two things can be true

I need to remind myself more often that it’s OK to hold multiple feelings at once. Things can be sad and optimistic. Some things can be difficult while other external demands are low. I think some people (yours truly heavily included) are prone to engaging in black and white thinking about situations that are far more nuanced. It helps to step back and observe the many feelings you are holding at once instead of fixating on one. Fixation on positive thoughts (specifically ones that feed our egos and cause us to reflect less) can be just as detrimental as fixating on negative ones.

I know I emphasized this previously, but it has really struck me how necessary it is to be intentional about setting aside time each day to check in with myself. I think the stigmatization of discussing mental health causes people to believe that there is something wrong with them as a person if they have to consciously work on things that seem to come naturally to others. No one wants to admit that they have to think about leading with kindness, or checking in with their loved ones, or valuing themselves. Society conditions us to believe that someone is defective if these things aren’t inherently in their toolkit. 

Working on myself has helped me realize that most people are carrying trauma, and a byproduct of this trauma is that it can cause people to handle their emotions in unhealthy ways. When these ways become someone's default way of engaging with stressful situations, patterns develop that are very hard to break. The world we live in has not made it easy for people to unpack their trauma and examine how it impacts their mental health and their relationship to others. Mental health services are difficult to access and costly, and services such as BetterHelp have proliferated to commoditize this rot. Pairing folks up with providers that are overloaded or new to the profession is seemingly the norm. These are barriers to people being able to access the tools they need to heal. It’s impossible for people to have knowledge that they have never had access to. 

All of these things shouldn’t stop us from looking in the mirror and asking if we are showing up as the best version of ourselves. The first step in getting help is recognizing that you have a problem. If we are never honest with ourselves about the need to change, then it doesn’t matter how accessible the tools to enact the change are. Coming to these realizations have given me the vision to take things less personally, while not outright excusing harmful behaviors. Few things are ever absolutely binary, and it's important for me to be cognizant of this.