Hello, everyone, and welcome to one of the posts I think important. Everything I do here is for your entertainment and mine. It is refreshing to write anything on the internet, especially when you’re not very good at using your own voice to speak. Today, a problem that according to the internet, everyone should be aware of, but at the same time, in reality, seems like no one really cares about (including those who are supposedly “helping”). As always, it’s easy to be a self-proclaimed social justice warrior on the internet, while never raise a finger for the person that is in need in your community. 

First, I need to clarify, I am NOT an expert, I am NOT a psychologist or psychiatrist. I just want to talk as a normal person. A normal person that went through a recovery process and took bad decisions in the process. I know that a healing process is different for everyone—our bodies and minds differ from each other. I will talk from MY experience, what I think we should start doing, at least as a start. I just hope that some of the things I’m going to say here could help, a bit at least, for a temporary relief.

There’s only one advice, though, that you should take here and one that I am going to repeat many times on this post: SEEK FOR HELP. DO NOT BE ASHAMED TO REACH OUT FOR PROFESSIONAL HELP.

Depression, an issue that is commonly being mistaken as sadness, ignored by the people you’d thought they were close to you—cared about you. Sometimes, family is the first group that ignores the issue. Mental health is unfortunately common in society. Age does not matter, as any other disease, depression could come at any time. Maybe it’s been there, waiting for that drop to spill the glass; maybe the glass it’s going to spill by itself. It is not a weakness. Depression does not mean you are weak, never think of it that way. And DO NOT think that reaching out for help is going to make you weaker, no. On the contrary, it takes guts to seek for professional help. In a society that needs to pretend in social media to care, one must take action and walk towards a professional, one or more if you’re not feeling confident with one opinion.

DON’T BE ASHAMED, SEEK PROFESSIONAL HELP

Let’s start with the most obvious, yet ignored, symptoms that urgently tell you might need to start looking for help. Have you ever felt as if your life lose its colors? Sit down, take a moment to relax and think what you love and what you’d stopped doing; one of the many passions that I had in life was music, I talked about it in a few posts on this website/blog, how the only thing that had made me happy was to lie on my bed, or walk around the house, listening to music. I think it’s obvious that most of my time as a childhood, teenage years, and early adulthood, I had spent a lot of time learning about music. I used to know how to play piano—my favorite instrument.

My second favorite hobby is playing videogames. The main inspiration to write came from a videogame called Earthbound (Mother 2 in Japan) for Super Nintendo. Thanks to that particular game, I sat in my room, playing the game, and as I didn’t know English back then, I used to make my own stories in my head, and let’s be honest here, that game is very open to interpretations; I don’t speak only about the ending, but the story in general. It gives you the opportunity to imagine your own adventure!

What does this have to do with anything? The reason I mention favorite hobbies is because they give you a good view of what you’re losing in your life. I lost the first, music; my biggest passion, my dream. After some events that happened in my life during 2016 (and no, it has nothing to do with a breakup), I continued listening to it, yes, but not as I had in the past. The music transformed from something I’d fell in love with, to something I just needed to ignore my surroundings—a background sound that I needed to distract myself from thinking. Just a distraction.

It was my experience only, but I applies to anything really. Think about your hobbies, perhaps your favorite pastime was to hangout with your friend; but all of a sudden, you don’t want to see any of your friends. It probably tires you just the fact to have something planned. At first you might think is a temporary thing, but how long has it been? A month is probably boredom, or just taking a break from everything. That is sometimes necessary, take a good time for yourself only. But how about a year or more? That’s not normal, considering it used to be your favorite pastime. Once your life starts losing its colors, and talking or distracting yourself is not helping to recover them either, it is a good time to ask for help. Professional help.

DON’T BE ASHAMED, SEEK PROFESSIONAL HELP

Friends. Friends are a difficult group to find. We have a lot of people around us, walking down the same street and sidewalk; sharing a classroom, a school, a laboratory; going to a same bar or party; sharing the same public space. But there’s always a time that the word friend is used differently. The cultures around the world are different, and sometimes is necessary to take a look at others and take the “difficult” ones, take some Asian cultures as an example: they won’t call you a friend or hangout with you just because you both had a conversation for hours, the friendship is earned with time and knowledge of the other individual. In occidental cultures, that doesn’t happen; even when we look at the Asian cultures we tend to call them cold. However, I believe that time is required to know a person to actually consider it a friend.

Note: I am aware that some Asian cultures have a high suicidal rate, and that putting it as an example of a health awareness topic is kind of contradictory. What I’m saying here, is that I happen to believe we, in America (as a continent) should adopt some customs from different countries. Not to pretend to be better than anyone else, but to improve as individuals, as long as these customs can be 100% applied in our society.

Friendship is not perfect, even the best friends have their disagreements; the difference is that they know what to expect from each other, and they end up forgetting or fixing whatever issues they had had.

This does not happen with a friend you’ve known for a week or less. Sometimes is easy to fall in the void, accepting any hand that apparently wants to help us. Unfortunately, that hand never reaches you, and it was never its intention in the first place to save you. Take a look at them. Are they really the people you want to tell your problems to? Are they friends or drinking buddies? Since the time you’ve met them, how many times they had been genuinely interested on the thing you’d said? There are many factors to consider before trusting anyone enough to tell the things that are destroying you from the inside.

Does that mean you shouldn’t have that kind of buddies? No, I didn’t say that. They could be a good distraction, whenever you don’t want to spend time with yourself. The only thing I say is that you should not tell too much if that’s the case with the group you’re hanging out with. Just look at it like this: if you tell them the issues you have, you’re going to notice if they really care or not, sooner or later; they’re going to forget, with the excuse of being drunk (even when you’d told them prior drinking), or they’re not going say anything about it. If they care, you’re going to find out. However, if they don’t, you’re going to find out either way AND that’s going to hurt even more your stability. Probably you won’t be taken seriously or, as it commonly happens, they will tell you that you’re sad and that “time fixes everything”.

Unfortunately, everything I said above can be applied to family as well.

If you feel as if your colors are disappearing, and you feel there’s no one out there to look for any relief. There’s always one option. Even if you had someone to rely upon, do not discard that option:

DON’T BE ASHAMED, SEEK PROFESSIONAL HELP

There’s no shame in needing help. There’s no way you’d be considered a coward if you want to reach out for help.

I’ll probably talk about more this topic. But, as I’ve mentioned at the top, I am just telling you about my own experience, and what I think could help you get hold of the situation a little better WHILE YOU REACH FOR A PROFESSIONAL.

I am no expert on the mental health subject, I know all people thinks differently, and I know everyone has their own way to treat with the issue. Just think about it, and look for help before reaching the bottom.

For helpful and detailed information: https://www.mentalhealth.gov/basics/what-is-mental-health

Do not be ashamed!