It’s 1:37am, I woke up a little over an hour ago.
I swear when I woke up I thought it was the morning but I found out that I had only been sleeping for a handful of hours.
Anyway, it’s Wednesday now, so I can post. First of all, thank you to everyone that read last week’s post and also listened to my new episode of my podcast – I really appreciate it.
If you haven’t read last week’s post, please do so here and you can listen to me return on the microphone here.
As some of you who have been following me for a while will know, I have been managing and working on my mental health for years now.
Today on #NationalMentalHealthDay – I wanted to share a few things:
Your mental journey is just that, a journey.
Focus not on a destination but managing the journey. Think about your mental health journey as a marathon.
You want to manage the journey and coast through the process – never too fast or two slow.
Steady is valuable.
Too often life forces us to be faster, or dwell longer – you want to strike the perfect balance.
It is also important to not get too hung up on times you are too high and times where you are low.
It is very easy in high moments to want to do everything to hold onto them and yes you should try to stretch your happy moments as much as possible but don’t fall victim of them.
Allowing yourself to enjoy the moments in them, being present and cherishing them is more important than trying to hold on to those moments.
Said moments will fade and can ebb + flow, so allowing yourself grace to move within them is important.
Track the highs and the lows – find the triggers and the highlights in both settings. It will help you navigate both as they come up. Most importantly, allow yourself to feel it all.
There are valleys and dizzying peaks. Days where everything you touch turns to gold and the next where the sun doesn’t rise outside and suddenly you question everything about your existence.
Sometimes I find that trying to prevent myself from feeling low is what leads me into a deeper hole. Versus just understanding what triggers may have come up, feeling things temporarily and relying on my (healthy) coping mechanisms to get me through.
Therapy is expensive but not healing or evolving costs more.
One thing that you don’t find out till you are in it is how expensive therapy can be – financially and emotionally.
Therapy will tax you emotionally and invite you to cash in the secrets that have built your walls keeping you from the outside world and the risk of being hurt.
And for example if you don’t live in America or have good health insurance coverage, you can end up paying a lot for a lot.
Financially, it adds up too.
But one thing I have realized is that if you don’t address it – it being your mental health, it will cost more in the long run.
Think about your life right now and think about the friendships, relationships and more that you have lost because you feared getting hurt or you self sabotaged.
Or things you couldn’t fight for because you were so on E from life draining you.
The costs add up. I recommend prioritizing your mental if and when the funds allow it, it will save you a ton and from a ton in the future.
Song of the Week:
I Get Backing –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRmx-btWrFk&ab_channel=VictoriaOrenze
Win small battles and get practical about your everyday.
You showered today?
You didn’t cry?
You ate?
Oh you actually went outside?
All small wins. With tremendous ability to have great snowball and downstream effects.
I used to struggle to do some big ticket things, until I started to try to win incremental battles. Please note that all I am speaking about is not during phase where you may be dealing with deep clinical depression.
I for one am now living functionally with my situation.
A few years ago, I started going to the gym in the mornings – it greatly improves my mood.
But I would struggle to get out of bed in the mornings, so I started putting my clothes in front of my bedroom door, so all through the night when I would go to the bathroom, I would see the items and know that I needed to go to the gym.
It won’t always be that straight forward but that simple act helped greatly improve my mood and made me feel closer to winning.
Guard your mental health jealously and selfishly
It won’t make sense to everyone but guard your mental health. Especially when you find out your triggers.
Those triggers can be in people, places, projects and more.
It won’t always seem easy to get for others but you have to know you and what gets you.
Remember though, that sometimes the guards you put in place to protect yourself could be triggers for others.
So while you try to protect yourself, understand that not everyone is out to hurt you – even if they eventually can and they just might.
Understand Your Internal Working Model
Internal working model of attachment is a psychological approach that attempts to describe the development of mental representations, specifically the worthiness of the self and expectations of others’ reactions to the self.
Your internal working model will influence how you view yourself and it tries to reinforce how you feel about yourself through things that happen to you or around. If you believe you deserve love, when it comes you’ll feel justified. If you feel you don’t deserve love, when it doesn’t come, you say “ah! Exactly, I don’t deserve love”
It will contribute to:
- Self doubt
- Imposter syndrome
- Negative talk
- Self sabotage
Understand how you see yourself and the interrogate that.
Why do you see yourself as less or why do you feel like you don’t deserve good things?
When clearly you do.
God above all
My mental health is largely influenced by my faith.
I go to God first. But I still struggle like everyone else.
I let depression sneak in and I may try to fight it myself, instead of praying.
I start almost everyday with prayer and worship but it doesn’t always mean that I do the right things internally.
Many times, my depression is brought on by my sin and falling short of God’s expectations. Which sucks because he forgives me and I end up not forgiving myself.
Like how sway?
It’s so backwards but it’s how I sometimes treat myself.
So truthfully, my mental health would be much better if I did what God wanted. Many times, I do the opposite of what he wants or I do the opposite of what I should do and then I feel worthless.
This then triggers my depression or negative talk.
Worshipping helps me a lot. I get to submit and just tell him how much I need him.
I want to stay in that place more and not just run there when things go south.
I don’t think I have everything about my mental figured or sorted but I can say the following
- Stay with it, it gets better. I promise.
- Therapy changed my life.
- Therapy requires application – the theory has to transfer to real life.
- You will have to get it wrong to get it right
- Be wary of false dawns. Do the work, the nasty, gritty work – you will be better for it in the long run.
- Be patient, be kind. You are figuring this out as you go along.
Please comment, repost and share.
Thank you for your continued support.
You are highly appreciated.
WordsOfWednesday
#WhatTheHeckMan © 2023
