What I Wish I Knew Earlier About Mental Health
Trigger warning: the following blog post discusses suicide, which may be triggering to some readers.
In grade school, we learned a lot about health. Physical health, that is. For seven years, the only things I ever learned in health class were STDs and abstinence. (It was like that scene in Mean Girls — “Don’t have sex, because you will get pregnant and die.”)
One topic we barely talked about in school? Mental health.
Back then, I didn’t know much about mental health. I thought that depression and eating disorders were the only mental disorders, that OCD meant you loved to be clean and organized, and that all psychopaths were murderers. (None of this, of course, would be the case.)
So when I started to struggle heavily with my mental health in college, I was in denial. I didn’t think I was depressed, because I simply didn’t know what depression was. I didn’t know what mental health was at all, for that matter.
Here’s what I wish I knew earlier about mental health.
1. Mental health is a spectrum
My teenager self would be shocked to learn that mental health doesn’t just include depression, OCD and eating disorders. In fact, mental health encompasses a lot more than you might think.
There are people with mild mental health conditions who don’t go to therapy; there are people with severe conditions who take medication, go to therapy and meditate in order to cope; there are people in between. Heck, there are even people who aren’t necessarily struggling with their mental health.
Mental health is a spectrum that covers everything from the most serious of disorders to a quick jolt of stress.
The most important part? Every notch on the mental health spectrum is valid. If someone has it worse than you, that does not mean your feelings are less valid, and if you seem to be struggling more than others, that doesn’t make you weaker.
2. It’s not always obvious
It took me awhile to accept the fact I was depressed, because I didn’t think I looked like I had depression. To me, people who had depression were who I saw in movies and TV shows — they had a blue-gray aura about them that made it obvious.
This just isn’t the case.
In fact, the more I’ve learned about mental health, the more I’ve realized how often it isn’t obvious. Many people would prefer to fake a smile and say “I’m fine” than talk about how they’re really doing.
The trust is, you never know what people are going through. People who appear happy, successful and loved can be struggling too. The important thing is to treat everyone with kindness, including yourself.
3. Therapy won’t solve everything
The first time I went to therapy, I thought I would feel a significant weight lift off of my shoulders. I imagined the clouds parting, a beam of light shining on my face and the thick coating of depression melting off like hot lava.
To my surprise, that didn’t happen. In fact, I felt the opposite — I didn’t like therapy in the slightest.
In the beginning, I’d be extremely anxious and depressed during the days leading up to my appointments, because I was uncomfortably fearful of talking about my emotions. I didn’t like crying, because I cried so often that I thought it made me weak, and during therapy, it didn’t take much to make me cry.
Because of this, I really disliked therapy. I felt like it was making me feel worse, not better.
However, in my heart, I was tired of letting my poor mental health overrun my life. I wanted to get better, and I knew I couldn’t do it alone — therapy was what I needed to achieve that.
Well, you could say I learned to love therapy, because I’ve been seeing my current therapist for almost three years now, and I can honestly say that therapy is the best decision I’ve made.
In the last two years, I’ve realized that I was too dependent on therapy in the beginning. Simply put, I would just go to therapy and not really participate in therapy.
Back then, nothing in my everyday routine changed — I didn’t take care of myself, I isolated myself, I didn’t set boundaries, I followed people on social media who made me feel insecure and so on. No wonder I still felt like sh*t!
Today, it’s the complete opposite — my world revolves around my self-care, baby!
As often as I can, I exercise at the gym, journal, go for nature walks, hang out with people who genuinely support me and vice versa, set boundaries, take care of plants and so on, as well as go to therapy. I’ve recognized what helps me and what doesn’t help me, and I make sure to incorporate as much of the good things as possible.
As a result, I find therapy to be much more rewarding, because I’m able to talk about my feelings and trust myself enough to know that I’m capable of taking care of myself during the good and the bad.
4. Everyone is going through something
When I first started to struggle with depression, I felt incredibly alone. I didn’t think anyone would be able to understand what I was going through and, therefore, I barely talked to anyone about it.
But the more I’ve opened up about my mental health, the more I’ve realized how many people have gone through sh*t or are currently wading through sh*t.
Just search #mentalhealth on Instagram, and you’ll find over 25 million posts. That’s right — 25 million. And that’s just on Instagram alone. Imagine how many people are going through mental health struggles who don’t post about it on Instagram.
Since opening up about my story and, specifically, starting my Instagram page, @yourfriendjane_, I’ve met hundreds of people who know exactly what it’s like to feel like to struggle with mental health. It’s opened my world up to people I would’ve never talked to otherwise, it’s given me the opportunity to listen to incredible stories and it’s made me realize the most important thing — we’re never truly alone in what we’re going through.
5. Poor mental health isn’t an excuse to treat people like sh*t
I’ll be the first to admit that I was a b*tch when I was depressed. If someone I cared about was trying to talk to me, I’d give one-word answers, I’d snap if they irritated me in the slightest or I’d stop talking altogether.
