Feel Your Feelings

Disclaimer: Mental health isn’t just mental illness. Mental illness is a sub category of mental health. I am not diagnosed with a specific mental illness, but I deal with anxiety. See, everyone has mental health and not everyone is diagnosed with a mental illness. That does not mean your feelings are any less valid and that you do not struggle with your mental health too. Everyone has struggles and everyone deals with things differently. Don’t feel discouraged if you do not 100% fit in the mental illness category. It’s ok to be hard on yourself, it’s ok that things get to you, and it’s ok if your emotions are out of your control. You’re human and sometimes I have to remember that too. 

It’s easier to hide your emotions and put on a mask. But, hiding your emotions comes at a cost. It gets heavy, overwhelming, and causes anxiety. Sometimes you don’t even realize you do it. It just becomes a defense mechanism you’ve been so used to. To protect yourself because you have been doing it for so long. But it takes courage to let them show and know that it is ok to do so. I let my emotions overcome me, but now I am choosing to acknowledge my feelings and let myself feel them. I am using that to my advantage, I hope you can too.

I’ve been struggling for the last couple of months. Dealing with all kinds of emotions from different things that have happened in my life- both good and bad. Feeling so overwhelmed and so anxious and just freaking sad.  At first, I didn’t even realize it. I just kept working through it and didn’t acknowledge my feelings. But after weeks and weeks of not being able to sleep through the night and days of feeling this heavy weight on my chest, I came to a breaking point. I tried controlling my emotions but my body had other plans. Every little thing started to affect me. I would cry at the office and I would cry randomly at home. I would start crying because I was upset with myself over something I did or said. You see, I’m really hard on myself. To a point where sometimes I don’t see any value in myself. I don’t feel good enough or worthy enough for anything or anyone. I’ve struggled with this in the past, but it felt different this time. The struggle felt harder, it felt more real. I was starting to hate myself and the anxiety I was feeling didn’t make it any easier. There wasn’t a day in the last couple of months where I could look at myself and say anything positive. That mindset destroyed me. All of this combined caused me to just spiral. It affected how I take care of myself, my focus at work, my communication, my health, my happiness... literally everything. 

Sometimes I guess you don’t realize how much you’re struggling until one day your emotions just erupt. Last Friday was that day for me. My emotions have physically and mentally affected me for months and even when I started to recognize it I still wasn’t doing anything to help myself. I just thought that I have no right to feel anxious or sad and those thoughts just led me to doing absolutely nothing. I started to feel numb. 

So here I am writing this. Awakening all my senses and emotions. Being vulnerable. This is my first step to helping myself out of the hole I’ve made. I know that when you don’t put yourself first sometimes, it’s hard to love yourself. And after not paying attention to your mental health, it can lead you to roads you didn’t want to go down. So now I’m here. On a road I don’t want to be driving down. So I’m going to turn around slowly and work my way back. Might be easier said than done. But I think acknowledging it is a step in the right direction. 

If you’ve been struggling just know you’re not alone. We’re all on our own journeys dealing with different things behind closed doors. Here’s to working on ourselves to live our best lives! While allowing ourselves to show and feel our emotions along the way.

Xx, Lindsey