Once upon a time I had no idea about mental health. I didn’t even think about it. I knew quite a bit about physical health; how to achieve and maintain my physical health. But, I rarely thought about my mental health.
That was up until a little over 15 years ago when I started having relationship problems which led to a marriage breakdown.
Fortunately, I knew just enough to reach out to my GP for help.
I left the medical centre with a prescription for anti-depressants and a referral to a psychologist.
While they weren’t a fix, they were a starting point. A starting point for my journey in learning about my own mental health, what it meant to me and how to manage it.
Mental health to me, refers to my thoughts and feelings and how I relate to those things. It’s not about feeling good all the time.
It’s understanding that sometimes I’ll feel good and sometimesI’ll feel shit. And both of those are ok.
It’s knowing when I am feeling shit, why that might be and what I might be able to do to manage that feeling.
It’s having awareness around what I can actively do to have more good days than shit days.
In a nutshell, mental health to me is about having,
These things enable me to understand where I’m at, adjust that as necessary and to spend more time feeling how I’d prefer to feel.