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Often times life brings upon our path challenges that somehow, we get through until the next life challenge. However, sometimes the strength to keep moving forward can get more difficult as time passes on. Life difficulties such as stress at work, home, or that fight with your partner, child, parent, boss that keeps re-occurring over and over again can get very draining. Where you used to have energy and happiness you now find yourself dreading going to work, coming home or even both. If your living in Calgary, Airdrie, Cochrane, or Okotoks these symptoms could very well indicate you are becoming or have become emotionally dehydrated. 

What is emotional dehydration?

Emotional Dehydration is just a creative way of saying you’re emotionally spent in being able to give anymore time and energy of yourself. Over time, if not dealt with, this can lead to multiple mental health challenges such as Depression, anger, anxiety, burn-out, relationship issues and many other mental health conditions.

Why does emotional dehydration happen?

Emotional dehydration happens when we are not taking care of yourself emotionally, mentally, physically and sometimes even spiritually. Imagine if you were going in for major surgery and the doctor came in the operating room with the flu. There is no way you’re going to want the surgeon to operate on you because although the surgeon has all the skills and knowledge to heal you; in that moment the doctor needs to take care of his own needs first by getting healthy before he operates on you. 

Where does emotional dehydration occur?

Emotional dehydration occurs quite often during ongoing unhealthy stress or adverse circumstances, such as trauma, in our lives. The more ongoing unhealthy stress and trauma that has occurred in our lives the more likely it is you may find yourself emotionally dehydrated. If not dealt with, you may find yourself finding it harder and harder to deal with your present circumstances only to find yourself over the edge and tapped out when a crisis, you have no control over, occurs in your life.

When should you seek out support?

As soon as you recognize symptoms of emotional dehydration you should seek out support immediately. The unfortunate reality is many people, by the time they recognize they are emotionally dehydrated, are now at such a state of dehydration that if they had sought out support from someone like a professional counsellor earlier on, they could have dealt with these on-growing issues of internal pain sooner than later. The good news is that even if you are feeling very negative symptoms of depression or anxiety this does not mean there is no hope for you in recovering. What it does mean is that recovery might take a little more time to deal with these symptoms.   

Who are you going to for support?

It is so important to seek healthy and safe support from family, friends and professionals if you believe you are emotionally dehydrated. One of the biggest outcomes of not seeking support when dealing with ongoing emotional dehydration can be unhealthy forms of isolation that can lead to other challenges such as increased alcoholic consumption, drugs and even unhealthy forms of relationships that can develop into emotional affairs with unhealthy people who are not part of your support network.

Again, it’s important to make sure that who you go to for support is a safe and trusted person that can empathize and be with you during your time of re-hydration.

Emotional Dehydration is real and needs to be dealt with as soon as possible in order to be able to lead a healthy and productive life full of energy and joy. If you’re reading this and saying to yourself “I definitely don’t have energy or joy in my life; just anxiety and depression” then I would encourage you to take the courageous next step and seek a qualified therapist to begin supporting you on your journey to re-hydration and discovering NEW LIFE.