Let’s Normalize Talking about Mental Health

3 women sitting on a dock

Let’s normalize talking about mental health

We are coming to the end of Mental Health Awareness month, and I want to share some of my story and struggles

I’ve always had a level of anxiety. For most of my life, it manifested as perfectionism. You name it, I wanted it to be perfect. My grades, my appearance, and you know, just everything I said and did. Totally realistic right? NO!

 

I would lose sleep thinking about something I said or did, and I totally beat myself up over little, meaningless things that I considered mistakes.

 

After college, I fell in love with weightlifting because of how it relieved stress and how strong it made me feel.  Fast forward a couple of years, and I found fitness competitions. A perfectionist’s paradise. Months and months of the ability to focus on following a workout and diet plan down to every last detail. Tracking every calorie and exercise with a goal of a perfectly lean and symmetrical body. If I wasn’t prepping for a show, I hated my normal body.  I finally realized this was a problem and that competing was doing way more harm than good on my mental state, so I took a break.

 After my first panic attack, I knew I needed to make some changes. I threw all my energy into working on myself.  Loving myself, forgiving myself, letting things go, understanding what is important, and tossing the unrealistic expectations for myself out the door.

 

And as hard as I worked on this, the anxiety still came in and out of my life. While, I’m much better with letting the little things go, I still really struggle with the big things. If I am worried about something really meaningful to me, it takes over my thoughts and mood.  At times, it’s debilitating. Even though I have a long list of strategies to help me cope with stress and anxiety, guess what? They don’t always work.

 

I recently went through a period where I was waking up feeling anxious with chest tightness almost every single day. All I wanted to do was sleep. The only time I felt relief was at the gym. One hour per day of relief. I couldn’t pinpoint why the anxiety was occuring. None of my usual coping methods were working, and I couldn’t realistically spend all my waking hours at the gym.

 

So, I went back to therapy. Therapy gives us the opportunity to get everything in our brains out in the open, in a safe and supportive space, with a neutral person. I can’t say enough amazing things about therapy. I talked through everything I’d been feeling and learned some new ways to cope. My therapist helped me figure out what was really causing all the anxiety and supported me while I worked through it

 

It’s been a rough year for so many of us

Let’s listen to each other

Support each other

If you think a loved one may be struggling, ask how they are doing and just listen without judgment or advice.  Ask how you can support them.

Ask for support for yourself.

Just as we need to normalize talking about mental health, we also need to normalize asking for help.

 

Sending you lots of love,

Michele

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