Mental Health Awareness
May is mental health awareness month and I wanted to share a little bit about why mental health is so near and dear to my heart. I never used to believe in the importance of mental health. When I was younger, I thought you just had feelings and emotions and that was that. I didn’t understand the gravity of their importance and the roll they would play in my life. Mental health struggles have been part of my life for about 12 years now, even longer if I think back to all the insecurities and feelings of sadness and loss I felt growing up. The majority of my mental health journey started when I developed an obsession with my physical appearance. This desire to look a certain way, to be as skinny as I could be turned into an unhealthy and dangerous obsession. I was looking for control, I was looking for validation, and I was looking to fill a void. I thought I could do this by making my outside appearance look like what was advertised and praised as beauty. I spent hours working out and hours fixating and obsessing over every ounce of food that I consumed. My mind was never not focused on food and work outs. I missed out on so many memories, so many joyous occasions, late nights eating pizza and ice cream with friends, taking spontaneous trips and adventures. I basically created a prison for myself, one that I was so afraid to leave.
It is interesting to look back on it because what I was doing to make myself feel good was actually making me feel worse and worse. That is where mental health is so interesting. You start to create these false beliefs, these untrue narratives that take over your life. I believed all my value was tied into how I looked. I thought my story was one that only deserved telling if I was skinny. I so desperately wanted happiness but I was doing things that brought me the exact opposite. Struggles with food and exercise aren’t the only ones I have experienced. I have also spent a good portion of my adult life dealing with anxiety. Anxiety is a tricky one. Anxiety can lay dormant for stretches at a time and then pop back up when you least expect it. You develop coping mechanisms to deal with anxiety but it turns out these coping ways only fuel it more, feed the flame. Anxiety can feel like intense worry. It can feel like a pulled muscle in your chest or shortness of breath. Sometimes anxiety can feel like you want to crawl out of your own skin. I have felt all these things. I have wanted to scream and cry and shake myself out of these feelings.
There are so many ways that mental health struggles can manifest and these struggles can constantly change. My general anxiety turned into an extreme anxiety about not falling asleep, about being tired. It took me years to dig deep into this to find the root issue. It turned out it was still tied up in my self-worth, in needing to feel like I was enough. For some reason, I felt that if I was tired I wouldn’t be good enough, that I would fail. Not being good enough is a huge trigger for me, something that hurts me to my core. This fear of being tired turned into such bad insomnia that I wouldn’t leave my apartment at night. I was afraid to go out and disrupt my routine. Even nights I did everything “perfectly” I would still stay up awake, frustrated and emotional. I would be in bed crying and then grab any over the counter sleep aid I could to get the pain to stop. It was the most viscous cycle.
It took me a really long time to admit I had issues and that I needed help. I was so resistant to therapy at first. I thought by going to therapy I was admitting I was broken, I was telling myself that I was right all along, that I wasn’t good enough after all. It is sad that there is such a negative stigma around mental health and therapy. If you would go to the doctor because you have physical symptoms, why would you not go to a doctor for mental symptoms? There is absolutely no shame in asking for help, in going to talk to someone. I know how scary it can be. How intimidating it is to talk to a stranger and share your deepest feelings. Sometimes you aren’t even consciously aware of the issues, you just know the dysfunctional behaviors they manifest as. I just want to share that it is amazing to take charge of your mental health and seek out therapy. It is impossible to be objective about our own emotions and getting a professional’s thoughts is something so valuable. There are many options now as well if traditional talk therapy doesn’t work for you. There are virtual sessions you can have. You can even strictly do therapy via writing which is what I am doing now because I am much better at writing out my thoughts and feelings than I am at speaking them. Just know that it is okay to ask for help, it is okay to need support. We don’t have to do everything all by ourselves. I am always happy to share more of my story or listen to anyone that needs to just talk things out. Take care of your mental health, it impacts basically every area of your life.