After spending years struggling with your mental health one day you finally decide that it was time, you understood enough of your issues to start your journey towards healing, to build a better life for yourself but it isn't exactly all growth, mindfulness and self love. There are certain things that you will run into time and time again during the process.
1. Cutting the bad stuff out: This is usually the first thing that needs to be done when you decide to start healing yourself from the inside out and it isn't exactly easy. You could be trauma bonded with toxic people in your life, maybe the only people you have in your life are the ones who are toxic and cutting them off means you would be completely alone, it could be family members (not surprising), people might form negative opinions about you when you cut them off because let's be honest not everyone is capable of understanding what you are going through, toxic people don't usually know they are being toxic and might even make you questions your choices, abusive people might try to manipulate you to give up and there will be times where you will ask yourself if you're being selfish but that's the thing you have to do it all on your own and completely ignore all the downfalls because you know you need this. Toxic patterns you have might be programmed so deep down in your head that to find the root of all evil, you might even have to revisit some painful memories to understand when they developed.
2. Depression and Anxiety: Now that you're going to therapy and working on yourself you might feel the need to keep yourself motivated and it is extremely hard when you wake up feeling fatigue and stress, you will want to give up on the whole process every time the depression slips through your hands and you no longer have a hold on it. You might feel like it's all pointless and none of it is going to work but you will have to push yourself even if it means you are crying all day, on those days I suggest you watch motivational videos and try to follow a guided meditation or whatever it is that makes you feel relaxed and grounded. Just take the day off from everything and sleep if you can't seem to summon any will power, the point is to not be hard on yourself over the downfalls, write down somewhere WHY you are doing this and remind yourself why you must keep going. Don't let one bad day define your whole life.
3. People From The Past: When you were at your worst some people might've labelled you as crazy, flaky, lazy or my personal favorite "likes to be sad" and these people might come back around to remind you that you are still the same messed up and confused person, people might try to pull you back down by using your past as a weapon. Negative people in your life never like it when you grow or try to be better and will do anything they can to keep you down, it's sad but people actually do that. In those times you have to disregard their opinions based on who you were and remind yourself you are a work in progress and not the same person anymore, use those past problems as motivation and drive to be better now. A lot of people who struggle with mental health issues are very sensitive to what other's think or say about them because it's a hard to digest fact that sometimes even the people you care about don't have any faith in you or want you to be better and most cases they don't even realize how they effect you.
4. Feeling Selfish or Lazy: Feeling like you are being selfish for trying to heal can be a very hard thing to understand, you already have people who feel upset that you cut them out and absolutely refuse to understand why you need to do what you are doing, then when you take days off to just take care of yourself and check in, you might also feel you aren't contributing or doing enough in your life but that's completely normal and honestly working on yourself doesn't always mean being at the gym everyday or trying out new things, you have to listen to your body and mind and respect that. You are not being selfish or lazy you are just doing what needs to be done, for you to get better.
5. Time Flying: Healing can take many years, unlearning your negative patterns, letting go of traumas and literally starting your whole self from zero takes time and constant work. Time goes by really fast, it feels like months when it's actually been 2 years and you get scared every time you realize that because you start questioning yourself again but then you see the results look back at the person you used to be and realize how far you've come and actually start feeling grateful for doing all that you did. You might feel that everyone grew up around you, friends moved away, got degrees, got married and have families and even though you are very happy for them it might push you to think negatively about yourself " I was so busy healing my brain that I didn't even realize how time was just going by so fast and now I feel old and not accomplished" but see that's just a floating negative thought and one really important thing while healing is that you learn how to switch your negative thoughts. Your accomplishments aren't defined by the society, you define them yourself and healing is an achievement that deserves a great reward because you literally just reset your whole life and that takes so much work and patience not everyone can do that. DON'T EVER COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHER PEOPLE. Everyone is different and everyone fights their own battles we should only celebrate our successes with each other and share our experiences but never compare. You don't know how many all-nighters they pulled to pass their exams, you don't know how many hurdles they had to overcome in their relationships before they found their soulmate, you don't know how many hours of work someone had to put in before they came up with enough capital to start their own business and they don't know how many days you had to cry yourself to sleep or drag yourself to therapy and how many times you had to talk yourself out of suicidal thoughts all by yourself.
To sum it up, it isn't easy but the dark side is so tiny when you compare it to the brighter side of healing. It's all worth it because YOU ARE WORTH IT. You made this happen for yourself, you got yourself through it all. So don't ever give up on yourself!!
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