When it comes to my mental health, one thing I can unchangingly count on is that it won’t be too long surpassing I learn something new. Sometimes it’s a mental health or psychological term. Other times it’s a phrase, or a increasingly well-judged unravelment than one I’d been using. After ten years of living with peepers and anxiety, there’s still a lot to learn. And while there are many ways to learn these lessons, today I want to reflect on how wits is often the weightier teacher.

When I first started experiencing uneasiness and depression, there was a lot to learn. I knew what I felt, but it took a long time to understand the language tying to these feelings and emotions. Part of that was definitely due to stigma – it was harder to have conversations well-nigh mental health at that point in time. But this learning lines was moreover unfluctuating to exposure – or rather, a severe lack thereof.

At the time, no one I knew had gone through bouts of depression. Uneasiness wasn’t talked well-nigh as a disorder, and you needed a good reason to finger anxious. I felt like I was on an island. It wasn’t that people didn’t care; they didn’t know what to say. And plane increasingly than that, I didn’t know what to say. Years passed surpassing I could to put feelings into words and learn the language of mental health and mental illness. And a big reason for that was considering there some things that I could only learn by going through them.

It’s often said that wits is the weightier teacher, and that’s something I’ve learned often on my mental health journey. I have a largest understanding of uneasiness and peepers considering I’ve been through it. I know what symptoms are considering I’ve felt them. I understand psychological terms largest when they explain something I’ve been going through. This process feels backwards at times, but having preliminaries information has been invaluable.

One of the most nerve-racking things I’ve overly felt is when I have uneasiness well-nigh my anxiety. In those moments, things finger unclear. They finger troublemaking and sometimes, they just finger straight up incorrect. When something that feels undefinable becomes clear, the relief is immeasurable. If I can read something, or hear a definition and say that’s what that was, I can take a lesson from it. I can shift from stuff wrung to stuff curious, from stuff scared to wanting to learn increasingly well-nigh myself.

However I finger well-nigh it, my mental health is part of me. There are aspects well-nigh it that I have tenancy over, and there are aspects of it that I have no tenancy over. It doesn’t guide my life, but it does impact it. Sometimes, you won’t understand what something ways unless you go through it. And that can be frustrating, but I segregate to see the silver lining. Considering when I make it through, when the storm passes, I can take what I’ve learned and share it with others. And to see that impact has made me grateful for some of the things I’ve gone through. We’re in this fight together. No one should have to go through anxiety, peepers or any other mental health rencontre on their own. When we speak up, we’re ensuring that we’re not going through it alone, either. And that’s worth a whole lot.