When you fall…

This is what mental health can feel like some days, even if the sun is shining and you are in a beautiful place you still feel like you are falling.

I first took the photo for humour, but the more I looked at it the more I felt it summed up how it feels some days, it can feel as easy as taking one wrong step and you go tumbling down. When you can’t find the words to describe how you are feeling a photo can be a powerful representation. Some people walk far from the cliff edge, yet others are walking close to the edge, sometimes a person can pull you back to safety and other days you stand with your feet close to the edge. It can feel overwhelming, frustrating, isolating, scary, and sad, sometimes all at once. When your head is loud and busy, your body is weak and tired, you want to be alone yet you don’t want to be left alone it can feel all too much. The more the negativity grabs a hold of you the faster you fall, people can say things like ‘positive mind, positive life’ or ‘think positive and good things will happen’ which at the time is the last thing you want to hear but I do think that mind over matter can play a part in recovery.

Someone said to me this week if you can’t be your own cheerleader then who will? It got me thinking, do people rely on others to cheer them on and keep them going instead of cheering yourself on alongside others?! A massive part of depression is feeling alone and shutting yourself away from people but once you open up and let other people pull you away from the cliff edge it can all start to become a bit more manageable. There are subjects that are going to be difficult and you might not feel comfortable talking about with family/friends and not everyone is going to understand or empathise with you but you just need to remember nobody’s perfect and there is no such thing as ‘normal’. Keeping all the negative s**t to yourself only makes the black dog have more power over you, I got asked this week how do I see my black dog?! Do I see him following me around or do I see him as over shadowing me, how big/small and I guess I never really physically imagined it until now.

If you do fall down, you need someone to be there to catch you and that can be a hard thing for someone to do, I can’t imagine what it feels like to watch someone you love and care about fall so hard. People around you are almost on this journey with you, people have told me that they feel helpless and don’t know what to do/say to help and that must be really hard for them too. Just simply being there is enough and cheering us on when we don’t have the energy too, celebrating the small achievements can help tackle the bigger challenges in life. So stick with your fans who will cheer you on through the good days and bad days and remember to cheer YOURSELF on!!