Fortsätt till huvudinnehåll

My time to talk - mental health

Today is yet another day created to raise awareness for mental health. It's time to talk about the my experience of depression because believe me, each experience is different. It's been a while since I expressed how I feel here and shared the difficulties I've had with this mental health lately. It's always been there inside of me, bubbling and trying to get out but I have pushed it away. So I cried myself to sleep? So what? That is probably because I had a stressful day. It's completely normal. So I cancelled my plans with my friends? I'm just tired after a long day. These were the excuses I constantly made without realising that I kept shoving my feelings deeper down. By doing this I ended up being filled with so much hatred and anger that I didn't even know how to express it anymore apart from taking it out on everyone, including myself. I blamed the people around me for my feelings and I avoided to accept the truth; I was not myself anymore and I needed help.
Since I felt like this last time I have been getting help, mostly by taking medication that is meant to stabilize my serotonin balance in my brain. It has helped to some extent but recently I discovered how I wasn't myself at all. I cried for no reason, had panic attacks and worst of all I lost my will do live. When this happens it's easy to blame other people and to say that they are selfish and not appreciating you enough. I know now that it isn't true. Sometimes people care too much to be able to handle the situation and instead of being there they give you space so you can learn to handle these problems. It is hard to deal with all this alone but if you feel something similar to what I'm feeling you should know that you're not alone. There are people around the world feeling lonely and worthless even though they're not. I've learnt quickly that this is my illness speaking, not the truth. Unfortunately, it doesn't make me feel any better.
So how did I help myself? I'm going to be completely honest here; I didn't. Instead of working on myself I kept digging further down until my body and mind simply couldn't take it no more. I couldn't sleep until I was so tired that my eyes wouldn't stay open and once I was asleep I kept waking up several times leading to constantly feeling sick and exhausted. I stopped doing the things I enjoyed, in fact I couldn't because I saw no joy in it anymore. Most of the time when I was talking to my friends I was in tears instead of focusing on the positive things in my life. When I got to this point I often had panic attacks, cried until my body was shaking and couldn't take the exhaustion and worst of all, kept thinking that all this was my fault.
Luckily, I know it's not my fault. I am suffering from a mental illness that many others suffer from too. We do our best to be happy but it is a long way to go. I'm not ashamed of feeling like this though, we need to talk about it. Sometimes I am hard to handle and my friends will lose their patience with me but that's ok. It's very hard to have someone around you that feels like this because it's hard to see someone you care about hurting and knowing that there's nothing you can do apart from being there.
Depression is extremely painful and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It's something I know I'm going to have to work on for years and it will always be a part of who I am. However, I am not going to let it be a part of what I do with my life because the day I let my illness define me, that's the day it has won the battle and I've been fighting this battle long enough not to give up now.

Kommentarer

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

To me he is Sméagol

After finishing Lord of The Rings and the Hobbit my attitude towards the books is easy to describe; I'm in love with the books. As much as it is a struggle to get through Lord of The Rings I enjoyed every word of it and the Hobbit only made me like J.R.R Tolkien even more. One thing that made me love the books was Sméagol (Gollum). The character added a lot of entertainment but also food for thought in so many ways. We are constantly thrown between Sméagol and Gollum and the inner fight he has with himself of what he is. The reason for me feeling so connected to Sméagol is probably due to the fact that I believe everyone can relate to the feelings he is going through, especially in the society now-a-days where we often let our urge of having something can lead to us changing our behavior completely. Sméagol is one of the few characters in the book that is not purely good or bad, he switches between the two, in extreme ways. As strange as it might sound, he is just an exaggerated ...

Sometimes life gives you lemons...but you might not like lemonade.

We all have feelings. If you say you don't you must be a robot because having feelings is one thing that defines us as people. What you and me feel changes constantly and no one can ever feel exactly the same thing as you do. My happiness might be different from yours and your sadness might be something completely different from what I'm feeling. Because of this no one can tell us that what we're feeling is wrong. However, we can try to understand other people and relate to what they are feeling to similar experiences we've had in our lives. One thing that has struck me recently though is how we seem to think we can relate to other people's feelings when in fact we often close our eyes to what is really going on. Especially when someone is going through something difficult. I find this strange because it is completely normal to have bad days. We wouldn't be human if we didn't. We all have bad days, some people more than others but we have all been there whe...

Thought on friendship

I have now finished my first year of university. It is a strange feeling knowing that in two years time I will be done with university and moving on with my life but it is also a good feeling knowing I've been through another year filled with experiences and new insight on life. One thing I knew before university but never really appreciated as much as now was the value of friendship. This year I've made friends that I want to make an effort to keep in touch with. I had fight with friends but sorted it out because it was more important to me than leaving it and just staying friends with the people I got along with and the most important thing, I've learnt who I can trust. Being a friend is not just finding someone else funny and listening to them talking about interesting things, it is also about hearing someone complaining about the same thing over and over even though you give them advice what to do. It is accepting that this person might never take your advice but you w...