The Prerequisites Of Self Healing

As I lay awake at night, life becomes increasingly difficult to live.

I’ve confided in basically everyone I know , I’ve told them how I feel, heck , I’ve even gotten therapy .

But will therapy stop the voices in my head from tormenting me when the sun isn’t shining ?

Every night at 3am , the noise in my head becomes too loud , I can hear myself through the worlds silence.

My mouth is closed, eyes are shut. What am I even thinking about?

My brain is working , eye ball is rolling , I’m sweating .

I lay on my back ,as I slowly begin to drift off , I’m suddenly locked in my own body , I’m screaming from within, I can’t move , I want it to stop . Sleep paralysis won’t let me move.

Maybe I need to listen to some music.

I put my earphones on , soothing sounds. Twisting and turning , no , still can’t sleep.

I put my pillow above my head , let’s stop the noise. It won’t stop .

It’s 6 am now , I’ve given up . So I lay there, wallowing and wallowing, lost in thoughts . Until eventually , I fall aslee…

In the midst of mental chaos , the greatest advice anyone can ever give you is to open up to someone , tell the people around you how you feel and get help. Truth is , anyone whose had a tough experience with their mental health already knows this , people can only do so much .

Don’t get me wrong , being open about how you feel and all you’re going through is important but will they be there at 3 am when you can’t sleep and anxiety strikes? Besides, you can only nag and cry and vent so much but in the end , it’s all up to you to put on the work and see life for the better.

There are a lot of triggers for people going through depression and or anxiety and other mental health problems and people aren’t always going to understand you and how you’re feeling. It’s important to talk to the people you love and understand that although they might sympathize with you and try to get you help , they can’t take the pain away.

Acceptance

Like everything and in everything, the first step is acceptance. It’s important to accept that you’re not yourself and something is eating at you , difficult as it may be and painful as it might be , the first step to healing can never be easy . Accepting you have a problem goes with opening up about it , telling the people close to you what you’re experiencing but also remember not to expect too much . Nobody else understands what you’re going through except for you, so don’t expect them to understand you or have the immediate answers to your healing because they won’t .

Acknowledgement

It’s important to acknowledge what’s causing your pain . What put you in this space where you can’t see the colors in this beautiful life. Who were you before this and what’s brought you here. After accepting there’s a problem , it’s important to accept that there’s an underlying cause in order to get to the bottom of it. I urge you to ask yourself , honestly and openly :

1. Why do I feel like this?
2. When did I start feeling like this?
3. How can I stop feeling like this?

Mental housecleaning

Our greatest vice is our mind . What we think and how we perceive life affect how we walk and interact with people . Just like a house , the mind needs to be cleansed , bad beliefs thrown out , good ones dusted and replenished. There’s this exercise I adapted to once : looking at myself in the mirror and affirming beautiful things about myself. This sounds like a very easy task but the moment I looked in the mirror and before I could say anything, I wept. I cried so hard and so loud I didn’t understand what was happening. What was happening was , for so long I’d been so negative and self criticism was something I’d grown accustomed to, ofcourse occasionally I’d say pompous things about myself in public but in this private moment I failed to say one good thing about myself TO MYSELF.

So why don’t you try it? Look in the mirror and affirm to yourself . Don’t let the bad days get to you. Clean out every thought in your mind that makes you feel like you can’t have a better tomorrow and view yourself from a different perspective. I have a blog post on this, read it here.

Stop trying to heal everyone else but yourself.

So many times, broken people try to find solace in themselves by trying to heal others. Wrapping your fingers on barbed wire hurts you, don’t do that . It’s a natural instinct to want to nurture and care for others when we’re in distress because it gives us joy and takes us away from the havoc already going on in your mind but how can you pour from an empty cup? How do you nurture and love and bring healing to another persons heart when you don’t have any of those yourself? Heal yourself first.

Forgiveness

Let the past go , don’t let it affect your present . What happened in the past is basically an experience you should get over and not the fuel to your engine. The things you replay in your mind over and over are usually the things you need to let go of the most. Forgiving doesn’t just come for people , a lot of us harbor self blame and vindictive thoughts that aren’t healthy . Forgiving yourself is more important than forgiving anyone else , so forgive yourself .