Mental health is complicated. We experience things throughout life that hit us in certain ways and every time something hits us we choose to react in a certain way. We can talk about it. We can cry. We can pack on the emotional trauma or experience or we can completely ignore it all together and pretend it will just go away on it’s own. I think the most common thing is to just PRETEND you aren’t impacted and hope that the feelings go away as you get older. I can tell you one thing from YEARS of doing that is it doesn’t. IT DOES NOT go away.

We cannot change the things that have happened to us in life. We have all experienced so much trauma that each story is unique and sad. We have all experienced loss, some sort of trauma or experience that has shaped us in some way. But as we get older we just take those experiences and handle it the best that WE KNOW HOW and try to move forward. We just take the issue sweep it under the rug and move forward. But by doing this we are creating triggers that we don’t realize we are creating. Let me give you an example of mental health triggers. “You are living life and everything is fine. You are having a great day and then all of a sudden someone says or does something. You see something on tv and then INSTANTLY you feel depressed. You are sad and all of a sudden are BACK to a moment that you buried years ago. You don’t understand why you are there but you are. You have never fully healed from that experience and yet here you are facing it head on again.” we have all experienced it. Most of us more often then others.

So how do we TRY to live life without the fear of facing those triggers at any random point in life? We have buried those experiences and traumas deep down in hopes that they would never pop up. I have been to therapy a lot in my adult life. I have experienced my share of emotional trauma and I just grew up almost thinking it was “normal”. As an adult I know now that the things that I experienced and the way I chose to handle those issues were NOT normal. So I started going to therapy. I figured out really quickly that I had been depressed for a LONG time I just got so used to “Feeling” the way that I did that once again I thought it was a normal way of life. It wasn’t. So I got into therapy. I started talking to someone that didn’t know me. They didn’t know ANYTHING about my life and past that I could basically only tell them what I WANTED them to know. But the more I went the MORE came out. Things that I had been sweeping under the rug for YEARS was coming out. Things I DID NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT. But let me tell you what happened.

I started growing. Sure. I hated hearing myself TALK about things that had happened in my life. But I felt it to be easier to talk about the NEXT time I went. So I continued to go. I was still facing depression I feel that is something that takes a LOT of work to live with but I was feeling better. I soon learned I DO NOT have to allow the people and experiences from my past to CONTROL me and who I am as an adult. I AM IN CHARGE of my mental health. I do NOT have to sweep EVERY SINGLE THING that happens to me under the rug because it is easier. Because sure, in the moment it is. But later down the road it will come out and HIT YOU LIKE A TON OF BRICKS. Get a journal. Write about ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING you are feeling no matter how painful it is. PULL THOSE THINGS OUT. You don’t have to share them with anyone, OR DO. Talk to someone. OR DON’T. Find something that is a positive FOR YOU. So you ARE NO LONGER sweeping issues under the rug. So you are TAKING CHARGE of your mental health. LEARN TO LOVE yourself. LEARN that it is OKAY to cry. Learn that it is OKAY to struggle with life. WE ARE ALL STRUGGLING. Some just hide it better. Some don’t. Understand that you are in charge. You have to start somewhere.

Mental health is a bitch. It really is and it is so hard to grasp and get a hold on. But the most we can do is try. We can try to take the steps to heal and move forward even though some of the things we are trying to heal from are very traumatic. We cannot change the past or the things that have brought us pain but we can try to grow.

YOU ARE SO INCREDIBLY important in this world. I know sometimes you feel like you aren’t much. I have felt that so many times and that is because the traumas and experiences from my past have been piling up for years that it started SHAPING ME FOR ME. LET ME TLEL YOU SOMETHING. YOU are in charge of YOU. NOBODY is in charge of you. NOBODY is in charge OF YOUR MENTAL HEALTH. YOU DESERVE TO BE HAPPY. Burn the shit from your past and GROW and blossom and be whoever you want to be. If you continue to let things pile up you will grow to be bitter, upset, angry and you will ALWAYS be watching for those triggers.

YOU DESERVE TO BE HAPPY. I DESERVE TO BE HAPPY. I am working on myself every day for ME and for my future self. I want to be a great mom but I cannot be THE BEST mom for my kids if I am not okay mentally, so I need to continue to work on that. WHY am I allowing people from my past to continue to control me. These people are not and have not been a part of my life in 10 plus years and I STILL ALLOW them to impact me. I cannot live like that. I am better than them I am better then what I went through. I have to rise up and prove that to myself and to everyone else. You need to do the same. YOU ARE NOT YOUR DEPRESSION. YOU ARE NOT YOUR ANXIETY. YOU ARE NOT YOUR SADNESS. You are a valuable important person who deserves to be happy and healthy and you need to start by loving yourself and you need to start TODAY. Because tomorrow is ONE STEP closer to being in control of YOUR own mental health. 

SLOWLY GROW. SLOWLY BETTER YOURSELF. SLOWLY HEAL. You’ve got this. Understand one thing. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. We are ALL growing. Even slowly.