Depression, Anxiety, and Entrepreneurship

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and you may have already been able to tell this by the title of this post, but we are going to be talking all about things like depression and anxiety and struggling with mental health as an entrepreneur. If this topic is going to be triggering for you, please take what you need and feel free to skip this and the corresponding episode (#47) of Keeping It Candid. I completely understand that this might not be a topic that everybody is in the space to hear right now and I want you to make sure that you’re putting yourself first!

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please consider calling star 988. This is a mental health crisis line that’s available 24 -7 and it’s open to both US and Canadian residents.

Let’s be real, being an entrepreneur is hard. Depression is hard. Anxiety is hard. And when all three of these coincide at the same time, it is really, really hard. Today, I’m sharing a little bit of a vulnerable podcast that I’ve honestly hesitated to share.

Even though I am so passionate about advocating for mental health and chronic illnesses, I still have a lot of internalized ableism like a lot of us do and opening up about topics like this can also be really hard. But I know that I can do hard things. That’s what I keep telling myself. So I hope you’ll join me as I share a little bit of an update on what life has been like for me over the last month.

---

[00:00:36] (Intro music) Welcome to Keeping it Candid. I’m your host, Sandra Henderson, an international wedding and family photographer and business coach. I help wedding photographers use systems to build out the back end of their businesses to gain control and continue to thrive no matter what life throws their way.

And on a more personal note, I’m a strong Enneagram three wing too who’s obsessed with I’m obsessed with tacos. My love for travelling combined with navigating chronic illness life are just two of the many things that drive my passion for all things systems, workflows, and beating burnout as a business owner.

Join me every week for a candid behind-the-scenes look at what it’s really like working as a wedding photographer, where I’ll give you actionable steps to take your business to the next level. Absolutely no fluff here, friends, so go grab your favourite notebook and pen and let’s dive into this week’s episode. (music fades out)

02:05 Personal Experience with Depression and Anxiety

Sandra Henderson (02:05.966)
Back in the beginning of April, I really just wasn’t feeling like myself. I had just come back from vacation, so those post-vacation blues were hitting hard, especially because I was coming from Florida, where there was nothing but sun, and I came back to dreary Canada, where we had snow and rain and lots of clouds and all the things. So that lack of vitamin D definitely hit me. And it was also just perfect timing with my cycle for things to be a little bit rough.

And so I really just, I wasn’t feeling like myself. And after about 10 days or so, I started to feel it pass. I started to feel better. I was taking advantage of feeling more energetic at work and mentally clear. And then about a week later, it all started going downhill again. There were just these feelings that I couldn’t shake. Like I was anxious. There was this deep, really heavy weight on my chest.

If you’ve ever experienced depression before, you might know what I’m talking about. It felt like there were these dark hands kind of gripping me and trying to pull me down. Almost like when you’re about to get a cold or get the flu, you feel it starting and you know what’s happening and you try to do things to stop it. But a lot of times that sickness that you’re fighting off is going to take over, whether that’s a cold or a flu or depression. They really kind of work the same way.

Now I am very, very thankful that I was able to connect with a doctor last year and get prescribed medication for my anxiety and depression. So I had that in my court already helping me get through this. And it gave me this perspective that I’d never had before where I could feel what was happening. I could recognize what was happening, but it wasn’t fully taking over to a point where I felt like I was completely out of control or didn’t know what was going on.

And so I am very thankful to have taken that time to boost my confidence to actually go and ask my doctor for this help. If that’s something that you’ve been struggling with, I highly recommend it. Getting back onto an SSRI medication was hands down one of the best decisions that I have made for myself over the last year. And of course, I don’t want to give out any medical advice by any means.

04:26 Seeking Medication and Managing Symptoms

Sandra Henderson (04:26.222)
This might not be the perfect solution for you, but it’s definitely worth talking to your doctor about if you’ve been struggling with anxiety and depression as well and have been wondering if there’s something that can help you get through it. So I had that in my court like I said, and then because it was able to just give me that little bit of separation and that little bit of clarity, I was able to focus on doing things that were going to make me feel better, whether it was things that I just enjoy doing or things that, you know, quote-unquote, people have said are the things that you should be doing to make yourself feel better.

05:19 Self-Care and Grace as an Entrepreneur

So here is a little bit of a look at what I did during that time when I was really feeling off. First and foremost, I gave myself the grace that I needed to just feel it out, to let it ride and not fight against the negative feelings because when we do that and we bottle them up, they have a special way of eventually exploding out in a way worse way. So I wanted to give myself the grace to ride that out. I was also able to give myself some time off, which I know is not possible for everybody, especially if you are in the thick of busy season, but I highly, highly encourage you to just find some time to take to yourself because when you’re feeling that way and you’re running on high and you are just filling all of your time with all the things.

You’re really not making yourself a priority. It’s like bottling up those emotions to not feel them. Eventually filling up your time and go, go, go, go, go all the time is going to catch up with you as well. I took some time to reprioritize my projects. So I put things that were really time-consuming and mentally draining. Those got pushed off and I worked on things that I could do kind of on the go instead. I’m used to making these kinds of adjustments when I have flare days for endometriosis.

