Image: Sandra Saxon Burnsed
You know, I want to be happy, I want to have a bright outlook on the day. But at the moment I ain’t feeling it. Some might say, maybe you should just keep your mouth shut till it passes. But you know what? For decades I did that and all it brought me was nothing but more pain and misery. I still have a bad habit out of ignoring things. Just shutting bad situations out of my mind, putting them off as much as I can.
I suppose it’s just a trigger mechanism I learned as a child to avoid scary situations. You know like when you’re defenseless against certain bullies down the street. So you take an alternate route to avoid them, you know kinda like that. I mean you want to be brave, but after getting beat down repeatedly you just give up. So you learn to just avoid the situation just to keep the peace within yourself.
But over the past few years I’m learning to be a “ripe the band-aid off kinda guy”. By using this medium to express my emotions, both good or bad, I just get things out. Through mindfulness practices, I’m learning to look at the pain. To give it a voice, to love myself, and to tell myself it’s okay to feel this way. Christendom has a similar way through confession. But considering my experiences and my mental health background, I’m more of a “physician heal thyself” kinda guy.
Listen life is hard, and I completely understand having bad days, weeks, even months. But you’re not alone. There are clinics, counselors, and just plain other people out there that understand. You don’t have to suffer alone. A great resource that helped me through some dark hours was Panic No More. It is a website that has forums dealing with various mental health issues. All I’m saying is, don’t keep that pain bottled up. There are solutions, there is relief.
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