This past week was my birthday. I’ll be honest – historically speaking, I’m not big on birthdays. Actually, let me be more specific: I’m not that big on my birthday. I’ll help anyone else celebrate the day they were born. Name the time and place and I am in there, ready to do it up big. But when it comes to my own birthday, there have always been a few challenges that have gotten in the way of enjoying my birthday the way I’d like to. There are plenty of reasons for why I feel this way, but since this is a mental health blog, I’ll focus on what one of the most challenging reasons that birthdays are difficult for me, which is one of the simplest aspects of a birthday: celebrating yourself.
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Why Your Mental Health Journey Is Unique
A lot of people face mental health challenges on a daily basis. That might sound like it’s a lot to deal with, but there’s something that’s easy to forget when we talk about mental health and the challenges that people can face – each person, and each challenge, is unique. There is a sense of community and togetherness that is important when it comes to the mental health discourse (think about ‘you are not alone’ and phrases in that vein), but it can be difficult to remember that even though we’re in this together, each person is on their own mental health journey. This means that our challenges will be faced in many different ways, which can get left out of how we talk about mental health.
Continue readingIt Sounded Better in My Head
One of the more prominent aspects of my anxiety is my difficulty with conversation. Most of that stems from social anxiety, which (according to the National Institute of Mental Health) is “an intense, persistent fear of being watched and judged by others.” Having conversations with others, especially people I don’t know all that well, can make me very nervous. I’m often worried I’ll say the ‘wrong thing’ and ruin a conversation, which is why I often avoid them. The biggest reason I end up in these situations is that I have an unrealistic view that every interaction I have with someone should be ‘perfect’ – which is what I want to talk about today.
Continue readingFocusing on What’s Effective for Mental Wellness
When I write about mental health, I often use the word effective to talk about a certain technique or method that I’m researching or using. I’ve started to use this word more and more in the past few years, and it’s become one of the biggest ways I’ve measured mental wellness and how I manage mental health challenges. By putting a focus on how effective things are, I’ve been able to prioritize my mental health in a way I hadn’t been able to do before. Here’s why that’s important.
Continue readingThe Difference Between Adjusting and Fixing
My posts from the last few weeks have me thinking a lot about making adjustments and self-improvement, and for good reason. My two-part post on making mental health adjustments allowed me to reflect on making the necessary adjustments to my changing mental health – whether that’s adjusting to my new symptoms or how this impacts the world around me. I also want to find ways to get out of my own head and feel freer in conversations, which is why I questioned if everything I say is actually that important. But my mindset is extremely important when it comes to making adjustments, which is what I wanted to write about today.
Continue readingMaking Mental Health Adjustments Part Two: Adjusting to Yourself
Adjusting to changes in your mental wellness isn’t easy. There are so many ways things can change, and since every person has their own unique story and personality traits, there are a million directions these changes can go in. In part one of this post on making mental health adjustments, I focused on how to adjust to new or different symptoms of mental illness, and wrote about the effectiveness of adjusting to one symptom at a time. Today, I want to focus on making mental health adjustments that help us build a healthier lifestyle – not just adjusting to our symptoms, but adjusting to how mental health affects our well-being.
Continue readingImproving My Relationship with Failure and Mental Health
I thought a bit about how I’d title this post because I knew that regardless of what I wrote, I’d feel some type of way about this particular topic. Like many other people, I don’t have a great relationship with the world ‘failure.’ At worst, the word terrifies me. At best, I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m not perfect. I think we could all stand to improve our relationship with how we deal with failure, and I feel like incorporating that improvement within a mental health framework is a good place to start. I’m not always going to succeed at being mentally healthy. I have to be okay at accepting that, and here’s why.
Continue readingThe Trouble With Being on Autopilot
I’m currently making my way out of a months-long mental funk, and things have felt a little off. That’s not to say that I’ve been struggling too much or things are unbearable. But sometimes you end up in a bit of a funk, and if that affects your mental health it can take some time to climb out of that hole. This time, I realized one of the main reasons I ended up in this funk was that I was on autopilot when it came to my mental health. Though being on autopilot has its benefits with getting through our day-to-day activities, it can also contribute to negatively affecting our mental health.
Continue readingFive Reminders About Building Your Mental Health Toolkit
Earlier this week, I wrote about some of the new symptoms of anxiety that I’ve been experiencing in the past few months. While it hasn’t been fun to learn how to manage and live with these new symptoms, it’s been another opportunity to work on what I like to call my mental health toolkit. Over the years, I’ve been able to create different coping strategies and methods to manage my mental health, and it’s played a big role in changing the way I view my health.
Continue readingThe Importance of Letting Out Emotions
I remember when I was a kid I’d hear the term ‘bottle it up’ a lot when it came to dealing with life’s problems. It’s been some time since I’ve heard it (thanks to friends and family who don’t use this approach too often), but it’s stuck with me over the years. One of the most important things I’ve learned on my mental health journey is that it’s extremely important that I let out my emotions as often as I can. Even more than that, it’s important to that when I let those emotions out, it’s in a healthy way that can help me build long-term wellness. Here’s how that came to be.
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My Brain's Not Broken 