So I did a lot of designing in Canva and just refreshing my marketing plan, getting a better idea of what I wanted to be working on for the rest of the year and things like that. So I still felt productive in my business without having to take on the mental load of some really big projects. I also got outside. Thankfully we started to have a little bit of nicer weather around here. So on days that we had some warm weather and sunshine, I went for a walk or I would just sit out in my backyard in the sun for a few minutes.

Sandra Henderson (06:46.766)
I ate a lot of protein. So I was eating peanut butter and crackers. I was eating nuts. I was eating Greek yogurt. I was eating chicken and spinach. Basically, anything that I could get protein from. I was really trying to pack that into my diet because my stomach was also off. So eating wasn’t super easy for me. I was making sure to pack in lots of vitamins, especially vitamin C because there’s colds going around in my area, and vitamin D as well because I was trying to adjust back to being in cloudy Canada. I did some face masks and took a shower, put on some comfy clothes and did all those things so that I could just feel physically more comfortable.

One night when I was really having a hard time falling asleep, I put my noise-cancelling headphones on and put on my favourite playlist and just enjoyed some music therapy, which I love that it still works for me at 37 years old the same way that it did when I was 17. The perfect Playlist can just be so healing sometimes. And I gave myself a lot of patience because anybody who has gone through this before knows that healing is not linear. So I had to be patient with the days that I was feeling better and then waking up the next day and feeling worse. It wasn’t a progression of slowly going uphill every day.

So, I had to have a lot of patience for myself with that. And then just leaning on my support system. I am very, very lucky to have a husband who knows exactly the right things to do when I’m having times like this. It took us a long time to get there. It takes a lot of learning to know what your partner needs and doesn’t need without them saying it and respecting their boundaries and autonomy when they’re not feeling well.

I was very lucky to be able to lean on him and message friends who are a part of my chronic illness support system and things like that. So that was everything that I did over a couple of weeks. And when I finally started to feel better again, thankfully it happened, then I was left with this other piece of the puzzle. And again, if you’ve been through anything like this, you’re going to know exactly what I’m talking about.

---

---

08:59 Facing Overwhelm and Anxiety as an Entrepeneur

Sandra Henderson (08:59.886)
But I started feeling better again and then I was left to face everything that had been piling up and that kickstarted my anxiety all over again. My body and mind’s natural instinct when it gets overwhelmed is to go into freeze mode and that’s exactly what I did. I had systems in place that help with a lot of things but of course, it can’t help with everything. No matter how much I wish they could, they can’t help with everything. I replied to three emails just this past Monday that had been there for a week.

My podcast, as I’m sure you have already noticed, has been completely all over the place this season with no consistency in when these episodes are being posted. My email newsletter and blog went radio silent in the process. And so now that I’m feeling better and back to feeling a little bit more like myself, what’s really important is that I need to give myself a fresh perspective to start getting things done in a way that’s not overwhelming.

This week I’m so thankful I was able to take the whole week off. I didn’t have any meetings or sessions or anything on the calendar, so I blocked the time off to specifically focus on batch-working my podcast. As of the time of recording, which actually is May 3rd, so just a little bit before this episode actually aired, my goal by the end of today is to have two months’ worth of podcast episodes ready to go because not only do I want to be more consistent, but I also want to be more prepared if and honestly likely when this happens again.

Anxiety and depression are something that I’ve been dealing with my whole life. So I know that it can come and go, but it’s also very, very much directly related to my hormones for me. I’m in the process of finding out if I have something called PMDD, which would explain a lot. I’m not going to go into a whole other gynecological side note on this because ya’ll know I could talk about all those kinds of things forever. But if that is the case, this is something that I can expect to be feeling more and more each month directly related to my cycles. So I want to be prepared if that happens again.

11:38 Upcoming Guests on the Podcast

I’m so thankful that I have a huge backlog of absolutely amazing guests that I’ve had the opportunity to interview so far this season. And I seriously can’t wait to share everything that’s been recorded. Just to do a little bit of name-dropping, we have Janelle Henningsen talking about hiring an editor, Angie MacPherson is talking about branding, Yasi Salavatian is talking about using your brand voice, Laura Murphy joined me to talk about systems and so did Diana Wei Fong, Kara Duncan joined me to talk about consistent marketing, and Dolly DeLong joined me to talk about systems again.

These women are seriously entrepreneur powerhouses. So make sure you check back for their interviews over the next few months because I know you are going to love them. Now on that note, thank you so much for being here today, for always listening to the podcast, even when it takes a few unexpected weeks off, and for allowing me the space to be vulnerable and share a bit more of my story with you. I hope you all have a great rest of your week and I will be back next Wednesday. Thank you so much for listening.

(Outro music) Thank you so much for listening. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at simplysandryvonne.ca/keepingitcandid. In the meantime, let’s connect. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok, just search @SimplySandraYvonne. And if you love this podcast, I’d be so honoured if you’d go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Until next time. (Music fades out)

---

About Sandra

Sandra Henderson is a photographer, systems strategist, and podcast host based in Ontario, Canada. She specializes in helping photographers create strategic systems for their businesses to help them get their time back so they can spend it doing the things they love most. As an entrepreneur who also navigates chronic illness life, Sandra takes a unique approach to using systems that will help businesses thrive no matter what life throws your way.

On a personal note, she loves tacos, all things Bravo, 90’s music, travelling, and spending time at home with her husband, stepson, and two cats!