Do you understand that feeling when something completely unexpected sets you off? Like a minor inconvenience pops up and suddenly it seems like the worst thing that’s ever happened to you? And after crying or venting or tearing your hair out, you’re left wondering WTF happened—only to understand, Ohhh, that wasn’t about [insert minor inconvenience here] in any respect?

That’s form of how this whole 12 months has felt, to be honest. Each Latest Bad Thing—whether it’s a tiny personal mishap you’d typically absorb stride or an awful news event like Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death and the Breonna Taylor ruling—seemingly carries with it the burden of all of the bad things that preceded it. Consequently, we’re all form of getting emotionally pummeled. Over and time and again. And it’s exhausting.

In the event you’ve been feeling this manner too, you’re definitely not the just one. It’s form of just…the experience of living through 2020. “We’re experiencing the cumulative effect of so many large-scale issues and we’re experiencing them concurrently,” Jor-El Caraballo, L.M.H.C., therapist and cofounder of Brooklyn-based therapy practice Viva Wellness, tells SELF. “Whether it’s politics or the lived reality of the pandemic or racial injustices and violence against Black bodies, we haven’t really seen any significant periods of release.”

All of that has an impact on our brains and our ability to deal. “Normally once we face a threat, we get scared, we get stressed, and we undergo our responses,” clinical psychologist and writer of Detox Your Thoughts, Andrea Bonior, Ph.D., tells SELF. “Hopefully, we use good coping strategies to get through, but within the very least, the threat eventually goes away and our physiological stress response can reset back to our baseline. The difference here is that we haven’t gotten to reset but all the pieces keeps accumulating anyway.”

All of it is smart but it surely’s also form of a grim picture. Greater than once, I’ve found myself pondering, “Okay, that is my breaking point,” however the things just carry on coming. So what will we do? While there aren’t any five easy mental health suggestions for making things go right when we are able to’t catch a break, there are small things we are able to do to care for ourselves in moments it seems like we are able to’t come up for air. Hopefully, a number of the advice here can assist, even when it’s by making you’re feeling less alone.

1. Give attention to getting enough sleep.

In the event you’re going to prioritize one traditional self-care strategy at once, please attempt to get some sleep. It might appear to be a small thing, but it surely impacts a lot. “The less sleep we get, the more hypersensitive to threat we’re,” says Bonior. “We get more anxious. We view things more negatively. It’s all an evolutionary response. Back in cave-dwelling times, should you were sluggish and drained, you bought eaten unless you were in your guard. In the event you’re not getting enough sleep, your body will view all the pieces as a threat to guard you.”