My journey to healing my mental health

I have already talked a little on some of the feelings I am struggling with, so before I continue with that I wanted to touch on the things I have already learned. I am not just starting this journey to healing my mental health, it had actually started a couple years ago. One of the things my anxiety causes me to do is overthink in worst case scenarios. There was a point where my ex husband was traveling for work and I would worry so much that I would have about 30 different scenarios in my head of things that could go wrong and he would be seriously injured or killed on a job site, morbid i know. But it was this line of thinking as well as worst case scenarios while I was driving that really made me understand that I was not ok, that my way of thinking was actually pushing past normal worry and anxiety. We all feel anxiety at some level multiple times in our lives and thats normal, thinking of different ways someone I care about or myself could be seriously injured and killed is not normal. So when that level of anxiety started affecting my sleep, my day to day life and even my job, I decided to do something about it. I had found a free online cognative behavioural therapy program that lasted about six weeks. I had learned different skills to help with the negative thinking, skills to reduce the severity of my symptoms. I started finding ways to cope and it helped but that alone wasnt enough I did talk to my doctor and got put on a medication as well as the skills I learned. I am by no means a mental health proffessional so all I can talk about is what as worked for me so far and what works for one person may not work for another. Put I put those skills to use everyday, I started finding outlets for my anxiety like exercise, crafts where I could get my mind away from spiralling out of control. All that had kind of started a chain reaction, so the more I used the skills I learned the more I was able to do. I started putting up boundries with people I would previously allow to walk all over me and bring me down, my good days starting increasing and my bad days were getting furthar apart. But it also kind of created this desire to learn more, I started using a meditation app to listen to when I go to sleep and even after 3 years of using the same one I rarely am awake before it ends. I have now also started listening to some podcasts. I am beginning to learn that just not one thing will always work to help with the high anxiety situations, this last month has been really hard mentally and I feel like I am slipping back into what I was before I started taking control of my anxiety instead my anxiety has been controlling me. I have been working on taking control again, the podcasts help some there is a few I listen to: the self love book which has been good at giving myself new things to try to increase well my self love, and there is two different ones about healing from narcassistic abuse or relationships and another about just healing emotional trauma which comes in different forms. I also start counselling tommorow so I can have someone to talk to and hopefully learn more. Healing your mental health isnt going to be like healing a physical injury, where once its healed its gone, no it is like someone who is a recovering addict of whatever always has to work on it to stay healed. It is a continous learning curve and everyone will have their own way of healing and that is ok. One of my favourite sayings right now especially when I am dealing with my ex is reminding myself ” not my circus, not my monkey” sounds kind of funny but what I am telling myself that when I start to get mad at him for lets say spending more time with his new girlfriend then he does his kids, is that he is her problem now and all he is doing in hurting the relationship he has with our two kids. They notice everything so why should I waste my emotional and mental well being and energy on being angry at him when I can use that energy in making sure my kids know I love them and create memories they will have for a life time. It is a huge struggle because I am also hurt and angry with him, but it does get easier.

As I have said I am not a mental health proffesional. Please subscribe, or leave a comment I would love to hear what everyone else finds to help them cope.