MENTAL HEALTH
Mental health.
Without it, things can look complicated, bleak, scary or just downright hopeless. But this doesn’t have to be the case.
Most of us aren’t born with mental ill-health, and yet this crazy world we live in can make the best of us feel like we are insane!
It’s worth noting that when you try to make sense of something that doesn’t, can’t and never will, we can end up inverting this on ourselves and thinking there is something wrong with us. Well, most of the time, there's not necessarily.
Although this can actually manifest as a clinical illness, there are lots of steps along the way that lead to this point, and with gentle attention and judiciousness, we can attend to many things before they become outright ‘problems’.
Your mental health is possibly one of the most important assets you have.
Unfortunately though, many young people find themselves struggling to integrate the changes they are experiencing – in life, in their body, in their friendship groups, at school, in burgeoning relationships, or at home.
We don’t really get trained on how to integrate our inner and outer worlds, either.
Life can therefore seem confusing, challenging, too hard, and giving up can seem like a solid option.
Problem is, when we do that, our challenges compound, because we are not really dealing with things as they occur.
Then, those challenges store up when we shelve them, and we can later blow up volcano-style when they start falling off the shelf.
Learning to listen to the wisdom of your body can actually help you navigate life better than any external (any)thing outside of yourself.
Your body is smarter than you are (and that’s a quote from one of my patients).
It’s wise to listen to your body and to heed its messages, for it has more than self-preservation at heart, it holds you in the potential for true love each and every moment of each and every day.
Our mind, on the other hand, can be filled with all sorts of rubbish – as evidenced by any thought you have ever had that you are dumb, stupid, unworthy, unloveable, etc.
When we are not met and held in the love that we are, there are a myriad of behaviours that we can reach out to in order to try to numb the pain of not being embraced to be all that we are.
This can range from:
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Pleasing people
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Not expressing what you feel
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Trying to hide your sweetness
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Hardening or toughening up
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Swearing
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Trashing yourself with drugs or alcohol
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Striving to achieve in any domain
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Gossiping and/or taking others down
So, you can rage against all that the set up is (hence the ‘angry teen’ – been there, done that), give up, withdraw from life and cop all the problems that come with that.
Yep, you read correctly, there’s a whole bunch of mental health issues waiting to eat you up… (there be dragons) or, you can give up and comply with all the ways we celebrate that are the apparent good, right, and kind in the world.
Now, I’m not having a go at any of these things – because I’m just the same as you, been there, done all that, but what I have learnt is that the key to living true in life is all inside of you.
And you can never find those keys if you continually refer outside of yourself for guidance, instruction, and/or to be told what to do.
Enter the wisdom of your body:
In short, any attempt to reduce your sensitivity.
The problem is, none of these actually work, and never can they.
This place we otherwise live in is set up for us to be
anti-all-that-we-naturally-are-inside.
No matter what the event or circumstance, your body gives constant feedback as to what is cool by it and not just by what you think is cool.
Your body is communicating with you all of the time. Most of the time, our mind thinks this information is inconvenient at best and a spoilsport at worst. But the key is that your body actually holds your best interests at heart, even if we don’t want to hear it.
And while we can always override it, beginning to listen to your body’s constant messages marks the beginning of the most beautiful, enriching and fulfilling relationship you will ever have – the one you have with YOU!
Your body is your instruction manual - it communicates with us all the time.
Our job is to heed its messages, and to act on them...
...you can save yourself much heartache simply by hearing and acting on whatever it tells you.
I can assure you, I didn’t get to be where I am by abusing myself, my body, my friends, my family and everybody else, although I have done all of that.
I was pretty down and out: desperate, withdrawn, lost. All my hopes and dreams had fallen flat. I had no idea what my purpose was in life, as any thought of there being one had been sequentially extinguished.
Whatever I thought I would ‘be’, I had tried, tested and failed. So, I thought I was a failure. Almost reclusive and/or agoraphobic at times; I certainly did not want to be seen for the abysmal failure I thought I was. It seemed no-one else had any problems with life, it was just me, and in that I was alone.
Of course, that was a fallacy, as I have since learnt that so many of us have the same isolating thoughts, i.e. those isolating thoughts are more common than we realise!
It wasn’t until I was encouraged to listen to and honour my body that life began to change, step by step. Every other avenue had been exhausted, there was nothing more I could do or say or walk in the other direction(s) that had proven to be of any substance worth living whatsoever.
Thus, I turned and faced inward, but not in a navel-gazing kind of way, but in a way that re-attuned my senses to that which stems from deep within, and had (and does) remain untouched by the crazy world we see and live in.
From here, I live life, go about my work, engage in friendships and relationships, and I am amazed at just how everything in life can offer profound lessons, whether we heed them or not.
There really is so much to learn about life and to rediscover about ourselves, particularly when we have all but given up on ourselves and on life.
Reflecting then, as I have, on all the things I got up to when I was your age, I felt strongly compelled to share with you all the so-called errors and mistakes I made along the way that in some ways helped me to learn that this was how to live life; in many ways, it was all completely unnecessary.
I have said and will continue to do so, that others who have not done drugs, drank to excess and slept around are streets ahead of where I was at, but there are so many other impediments to living congruent to our most deepest, most natural selves, and to live any other way is to begin the steps towards mental-ill health, whether diagnosed or not.
However, you and whatever you have done are not irredeemable – YOU can walk yourself out of whatever situation you find yourself in, because YOU walked your way into it!
The beauty of this means that your steps are always retraceable, back to who and what you truly are.
So, I invite you to read more, and continue to check back, as this website is a living website, forever being updated and expanded!
Here, I discuss maturity, what everyone else is doing, the craving for 'love' and the empty search for it, what love actually is, and the everything that it's not, including porn.
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