In short, I pushed people away, because I wanted them to fix my mental health and poor self-image. Because that was something they could never do, I was never satisfied.
Although my mental health was the reason behind my b*tchy attitude, it wasn’t an excuse. No one deserved to be treated like toe scum because of my inability to process my emotions — they weren’t to blame for my less-than-stellar mental health. Even if someone were to blame for my trauma, it was my responsibility to deal with my mental health.
When the people you care about are struggling, they may unintentionally take their emotions out on you and, as a result, hurt you. Even though their behavior hurts us, we may feel guilty for being angry or upset with them, or we may refrain from expressing our hurt feelings to them, in fear that it’ll make their condition worse.
The thing is, sh*tty mental health doesn’t excuse the way you treat someone, or it doesn’t excuse the way someone treats you. If you don’t like the way you’re being treated, you have every right to respectfully communicate your feelings. If they react negatively, that’s on them, not you. Setting healthy boundaries is not always a fun time, but it is necessary.
6. Refusing to talk about your feelings doesn’t make you a stronger person
For awhile, I refused to talk about my feelings, because I wanted to be able to handle my struggles by myself. I thought not talking about it made me more independent and stronger, which were qualities I strived to have, especially when I was depressed.
My depression made me unmotivated to do basic tasks, like get out of bed or brush my teeth; my 24/7 anxiety drained me of my energy; my eating disorder limited the amount of nutrients I was getting. This meant my mental health, quite literally, made me weaker, so the thought of gaining back that strength by not talking about my feelings was appealing to me.
However, when you internalize your pain and pretend everything’s okay, you’re only hurting yourself more. When you’re struggling, you’re already going through a lot of pain — you don’t need to place more of it on yourself.
You don’t have to shout “I’m depressed as f***” from the rooftops to heal. (I mean, if you want to, go ahead. I’ll gladly join you.) But simply admitting to yourself “Hey, I’m not okay” can work wonders and can be the ripple effect you need to have more honest conversations with others.
7. It won’t be like this forever
When I was in the thick of my depression, I heard it all of the time — “It’s going to be okay” and “It will get better.”
But hearing this didn’t help me. In fact, it only made me angrier. How did they know I would be okay? Did they have a magical crystal ball that could see into the future? I didn’t want to wait to feel better — I wanted to feel better now.
The truth was, no one knew for sure if things would get better. It very well could’ve worsened.
But life is never certain. There was an equal chance of it getting better or getting worse, and I was willing to see if what everyone told me would happen — would it actually get better?
Guess what? It did. It got a lot better.
When I was in college, specifically freshman year, I thought about suicide nearly every day, and to me, that was normal. It had become so ingrained into my everyday routine that I couldn’t remember what it felt like to not think about suicide. Heck, I couldn’t even remember what it felt like to feel anything, let alone happiness.
Today, it’s the complete opposite — I can’t imagine myself being that depressed, where I would want to take my own life, because I find life so fulfilling.
Does life still suck on occasion? Heck yeah. Have I still gone through low periods since starting my healing journey? Of course. Have I experienced major growth, self-love and joy, while having mental disorders? Yup!
Because at its core, life can be happy and sad, and it can still be a good life.
What motivates me is, there are people I haven’t met yet, places I haven’t been to yet and memories I haven’t made yet. I don’t know what life will look like in five years. Heck, I don’t know what it will look like tomorrow! No one knows for certain. There’s certainly a chance it can get worse.
But the point of life isn’t to strive for happiness 24/7 — it’s to simply live, and that means experiencing every emotion in the rainbow.
8. You are the only person who can take care of yourself
When I was younger, I had co-dependent tendencies — I relied heavily on others to put me at the center of their universe and make me feel better. If they didn’t, I would blame them or feel incredibly insecure, thinking they didn’t actually like me.
Even when I started therapy at age 19, I struggled with co-dependency issues. I expected my therapist to wave a wand, say magical gibberish and make me feel better. When that didn’t happen, I simply said “therapy must not be for me” and stopped going.
What I understand now is, I’m the only who can take care of me. I can go to therapy, I can lean on my friends and family for support, and I can hope for the kindness of strangers. But at the end of the day, I must have my own needs at the forefront, or everything will crumble.
It’s time to be honest — if you expect people to drop everything to be there for you 24/7, you will be severely disappointed. Does that mean they don’t love you? No. It’s just impossible for someone to constantly be there, when we each have our own lives to live.
The takeaway is, people can support you to the best of their ability, but you must be the one to take care of yourself.
—
The older I get, the more I learn about mental health. In fact, the above list is only a pebble compared to the mountain of lessons I’ve actually learned.
The most important note is, mental health is valid. Whether you have a diagnosed disorder or not, your mental health is real, and you are worthy of getting the validation and support you deserve.
Your friend,
Jane
