Vanessa
Back in October, due to the World Mental Health Day, we all opened up a bit more about our own state of mind. I’ve always been open and honest about my feelings, whatever feeling it was at the end. Positive, negative, confused, annoyed….But always honest. Our mind’s are powerful things but sometimes they can hurt us.
My honesty got me… not into trouble, but I spoke up and pointed out issues, for example at work, when no one wanted to hear it. If there was something wrong, the last person who would shut her mouth about it was and will ever be me.
I consider myself as friendly and caring. I love to laugh, to talk to feel comfortable, like we all should feel, right?
I listen. I hear so many things because I sometimes seemed to be invisible.
To explain this…At work, I had this situation a few times that my boss at the time did not care. I was there, fine, I wasn’t there, who cares? It is all in my mind.
I always heard and therefore knew many of the things, which were going on. Caused by the simple fact that I did not seemed to be important enough to get information.
I seemed to be disturbing when I asked something and sometimes I had to wait for so long to get answers that I was already done with whatever I was working on, until they remembered I actually had a question.
I don’t know how that happens, because when I laugh, I’m loud when I talk, I’m loud. That’s caused because of my natural voice, I am not an extra loud person, but I can’t keep my voice down when I have to laugh!
So as I often keep quiet and just speak when I have a question or when I get asked explicitly, it might be a shock to some people, who don’t know me that well, when I snap.
When I openly show, I am not okay when I openly talk about who sick I feel about something. And yeah, I would say ‘I’m sorry I make you feel uncomfortable with my behavior’ if I just would be sorry!
Nevertheless, I am not! I have never been sorry when I showed my true feelings if I made other people feel annoyed or not. I can keep them down to a certain level, but I cannot lie about stuff like this, because it would end up with physical pain for myself, my inner demons would return and it would backfire onto my mental health.
I’ve learned to speak about my feelings, about how certain things around me effect my mood, or who’s behaviour changed my mood to the negative side and why. My point about this is: I am confused and I feel insecure at the moment. I am physically and mental all fine, but life happens, right? Life happens and sometimes, something you knew all along still hits you in moments you are unprepared to deal with them.
To give you some back-story: As you might remember, I struggle with getting a permanent job. And as I know, officially since February, I will be done with the temporary job I am currently in, by the end of March. And even I knew, actually, since I started it, it would be over in just a few months’ time… To – one more time – having to start again starts to feel more difficult for me. I am happy, that this job is over soon, I never really felt comfortable in it, but at the same time, it was all I had and I was desperate to earn money. Life is expensive, as we all know.
Knowing, I will be without it again and not knowing how long it will take to finally get a permanent job makes me doubt my abilities. I was at this point way too often already, temporary jobs are okay, but I want stability in my life. I have dreams and plans, which I finally want to fulfill, which I will not be able to do so, without a permanent job. Besides the financial part, there is also the feeling of being useless, having to deal with cancellations all the time. I do not want to jinx myself, but there are enough experiences already to know for me, with the very long CV I already deal with, it’s going to be very difficult to finally achieve my goal. This feeling of not being good enough when I see other people get, what I am hoping for is really mean. Combined with cancellations, which are telling me in like 5 different stereotypical e-mails for everywhere that I am not good enough for the easiest jobs is nagging on my confidence. I have enough experiences, I know what I have to do, but I can’t settle down and just live my life when there is no one who would give me a chance to proof that I can stay in a job for longer than 2 years. Inner demons…They come back, slowly but surely to grow on the insecurity I develop on all the negative responses, because I start to believe them again?
I am fighting my mind very well at the moment, but yes, there were other times.
My mind is telling me two things right now: No. 1: You know how it feels to be unemployed; you know how to handle it. No. 2: You know what you would like to do! Do it!
I was planning to get myself into further education, now that I know, I will be unemployed in a few weeks’ time, to become a Social Media Manager. And that nasty voice in the back of my mind, which simply won’t fit with the positivity I try to live out, tells me: You won’t make it. You are simply not good and smart enough to get through these six months of school to receive this diploma. And sadly, I do struggle that much right now with keeping up my confidence and my trust in my own strength and abilities, that I don’t know, if I will step up and take the chance to change my life.
Life just likes to trick us from time to time.
Things, which might be the best for us, which sound so promising, which just need a bit more courage, suddenly seem to be the wrong choice to make. That does not mean they are wrong, we just might need a little push to believe in our own strengths. A change in your life is never easy and always starts with some sort of fear.
It might be the right choice to make, because we are afraid of what’s going to happen next.
Because there simply won’t be anything negative to happen when we choose to change our lives.
That is what I have to deal with right now.
My mind is a bit confused and I doubt things and actions of mine, which I never thought I would. I have to get my mind clear and free of all these ‘what if’- questions and the memories of the moments I’ve been told I am not good enough, which are locked in the back of my mind.
‘What if I do it and I won’t make it through the tests?’
‘What if I don’t do it and then regret it, because I haven’t got my fingers on another job ever since I got away from my current one?’
‘What if?’
‘What if?’
This mix of the knowledge what is going to come without a job for a while and the option to get into further education, which I do not even know much about, is pretty scary.
Will I be able to keep up with the whole thing?
The 1st step is in my mind but always the most scary one.
But the most important thing of it all is: We have to think of our mental health. We can drive ourselves crazy with thoughts like this.
Especially, when we keep them to ourselves for too long.
Make yourself a priority!
This goes out to all of you: We are the most important person in our own lives. We are the ones who should always believe in our own strengths and even we might struggle to believe that we are good enough: WE ARE.
Our happiness and our dreams are worth fighting for and if that means we have to ask for a bit more of moral support, so we can make this, we should do exactly that.
Thank you for taking a bit of your precious time to let me share a part of my story with you.
What’s a fear, a struggle you’re fighting through right now? Get in touch with us on Twitter and let us fight your demons together. We are more then our mind will allow us to be.
