What A Shame She’s F***ed In The Head, They Said.
“My wish for you is that one day you will wake up and feel empowered by the parts of yourself that you once labeled as flawed ”
From a young age, we are taught that if we can’t accomplish something by ourselves, we can ask for help. If you can’t follow in class, raise your hand. If you can’t find what you’re looking for at a store, walk up to someone, and if your power goes out and you don’t know what to do – call someone. So why is it so hard to ask for help when it comes to our mental health?
There’s a public stigma associated with therapy. I remember about two years back, I was at work, and I mentioned something like, “so my therapist told me that…”. Complete and utter silence followed from the people around me. I’m not sure if it came from a place of discomfort or maybe even disbelieve, but one thing was certain it came from a place of – “why would you confess to seeing a therapist? What is wrong with you?” And I just kept thinking to myself – “why wouldn’t I?”.
If you don’t learn about why you do the things that you do, how are you supposed to grow as a person? It’s impossible to figure everything out by yourself, so why not ask someone who has no connection to your daily life for help? We spend years of our lives in school listening to teachers talking about historical events, math, and the human body. But we don’t learn about ourselves and what kind of effect our surroundings can have on us later in life.
The first time I saw a therapist, I was about nine years old, and I got diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. This was after my teacher couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t answer any of her questions in class but kept acing all my exams. In her mind, that meant I cheated. To me, her asking a question in front of an entire class gave me so much fear of getting it wrong that my brain just blocked, and I would rather answer “I don’t know” than say something that wasn’t correct.
To this day, every person that I meet doesn’t notice that I have anxiety. I’m social and friendly and seem pretty outgoing. Little do people know that after every social encounter, my mind goes wild; “did I say something weird,” “they probably don’t like me,” and my all-time favorite: “there’s probably some group chat on WhatsApp where they all talk about how awful I am.” This causes me to shut down and not be able to sleep, go outside, or talk to anyone. That’s when I start keeping myself on the sidelines. Don’t be too loud, don’t post too much, don’t be too opinionated, and don’t wear clothes that make you stand out. I tell myself -“people can’t have an opinion about you when they don’t notice you.”
I started going to therapy again. I felt like I was starting to fall back into old thought patterns, and I wanted to stop that from happening. So, one day I decided to ask for help again. I decided that I refused to be held back from the things that I love doing by the negative thoughts in my own head. The only thing left to do now is tear down the negative associations in my mind and turn them into positive ones. My therapist told me it would be good for me to start a so-called “white book” – a daily journal keeping track of positive thoughts I have during the day.
Anxiety makes me think a lot. I realized that this doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It’s time to embrace anxiety and accept that it’s a part of me. And I know it’s not going to be easy, but I’m sure I’m not alone on this journey.
You know what they say – we are all mad here.
