my mental health obstacles and recovery

Happy Sunday lovelies!
I am here again with my weekly Sunday post, hope you’ll enjoy it!
Today, I bring to you a short story about my mental health obstacles and recovery.

Today was spent by me consuming a whole lot of teas, jazz, reading and going through my books. I love going through them, I can’t explain it. Running my fingers through the pages, the smell of a book AAAH! My TBR-list is getting longer and longer and I don’t know what to do with myself. Love it here tho. My fellow book lovers understand what I’m talking about.

Although, the first thing I did today was to write in my journal. It’s so profoundly liberating and honestly the most important step in my healing journey. I can be as honest and as raw as I want since nobody will ever read it, it’s literally for my eyes only! I will forever highly recommend that you invest in a journal and just start writing. Whatever you feel like writing.

I have two journals that I write in, an ordinary journal and a gratitude journal. I’ve been thinking about getting another journal and fill it words of negativity and anger. Why do I think that it’s a good idea? My thought is that it’s better to write down my negative words and get them out of my system that way instead of being negative towards others and maybe even ruining their day thanks to me and my mood. It’s incredibly disrespectful and not fair on my end. It can’t be all positivity, beautiful clouds and rainbows every day. You’re going to have days where you would gladly watch the whole world burn down while smiling. I know I’ve had a couple of those days and that’s okay. I’m happy that I’ve matured and now know how to handle them.

Journaling was and still is a big part of my healing journey. I had so much built-up emotions within me and never knew what to do with them. Always felt as if no one would understand me and even if I chose to share something, I would never allow myself to be fully honest of what I was feeling and sometimes not even to myself, but journaling allowed me to be emotionally me and true to my emotions like never before. I kept my diary a secret from everyone (yes, some people are open to others about the fact that they own a diary/journal) and it made it much more fun to write in it for some reason. Made me feel like a kid again and it made me very nostalgic since I owned several journals when I was younger. I wish I still had them today but oh well.

Started writing in my first journal in 2018 when my mental health was THEE absolute worst and I needed an outlet quick. I was already seeing a psychologist at that time, but I craved something more, something just for me damn it and that’s when it came to me. I literally told myself ”Hey, I love to write. Why don’t I just do that?”. And… I just started writing and haven’t stopped ever since. There have been so many questions that I deemed no hope in finding an answer to but the more I wrote, the more I understood said topic that I was writing about. Especially the origin of my declining mental health, anxiety- and panic disorder and depression. But that’s for another blog post, when and if I decide to write about it. For now, let’s just be happy that those days are over.

Journaling forced and allowed me to be honest with and about myself. That was my obstacle in my healing journey. I didn’t want to accept the real reason as to why I was feeling the way that I did.

Epiphany

But when the moment came and I realized that I had no choice but to face the music or however that saying goes, wow did it hurt. It hurt extremely bad and for a week or two, I felt like shit. I hated every second of it.

»This is it« I thought. This is the moment where I just end it all and fucking disappear. Not by suicide necessarily but just… bye. It was heartbreaking for me to realize that someone could make you get to this point. Someone who is supposed to love you and stand by your side.

I don’t know if I will ever be comfortable writing about it but for now, just know that shit went down. What I wanted to say is that as crippling and devastating this realization was for me, I needed it. I REALLY needed it and I am so grateful that it happened. I was still sad and hurt about some other areas and events in my life but those was events that happened in the past. Whatever I was going through and causing me to develop an anxiety- and panic disorder with depression was happening RIGHT FUCKING NOW and I needed to get to the bottom of it.

The solution to my mental health recovery

Honesty and acceptance. That’s what I needed. I needed to be honest about the situation I was in and actually accepting it in the good, the bad and the absolute ugly. The power of acceptance is no joke! I think that some people fear it because they see it as just because they’re accepting a certain situation that they’re also settling which is just.. no? That’s not true. Accepting is facing the truth and life head on and saying to yourself for example ”this is how it is” and hopefully choosing to make the decisions and taking the necessary steps to change whatever is going on in your life that makes you sad. Settling is more ”it is what it is” and rolling with it. It’s really up to you from then on.

Your healing journey will not be easy, but it is extremely rewarding and worth it. Certain events and emotions from your past will pop up every now and then and it will definitely give you a mixture of emotions. Some will make you cringe HARD but that’s okay. I call it purging. Like my mind is letting some memories come to surface (often memories that I’ve tried to bury) to take a quick look at them, be real about my feelings about them and store them somewhere in my mind, in a healthy way. Like paperwork that needs to be looked through, signed and then stored in different folders.

Your journey will look different to someone else’s so don’t even bother comparing yourself to someone else. You have no idea what said person has been through, what their difficulties are and what they’re working on. Remember that you are doing this for you and you alone and that you are the only person who knows that tools you need to heal yourself.

Your mental health recovery is possible, and it will come. I’ve been working on myself since 2018 and yes, there were days where I wanted to give up because I felt like it was going nowhere. But you must remember, if you’re the same age as me that means that you’ve been alive since 1990. That’s many years on this earth with many layers of yourself to uncover. Like damn! Be kind and patient with yourself and never forget that you’re actually doing something when you could’ve easily just said fuck it and continued living a life that you don’t want. Be proud of your damn self because that takes a lot of courage, bravery and fearlessness to do. I hope you find the peace that you’re looking for, you truly deserve it! 💙