Copying with anxiety and realizing you need help.
A reflection about feeling like s**** for the “World Mental Health Day”
It was a rough week, and I mean that.
I spent half of my days in bed, the other half feeling guilty for staying in bed so much. This was one of those week where I didn’t want to go out because the thought of it made me stressed.
Last year I had to necessarily go outside and things went south. I needed to withdraw some rented props for a shooting, the rent service was one hour away from my hometown. To keep it short, while driving, my brain decided to punch himself in the amygdala and I had a panic attack on a highway. I think that was my closest near-dead experience ever.
When it’s that period of the month you find it difficult to enjoy what makes you happy, and the bad thing about anxiety is that you can’t control it. I keep asking myself if I am good enough and a voice in my head keep telling me I am not worthy of everything I have achieved.
I am a failure, everybody knows it, I am destined to fail.
I recently finish my first indie feature and during the last 2 days of shooting I nearly lost it. It was so difficult to stay motivated and keep doing your work when you just can’t. I was anxious all the time and I couldn’t focus on what I should have done.
Enough with the whining, let’s get into the article. I learned about the “World Health Day” this morning, and I wanted to share my experience and made some points about mental health:
1. Listen to how other people feel.
Most of the time I try to explain how I am feeling with people, they don’t really get what I am saying. So I just avoid talking with them about certain topics.
Even people who suffers from the depression didn’t understand the problems coming with anxiety. Truth be told most people don’t know how you are feeling because, guess what, they are not you. You are the only one who knows what’s going on with yourself, and that’s fine.
We need to be more empaths to each other.
People with mental health are shy, they don’t want to talk about their problem, and if they do they will tell you about it slowly and enigmatically. So listen more carefully to what your friends have to say and be more aware of feelings. You will realize that other people around you are not as much happy as they appear. Don’t believe in the “I guess I am okay” s***, try not to be so superficial. If it’s someone you care, you need to be more present and helpful.
Like everybody else I have been on both sides. I was the one who seeked help and the one who wasn’t there enough. I guess it simply happens, don’t worry to much about it. Just try to be nice with people.
2. Realizing you need help.
Lets acknowledge the elephant in the room. The Xanax pills your friends gave you cause his father is a pharmacist are not going to work.
There’s always that moment where you think you can handle things. You say to yourself that it’s just a phase, you are strong enough. You’re not sick, it’s just that you are stressed. You blame the society, your work, the people who made you suffer.
Then after a month, during a perfect time in your life you start to have anxiety for no reasons at all. You were happy, everything was fine. So what happend? Who made you feel this way?
Turns out you need help. Not from your friends, not from the ASMR that tells you evertyhing is okay, but from a psychologist.
A few weeks ago a friend of mine proudly told me she was making a hell of progress with her psychologist. And I feel immensely proud for her, I like when people are genuinely open about their mental health. It reduces the stigma, it’s what we need right now.
3. Keep the trash out.
Oh, I will thoroughly enjoy writing this point.
I have this thing in my head that when people treat me badly I am the one responsible for their behavior. To summon up every micro trauma of my high school time with a phrase “They treat me bad because I deserve to be treated this way”.
And you know why I felt this way for so much time? Because someone kept telling me that. Everything I did was not good enough, I had to be better. I was not educated enough, polite enough, well-spoken enough. It made me doubt of everything I was.
Turns out I am who I am. There’s nothing wrong with me. But for so much time I kept hating myself for who I was.
Toxic people belong to the trash. They don’t realize how much they are hurting you, you need to be loved and appreciated. You have your own personal problems, you can’t think about them. Try to be yourself not who other people want you to be.
Conclusion
I made some self explanatory points, I guess they are obvious but also really hard to follow. We can try to apply them though. Not in a Nike’s “Just Do it” way, but by taking our time.
Thank you for your time.
Feddie.
