What's up human beings! Hope you're all safe and doing awesome in your lives. My name is Ritik and I reside in Mumbai, Ulhasnagar pursuing the third year in bachelors of commerce (Am I?). First of all wishing you a Happy World Literacy Day, I recently came across a post by Baatein Ankaheesi on Instagram mentioning a campaign to write anything on Mental Health and I'm glad they conducted this campaign on this day talking about the importance of Mental Health Literacy. Let's dive into this blog.
As a human being, there are various aspects of our life we need to work on to live an amazing life. Some of the important aspects are our Health, Relationships, Career, and Spiritual. To live life to its fullest, there should be a balance between all of the aspects. Telling us that there should be a balance between all aspects is one thing and doing is another. Also, Obsessing over one aspect will leave you nowhere. As humans, we have a short life on this planet earth, so it's necessary to focus on our health & take care of ourselves. If our health is good both physically and mentally, we will feel energetic and can work on other aspects like relationships, career, and Spiritual.
About Mental Health:
We all are familiar with physical health and the majority of humans focus on their physical body by working out and eating healthy food. But what about Mental Health? In India, awareness and knowledge of mental health are less compared to physical health. Mental health is as important as our physical health. When it comes to the definition of mental health, it's what we believe, what are our thoughts, and how we feel. Like doing exercise makes our body fit, likewise positive affirmations, controlling our thoughts make our mind fit. Considering my personal experience with a mental health issue, I can admit that the powerful thing in the world is not any materialistic thing, it's OUR MIND! A Positive altered state of mind can conquer the world and a negative altered state of mind has the power to destroy our life.
My Personal Story with Mental Health:
At present, I am in the process of healing from my mental health issue and I'm seeing some positive results from the last few months. Here I want to share how I overcome my mental health issue. I won't share how I fell into the trap but I will share how I made my mind which was fearful, full of negative thoughts, beliefs, anxiety, to positive thoughts, and facing the world. I'm a creator and as a creator, we find ways of expressing ourselves. When I was in my dark phase, I expressed and wrote my negative thoughts by creating a twitter account and an Instagram account. Below I'm placing my tweets and thoughts I were having at that phase :
My thoughts on May 12:
Today, I don't believe in myself and have lost confidence in myself. I think I am responsible for the life I have created myself.
My thoughts on May 13:
I can't put into words or describe what happened to me or what's happening to me. Some days I am normal and some days I'm in that worst zone created by me.
My thoughts on May 16:
I hope that this does not continue for the rest of my life and please Give me the power to change myself.
These above tweets are the thoughts I was having in my mind at that time. Looking at my mind's thought process, we can see that I'm having negative thoughts which will lead to negative beliefs. Thinking negatively will also lead to negative feelings like fear and anxiety. Do you think with such a negative thought process, one can live a happy and satisfying life? Absolutely NO. We all sometimes get negative thoughts but when it's the only thing coming to our mind, it's not good for our well-being. We can conclude that Mental Health is as important as our physical health to live life to its fullest.
How do I overcome my Mental Health Issue?
In my dark phase, There was no single hope for me to live. Every day was a burden to me, I didn't want to live, I wasn't aware of the knowledge to treat my mental health issues. If I was aware of How our mental health, our thoughts, our feelings are important, then I wouldn't have fallen into the trap. But I feel blessed that I'm at least now out of it and better compared to my last phase. I've realized the importance of a peaceful state of mind. And now I want to share with you what I do to overcome my mental health issue.
First of all, let me be very clear I'm no expert in this and I'm just sharing my experience with you fellow human beings. If you're facing a serious issue, I would suggest you talk to your close ones and consult a physiatrist.
It's a process!
It didn't happen overnight. The first thing we have to do is to choose to heal and believe in ourselves which is difficult in such a scenario but you have to. If we want to come out of such a state, we have to do whatever it takes but we don't have to be hard on ourselves. If we choose to heal and start doing things for good mental health, you'll notice the results in the process. But you can again think negatively as your mind is altered in that way. So we have to let go and again do the same things the next day. It's a journey that will take time. At present, I can tell that I am too in the process. Make your close ones part of your journey and they will motivate you when you feel low.
Reading Books
The book "Heal your life by Louise hay" is the book which completely changed my life and it's one of the reasons I'm here doing better. When you read books like these, you'll feel positive and your mind will open to many new things. I believe that it was in my destiny that I will read this book and heal my life. The book is exactly about how we can change our thought process, accept ourselves, think positively, and be grateful for what we have. I decided that I will believe everything the author has said to change my life and I implemented some things from the book which improved my mental health.
Eating healthy food
Food is the essential thing our body needs but I'm talking about healthy food. In today's times, we eat too much junk food or unhealthy food which is not good for our health in the long term. I started eating healthy food and I was feeling great and happy about it. But in the process, I was eating unhealthy food. So what I did was I created a balance between healthy and unhealthy food and to completely get rid of unhealthy food in my diet, I gradually decreased the amount of unhealthy food and avoided it. The takeaway point is if you'll take care of your body, you'll feel good.
Positive affirmations
Affirmations were the way that helped me and is helping me now also to improve my mental health. Affirmations are the sentences that we can tell to ourselves and gradually our mind will accept it making it our beliefs. What I did was I replaced my negative thoughts with positive affirmations. I wrote positive affirmations in a book, I read it aloud, I also did the mirror work which I also do now. I wanted to share my affirmations which I accept:
Point of Power in the Present
The past is over for me and I have no control over it.
I am grateful.
People are there to help me.
You can learn more about "Positive Affirmation" by researching on google and reading some books on it.
Sharing my problems with people
As a human, our emotions are meant to be expressed. The best thing is to do is write down your thoughts, feelings, or open up with your close ones. I did both. One of the reasons I think I fell into the trap was because I suppressed my emotions within and didn't share my problems with the people I know. Every problem, every negative thought, feeling I kept to myself which affected my mental health.
Conclusion:
In the end, there were the habits I developed to overcome my mental health issue and ultimately improve my mental health. I'm not fully healed yet, I too get anxiety these days but I think it's normal as a human, it's a process and I guess I will see results eventually. You might've gotten an idea that mental health is as important as our physical health. We have to work on our minds as we work on our bodies.
The message I want to give from this blog is we really have to learn more about mental health, it's problems, and how we can treat it. Baatein Ankaheesi did an amazing job creating this campaign and empowering people to make awareness about Mental Health on this World International Literacy. If you've read till here, I wish you a happy and fulfilling life.