A language which gets introduced once you on mental health journey.
There are 1000 things that are different when on this journey. Most of it just makes sense to you who is on it and looks totally nonsensical to others. First is asking for “help.” The popular belief is that an adult shouldn’t need any help; he or she is equipped to know it all, figure it all out, and find it all.
Another is that not everyone would understand you; it is easy for others to know why you broke down in a situation that is otherwise normal for you and others but difficult at that moment. Sometimes, it is inexplicable to you. So, others can wait in such situations, but as social beings, we want to make others understand, be understood, and even be validated. No one can know what you feel. A feeling is entirely unique of ours, only selective humans might emphatise to may be some degrees of what we are feeling at that moment. If you find someone that way, you are blessed; as we all know, it is an arduous journey, and someone to reflect on what you feel is always good to have.
Then, the vocabulary changes, and new words need to be welcomed.
Some of them are listed here. It’s a growing list, so I definitely can’t list them all here at once.
Kindness to self: How do you be kind to self? Is it even essential that we are taught to be tough and achieve? We always have to set a higher bar for ourselves. Ofcourse, being kind to oneself doesn’t go against being ambitious or achieving. It takes a while for this understanding; we often slip from understanding some moments we need to hear to what the gut says and press pause. And have faith that we will press play after some time. That faith is difficult to fathom; sometimes, the pause must be long enough to make you think otherwise. But as they say, it’s all a phase.
That brings me to the next important statement of all time.
It’s just a phase: How do I loathe that? How long is a phase? Can it be months together? Are there stages to this game of phase? So that I know it’s reached level 5 and that I have an exit. Yes, once in the phase, it’s a total disillusionment — of how long it can be. But every feeling is indeed just a phase; you would feel otherwise a bit or a little bit later. Here to faith that this too shall pass needs to prevail, but never does.
Self-sabotage: What is that? Putting ourselves down, as simply it can be put. Oh, aren’t we good at that? Are we even worthy of having this? It can be a constant feeling. You convince yourself that most of the time, you are right. Only to look back and wonder why we thought ourselves so low in the world. But that’s the game. Some lessons will have to be learned slowly, is what they say. Hopefully, so, too.
Limiting the boundaries: Oh, I love this! This is tight as a fort now. Or is it? Infiltrators still come in. But how to give to others, how to take from others, and who to take from is wisdom that comes only when you are hurt and injured. So, these boundaries defined earlier would be best. But we all are people pleasers. We don’t like saying no, and we have our FOMO in full-on game mode.
The Soul Plan: Huh, what is that? We have heard heart, mind, and now the soul. What could essentially that be…… a deep subject. It’s better to say less of that for now. But that’s what we are all serving: the truth. Everything else seems to be just a covering over that to complete that plan.
Aligning with true self: What is the true self? From early life, we emulate others whom we see around and put on masks, either because “you” was not made to feel good enough or wasn’t appreciated. So, some others who were famous or nurturers and seemed figured out were copied. The true self mostly gets lost. So aligning back to that is not easy; that is the pursuit, the wise say.
Complete faith in self: How can it be? Have we been taught to refer to an external authority for faith references? So, this can be entirely missing.
Intuition: This knocks on our doors in every situation. But we shun it royally; still, it persists. You can feel its churn when it is ignored in the gut. One day, it will dawn on us; as they say, it’s all within.
So this is a list which would go on….sop does the work on self.
