Having had a bit of a rough mental health day today, it’s made me reflect somewhat on where I was 6 months ago and how far I’ve come along since then.

Back in July, I wrote this piece about where I was mentally. It wasn’t a particularly nice time, having just lost my dad and burying him 7 years to the day that I lost my mother.

It has completely knocked my confidence which still affects me now, and back then, I was having frequent anxiety and panic attacks. I genuinely felt that I was being a real burden on those who were around be because I just couldn’t process my feelings properly and was overthinking everything to a very unhealthy extent.

Since September, I’ve been using an app on a daily basis (sometimes more than once a day) to track my feelings and to help me rationalise why I feel the way that I do.

Whilst January (and particularly today) has been rough for a number of reasons, looking back over what I logged in 2018 demonstrates that there are now many more days where I’m feeling good vs the days where I’m feeling bad.

And I think that’s the important thing for me to remember. With the help of cognative behavioural therapy and, more importantly, some amazing people around me, I’ve reached the point that I almost feel that I’m back to normal. The problem I still have is that in the moment, I jump to the worst possible conclusions and scenarios and I forget that and my judgment gets clouded almost immediately.

Of course, my normal is probably very different to your normal. Normal for me still has those moments where I worry massively about what other people think. I still read far too much in to things which are posted or shared in groups and appear malicious to me but really are not. My biggest issue is that I still genuinely feel like an afterthought at times, through no fault of anybody else but myself for overthinking the things that are going on.

Those things won’t go away any time soon because they’re feelings and emotions that I’ve always had. I guess my main takeaway is that it’s not always what I think it is and I just need to let it go.

AJ