Job applications always look for detail-oriented candidates who can multitask and accomplish goals successfully. But jam-packing my schedule, picking up part time jobs to fill the holes in my days, volunteering with my available minutes, trying to maintain a social life and attempting to remain healthy didn’t get me my dream job or success in my field – it got me into therapy.

I reached my breaking point last spring. My 15-credit course load; my part-time job; a position as news editor at The Chronicle; volunteering for multiple non-profits; juggling intern applications for the summer; dealing with friends, relationships and family situations out of my control – it all just became too much for me. 

It was not necessarily the amount of time I was spending doing all of these activities, but rather the lack of time I had to myself. I realized that in any given day, I rarely sat down to think. I wasn’t taking time to sort through all of the stress in my life. It all makes sense that suddenly, around March, I crumbled. 

Every single day was daunting. My days were long and my hours were draining. Simple tasks felt like climbing to the top of a mountain. Yet somehow, despite the emotional and mental turmoil I was under, I never let my grades take the fall. For some reason, that was most important to me. I realized then that I had a serious issue: the fact that I was going to let my own mental and physical health deteriorate for the sake of my perfect GPA.

And so I went back to therapy. In the beginning it felt a bit like a defeat to end up back in the same chair I had been just years before when my PTSD hit me like a ton of bricks and I could barely get out of bed. It felt kind of like throwing in the towel. But as my weekly sessions progressed, I began to realize that it wasn’t a defeat in the slightest – it was a victory.

Our society is so fast-paced it can become difficult to decompress or to escape for a bit. But I’ve found that giving myself “me time,” even for 30 minutes a day, can change everything. Watch that Netflix show you’ve been dying to try, take a walk, watch the sunset, call your best friend, adventure to a new restaurant, play with some dogs, journal, listen to your favorite album. It isn’t healthy or natural to overwork our bodies. If we are physically tired, we rest. We should be resting mentally, too. 

Taking ownership of my perfectionism and recognizing it as a fatal flaw was life-changing. Through therapy, I began to recognize ways to cope with stress and small practices to make my schedule not only manageable, but enjoyable. I realized that at the root of it, my stress did not stem from the level of difficulty in my classes or commitments, it stemmed from my own warped self-grading system that ruled that anything less than an A was a failure. 

Society itself can’t really slow down. Everything down to our news cycle moves in the blink of an eye. When sitting down with a computer, I also have Netflix or Hulu on in the back, my Twitter feed rolling in, my text messages appearing on the screen, my Amazon cart loaded with things I need and a horrifying to-do list glaring at me. It is human nature now to multitask to unhealthy extremes. While the world around us can’t really slow down, we can remind ourselves to stop, take a breath and take it all in. 

I’m not saying in any way that I am healed. I still find myself going crazy over exams and stressing over collected work and projects. I strive for the best – an innate characteristic that I may never be able to conquer. But what I can change? How I look at things. I am entering this year with a new and fresh perspective, one that pushes me to embrace the chaos and the stress, celebrate failures and learn from mistakes. And I have my therapist to thank for that.