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Mental Health
The Weight of Words I Never Said
Learning that emotional health shapes physical wellness changed my entire approach to healing.
“Have you thought of seeking talking and sharing things?” She softly asked me. I blink. Clean the brain; it must have been a mistake. Nope. It remained.
The suggested was strange for me. I come from a family where we don’t discuss feelings. Pushing through is our love language; emotions are treated like passing clouds—just wait long enough and it will drift away by itself.
Figures don’t lie! Studies suggest emotional stress can push inflammation markers.
Yet we tend to brush it aside, instead focusing on step counts and calorie-tracking apps and “wellness” through numbers alone.
I’m looking at my prescription. This one is not for pills; it is for therapy sessions every week.
I wonder what it would be like to live differently. To have space for my feelings. To heal. To have a clear mind and actually enjoy life. To not just survive my days—living them.
But then, my thoughts wander back to my childhood upbringing. The raised eyebrows in my family when I try to share anything (especially about the things that I can't do). The eye rolls, the “just get over it” mutterings in soft tones—I almost hear them right now. The dismissive sighs and “stay busy” and “don’t think too much” advice they thought was well-intended.
It is such little things that made me bottle it all up, I think to myself. But could it be that I’m holding onto a slow death of a coping mechanism? I fold the prescription. Up. Out. Dramatic, I tell myself. But later, lying in bed, the troubling thought remains.
I can, in fact, live life otherwise. A life, for example, in which my body do not suffer the burden of unsaid words. A certain somewhere I can just breathe in, otherwise the constant pressure on my chest. A place here, my body is not a field for the buried emotions. Is healing merely about overt symptoms? About counting your macros and logging your miles? I, for a long time, thought so.
However, I am beginning to question what wellness is and if, by that definition, health…
