Big Heart

Stephendonnan
Nov 1 · 3 min read

Poor mental health is like a rollercoaster, except there are no safety bars or seatbelts on the ride and the tracks could fall apart any minute. One slight nudge in the wring direction and the cart goes wheeling down the dip again, but you have no idea how deep it will drop or if you’ll gain enough momentum to come up the other side.

That might seem very dramatic but I’m a writer, and a writer with often poor or ill mental health — analogies are how I describe the world to both myself and to those that read my work. It’s the easiest way I can relate to the world and rationalise how I feel in a way that doesn’t make me think that I’m losing my mind. It’s a self-kindness.

I’ve always wanted to help people, and for the last two and a half years I have been working with vulnerable people who themselves suffer from severe mental ill health, addiction issues, trauma, PTSD, depression etc. It can be a rewarding and privileged position to be in; working with people who are at the most extreme fringes of society and developing a professional relationship with them is an honour and one that is not to be taken lightly. But this kind of work can also weigh heavy on your shoulders and on your mind.

The capacity for burnout in this field is massive and often underestimated. There is an addictive quality to the freneticism you experience when working with chaotic heroin users, or in advocating for people who are unable to speak up for themselves. But there is also a cost to the emotional, physical and mental energy that you expend in trying to make the most of the time you have with some of the most vulnerable people you’ll ever meet. That cost isn’t spoken about enough. Yes there are seminars and workshops about resilience and wellness and maintaining your mental wellbeing but my issue is in acknowledging that I’m in need of that support and self-reflection.

It won’t stop me from doing the work but I need to remind myself what is achievable, and that sometimes the end of the world isn’t the end of the world.

I have a big heart — I don’t mean that to sound corny or cheesy or trite but I have always been willing to help others and I’ve come to realise, through trial and error, that my empathy is both a blessing and a curse. I trust way too easily. I make connections with people and dive in feet first, with all I’ve got and dropping my guard way too easily. This leads to me getting hurt easily by people I had built up as friends in my head but in reality were never more than acquaintances at best.

I try to give everything to everyone and I end up with nothing for myself. I find myself struggling to be left alone or spend too much time with my own thoughts lest they manifest into something more sinister. I don’t know where that comes from but I think it might be because, as I had discussed in a previous blog post, that I find it hard to love myself so I look for that validation, acceptance and companionship in the wrong places. Maybe that’s something to do with being queer and having to find ways of validating my own existence but I might explore that another time.

Having a big heart is not a bad thing, but letting others abuse it is a recipe for disaster. It’s a cruel lesson to learn, and I am doing my best to be kind to myself by being guarded and only allowing people who care about me to know me.