Mental health is many things to many people. There is no singular experience that defines how it affects people.
• Mental health is massive and strong much like the river flowing. You drown not by failing into a river but by staying submerged in it. • Outlets at Silverthorne • Location: Silverthorne, CO
There is no preparation. Maybe a few signs. My first experience with mental health was the loss of my father, six years ago, is very different from my recent experience being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and Graves' disease. My experiences with mental health is different from my ex-boyfriend or my good friend and probably even your mental health issues. There is an overall environment and process of dealing with mental health shared by many.
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "mental health includes are emotional, pyschological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make healthy choices."
1 out 5 Americans will experience a mental illness in a given year. More than 50% will be diagnosed at some point in their lifetime.
Mental health illnesses can occur over a short period of time or be episodic. It comes and goes with discreet beginnings and ends. Did you know there are more than 200 types of mental illnesses?
The internal experience of mental health, much like grief, is likened to finding yourself in a small, dark, musty room, perphaps a small closet. The #anxiety and #depression weigh on you like a 10,000 pound elephant sitting on you. You are constricted, it is tight and feels like you are suffocating. No matter how you move to get relief, movement is impossible. You start panicking and #hyperventilating, sometimes it is overwhelming that you just shut down. It is overpowering and the mental illness is in control. The days can get rough and messy and painful. When you look back, it is the moments that you felt #lost and unsure that you'll remember.
You learn to co-habitate. You become very best friends.
Moments feel like hours and days like months. Eventually you feel a slight sense of release of pressure. You can take small breaths. It was hard to process that I was navigating in unknown territory. I just go with it and try to survive the moment, the day. Mental health illness has no concern for your well-being. You learn to co-habitate. It is like having a second layer of skin that attaches to you. Sometimes it gets irritated and flares up. Other times, it is dormant and laying in wait.
There are days I feel good and refreshed from the constraints of anxiety and its mucky presence. At times, it will decide to upstage my great attitude and remind me I can still get kicked in the arse and pulled down. It will be those moments after, those dark moments that lead you to #happiness. The days that break you are the days that make you. It does get easier and becomes a normal part of your daily routine.
There is No Road Map. No Clarity. No Time Stamp.
Managing your mental health is as important as managing your physical health. I was one of those that found I could operate and function in a daily routine. I could go to work. I could have a killer workout at the gym. I could read books on mental health illness and anxiety, but nothing provided solace or a better understanding. Some days I gave myself permission to not think or feel anything. I let myself be and try to sit being present in the moment. There is no road map, no clarity, no time stamp when the feelings would pass or come back.
Research. Perspectives. Comparisons. I was turning the kaleidoscope to understand by talking to therapists, friends who suffered mental health issues, was even in a relationship with someone who wore that blanket of comfort far longer than I had. You don't know yourself. That sort of makes you feel even more alienated.
For me, it was periods of isolation, some times self-inflicted, some times inadvertent. I did not have answers for people that asked how I was doing, especially during my early stages of being diagnosed diabetic. Honestly, I did not think people truly wanted to hear about the struggles. They were used to the happy-go-lucky positive cheerleader I generally am known to be. Though if I had to admit, bringing up my struggles with mental health and anxiety, bringing it out in the open, I truly felt better and it helped me not feel so isolated.
The truth of the matter is you are going through something and you are not in it alone. I think when you do not deny what is happening, you feel more capable, more visible to the world. When you acknowledge your situation, while things do not always go as expected, the bandwidth of goodness will keep coming. Over time, it is less overwhelming. Life is still going on outside. Fill your days with small pockets of #joy. Be your own hero. This is especially true for all of us. You have to show up for you. You have to reach out for help. I want to impress how valuable your state of mind is for you. Spend time with people good for your mental health. On particularly rough days, when it seems you can't possibly endure, you have to remember, it is not the baggage of our life that weighs us down, it is the way we carry it.
Too often, we believe we are stuck. When in reality, simply you are committed to certain patterns of behavior because they helped in the past. Now those behaviors have become more harmful than helpful. The reason why you cannot move forward is because you keep applying an old formula to a new level in your life. But if you change the formula, you will get a different result.
Elephants have a long life span. So does your mental health illness. Just never give up. Keep taking time for yourself until you are you again ♥
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