Self-help journal

Counselling

I was very lucky to have gotten support all these months ago. An amazing lady convinced me to speak to her- and I haven't looked back since. Here's the (hopefully) interesting facts/ thoughts:

Why we feel sick when we feel scared
This one was interesting. She told me that it's all evolutionary. Apparently when the cavemen were around and sensed danger, their bodies would reject any food you've put into it (make you sick) so you are able to run away from danger.

But our problem?
There is no huge predator or lion or tiger. Our danger is invisible. Our danger is inside our heads. The one place we cannot escape from. We can run as much as we like but our mind will only run twice as fast so it can overlap you and ridicule you further. It's not worth it.

The bucket of emotions
'Picture a bucket inside your body', she said, 'now imaging putting all your emotions into it, now it's half way full. But when you bottle up all your emotions, your feelings are just adding to the pile and growing.' And like a coke bottle under pressure, it will eventually overflow and explode- losing control and, just, feeling down. Possibly whatever emotion you threw in there on the 4th of March was anger and the day later was sadness. Now they fly out of your bucket like confetti and determine your emotion for the day. But you have two. Your body is desperately trying to make sense of having two different emotions, fighting it off like a disease, but you just feel down. And angry. Maybe you want to punch everything. Maybe you want to cry on someone's shoulder.

Don't treat mental injuries different to physical injuries
What would you do if you broke your knee?

Would you get it looked at, fixed and supported? To prevent further damage and make you overall in less pain?

Or would you keep on walking, feeling the pain each time you walk? Fight the pain.

You'd get it looked at. No one in their right mind would continue attempting to get through life with a broken knee.

Now imagine it wasn't a broken knee, but... well, any mental health problem.

Now it changes. The amount of people seeking help is much smaller, but as my counsellor said: 'you wouldn't keep walking on a broken leg, so why would you carry on as normal after a mental health problem?'

She didn't say exactly that, I can't remember what she said exactly, but you get the idea. But it stopped me in my tracks. Maybe this was true. We should speak up more.