Investing in your mental health
Let’s talk about the real world impact of anxiety, depression and stress on quality of life. The destruction starts within, eroding self esteem and confidence, fuelling negative self talk, sending self punishment into overdrive, resulting in feeling like a failure. Overinflated guilt and shame becomes a barrier to understanding what is going, you feel powerless, hopeless and worthless. The conflict is between what you know you should be doing and what is going on internally. Emotions, self talk, thoughts and behaviours causes confusion and a barrier to reaching out. You can feel vulnerable, lonely and emotionally unsafe – no matter where you are.
Self blame is easy when you feel like a failure.
These internal impressions influence and disrupt your connections to your life. Relationships are lost or damaged, including family, relationships, friendships, work / education colleagues. You want so much to engage in your life to take part but you don’t know how or what to do. You lose precious time with your children because of overwhelm of doing practical things, you find it hard to engage positively with them. Positivity seems like a fallacy, as negative thoughts impinge on everything you do.
We’ve been led to believe that having poor mental health is a bad thing, something to be ashamed of and to keep hidden. The way mental health works makes it easy to hide – it all goes on inside. In order to seem ‘normal’ we slap on a smile, we pretend that we are doing fine while we struggle inside our own heads. Ultimately it’s the shame and guilt that stops us from reaching out and getting help. When you have a physical illness or impairment, there is no embarrassment you get the right help, doctor, medication, osteopath, massage therapist, physiotherapy, etc, what ever makes you better, it mobilises you and gets you back on your feet.
Sleep evades you. You lie awake long into the early hours or you wake early, your mind full and busy with intrusive thoughts of your failures, past, present and future. Exhaustion fuelled thoughts are more intense and hurtful. You already know that you are going to fail, or at the very least you expect to fail. Your life becomes a self fulfilling prophecy of bad days, failures, emotional dejection and guilt. Your world feels out of your control with no visible way out of the limited mind space.
Investing in your wellbeing and mental health has great all round benefits.
This paints a challenging picture of life with poor mental health but it doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to consume every waking moment, it does not have to overwhelm and control your life. Choosing to invest in your mental health means spending time on you and your needs. By taking time out to get to know yourself, implementing self care and self respect, in the same way you would your friends or family. What happens when you get the right help for your mental health? You can start living again, you can find quiet in your mind, make room for happiness and fulfilment, open up a world of possibilities. One of the benefits of investing in your mental health means having quality sleep again, sleep that energises you for your day and gives you mind space to engage in your life.
How Self Development can help
Self development is an underrated as a skill for improving mental health, including developing skills, knowledge and self knowledge. Understanding how your life has impacted on you and what you can do about it, taking control of things you have often let happen. Making good choices and taking the right actions, you can learn to quiet your mind and train your self talk to be kinder finding freedom from your intrusive thoughts. You can reconnect with your children, partner, friends and life without the emotional limits that keep you from enjoying the benefits of having close relationships. You can once again feel capable in your own life and be confident in your decision making and problem solving. You can get to know how to make yourself happy.
Self knowledge is a super power and has the ability to help you live again. You are the most important person in your life. You deserve happiness, good health, and to live a life you want. Is now the time to invest in your mental health?