Working on My Mental Health

Welcome back! It is officially my spring break and I am spending it here in Fayetteville. It is unfortunate, but it is for a good reason. My team is awaiting the news of if we made it into the NCAA tournament. We will know officially on Monday, but if we do not make it in that tournament, then we do have a bid for the NIT. Either way, we will have a postseason and I am very excited for it!

Anyway, onto this week’s blog. I will be talking about a touchy subject a lot of people usually blow off, and that is mental health.

I wanted to share this topic and its importance because like many people, I would take the information about mental health, store it somewhere in my mind and think I was never going to have to use it because I was happy.

But unfortunately, I did.

Now, I am not diagnosed with depression or an eating disorder or anything like that. But I went through a hard eight months at the end of the summer. What I learned from that experience is that you can never be too careful when it comes to your mind.

After different events unfolded and there was anger and distrust in all aspects of my life, I decided to go see one of our sports psychologists. And that was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make in my life. Because for anyone who doesn’t know, I am extremely stubborn and do not really like help from people. For example, I once fought my mom about getting a tutor for math because “I can do it on my own,” even though it was evident that I couldn’t.

So now I had made this choice to go see this woman who I had no interaction with besides a casual hello and spill out everything that was going wrong and to tell her about my feelings. And feelings are not my cup of tea. And I struggled in the beginning.

I would just tell her what was going on and shy away from telling her how it made me feel. It was all facts and nothing else. But slowly I learned that I wasn’t going to get anywhere or help myself if I didn’t come clean about how these things made me feel. What I gained from her during those eight months is that I was going through ‘situational depression’. Basically, I am not diagnosed with depression, but something traumatic has happened that during this stage, I was behaving in a depressed way. But what I also found out is the only way to help me get out of that was by talking through it. And that process was almost as hard as the situation I was going through.

I had days where I would sit in her office and fight back every tear that came to my eyes, or I would cuss her out because I was so mad and didn’t know what to do. But she taught me that my first reaction couldn’t be anger, which it more than likely was. And that in order to get through this situation I needed to understand that and find a way to express my emotions in a healthier way that didn’t end up making the situation worse.And I am learning how. It is still a struggle for me to not show anger as my first emotion, but progress is being made.

Even though I am not in the same situation I was before, and a lot of things are better, there are still days where the repercussions of the events still linger. And I still go and meet with her to talk about everything. Sometimes I don’t even come in with bad news and we just have a healthy conversation that makes my day better.

What I want people to get out of this post is that we are all going to go through situations in life that change us. And not all of them are going to require you to see a psychologist. But if you believe you are in a place where you can’t get yourself out alone, then go see one. It is all about you and your mental health.

So, don’t be like me and jeopardize your mind because you want to be stubborn. Just go sit there and talk to them, and if you don’t like it, you aren’t forced to go back.

But always, take care of your mind because you carry that with you for a lifetime.