Tag: mental health

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The Mood Around Food

“If we are panicked or overwhelmed by food – it doesn’t matter what we are choosing to put in our body it will not nourish us”

I am eating all the right things.

I am only eating “healthy”.

Why am I still having all of these digestive concerns even when I eat only good things.

These are common things that I hear: from patients, from people around me, sometimes even in my own mind. There is this idea that if you are doing it “right” – eating only the “right” foods, eating only the “right” amount of foods – then you are supposed to feel good. If only it were that simple.

The truth is there is much more that goes into the way that we nourish our bodies than the food that we eat. There is so much more that goes into feeling good then just your food choices. Yes the quality and nutrients of the foods that we choose to put into our bodies is one part of this, but it is not the only thing. The foundation of allowing food to nourish you includes understanding how food impacts your mental health. This means looking at how you feel mentally and emotionally around food. When you are having a hard mental relationship with food you can feel mentally and physically bad even eating the most nutritious foods.    

Stress around food and what you are eating doesn’t allow you to seek the nourishment that food offers. Instead that stress can trigger an overwhelmed or panicked state changing the way that our digestive system is working. This state is also called a sympathetic nervous system response or a fight or flight state.

There is a profound physiological link between our nervous system and our digestive systems. Both of these systems produce the neurotransmitter serotonin that helps to regulate our digestive function and our mood. When we are not eating foods that are nourishing our bodies, we can experience changes in our mental health. In this same fashion when we are experiencing extreme stress or emotions in our nervous system this does not allow us to physically digest and use the nourishment of food. In essence our emotional or mental state can influence our physical ability to use food, or engage with food including whether we feel hungry or full.

It is the parasympathetic nervous system response or relaxed state that allows for our brain to reset and for the digestive system to function optimally. If we are constantly being panicked or overwhelmed by food it doesn’t matter what we are putting in our body it will not nourish us. Our nervous system will actually prevent our digestive system from using the food properly.

Having an emotionally or mentally stressed relationship with food also doesn’t give our brain any time to rest and reset. No matter how well you are doing anything else – if you cannot relax around food it will only tax your nervous system instead of nourish it. This can result in changes in your ability to digest food properly and can cause or exacerbate digestive symptoms such as bloating, gas, irregular bowel movements, nausea and much more.

The way to nourish the body and mind most profoundly is by being okay with the foods that you are eating. It means not fighting against the act of eating or the food that you are putting in your body. It means being nice to yourself. It means not using food as a way to be hard on yourself. It means not trying to use food as a way to control what is going on around you. It means not using food as a way of judging yourself or as a way of isolating yourself. It means understanding that food doesn’t have to be perfect, that you don’t have to be perfect. You are okay just the way that you are, just like the food you are eating – no matter what it is – is okay just the way it is.

Letting go of all the rules and restrictions we have around food can set the stage for us to start to feel good. Feeling good means feeling safe in your body. It means being present and seeing things for what they are. Seeing that food is just food – nourishment for our body – and not the be all and end all for you happiness, success or comfort in your own body. When we can separate food from our own happiness and self-worth, that is when we can truly start to let food – no matter what that food is – nourish us. At the same time it also gives us the space to start to find the nourishment that we truly need beyond food. This could be in rest or sleep or passions or work or relationships: any of the things that focusing on food prevents you from engaging with.  

During this time of self-isolation there is a lot of time that can be spent thinking about and engaging with food. This can be very triggering for anyone with a complicated food relationship. At the same time it also gives us the time and space to reflect on it. It gives space to sit with the discomfort you might feel around food and reflect on the ways that your relationship with food is actually NOT nourishing you and the ways that this same relationship might be preventing other parts of your life from nourishing you.

It doesn’t have to be this way. YOU can change this. YOU can let this world nourish you.

Today – choose one meal and before eating it sit down and tell yourself all of the reasons why the food on this plate is nourishing your body. Is it because it is right from the Earth? Is it because of the vitamin and mineral content? Is it because you are low energy and need a pick me up? For this exercise the type of food that you are eating – it doesn’t matter- what matters is letting go of judgement towards the food and yourself. What matters is the positive way this food is impacting you.

Every single food has something to offer you. Yes there are foods with higher nutrient content than others, but each food still has something to offer. Once you see what each of the foods you are eating has to offer, keep this in your mind as you take each bite. The focus is not on judging yourself for what you are eating but on reminding yourself that each bite of each food you chose today, at this one meal, is nourishing you.

It is time to stop letting food dictate your worth, your time, your energy. It is time to nourish yourself inside and out.

Please reach out if you need any support at this time. I am always here offering virtual appointments.

With love

Alex 

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Self-Isolation and Your Food Relationship

It has been a long week; a very different week for most of us. Schedules have changed. Leaving the house isn’t an option. The things that normally keep us sane we may not be able to do. For some of us this could be a chance to get some much needed sleep, get caught up on a television series, catch up on video chat with some friends, do some spring cleaning or whatever it is that we haven’t done around the house because we were too busy, but for others being at home can bring on its own set of anxieties especially around food.

Suddenly the day doesn’t revolve around going to work, working and coming home. Working from home, the hours can start to blend together, the anxiety can start to creep in, and with the inability to leave the house one of the easiest ways to cope with the impeding uncertainty, anxiety and boredom is with food.  It is the perfect distraction – something you have to do anyways at some point in the day– an excuse to not think about what is going on.  It is an easy thing to do to reach for a snack when we are feeling overwhelmed or bored or when we just don’t know what to do with ourselves.

Eating and emotions are VERY closely tied in our society. The first thing to remember is THAT IS OKAY. It is okay that we have created a society where our emotions and food and hunger are all intertwined. This was not something that we consciously chose to participate in, but that we were drawn into as a collective whole. It is an underlying construct in our society the same way that the expectations of what women and what men do is. It takes awareness of these unconscious processes for us to be able to change them and it takes a village, a collective shift among what the role of food in our society is.

We are starting to see this shift in the world of gender over the last couple of years. Women are drawing attention to the unconscious biases and expectations that surround their role in society – they are bringing forward the expectations that we didn’t even know we as a society had – the ones that are so unconscious that they just seem like facts. Drawing awareness to these unconscious expectations is the first step in creating change. How can we change something that we aren’t even aware exists?

This concept is the same thing that needs to happen with our collective relationship with food. The first thing is understanding how you view food and how you interact with it as an individual and why you feel this way. Does it feel like this is how it is supposed to be based on our social interactions and collective understanding of what food is?

Instead of feeling the anxiety of what is going on in the world, or your life or your mind – food and eating or not eating can bring up its own set of anxieties, often unrelated to what is happening in the external world. Food and our relationship with it can serve as a reflection of what is happening inside of us. With us being able to engage in very little outside of our homes right now, this relationship with food and our internal world can feel very amplified. That doesn’t mean that anything has changed, or that things are getting worse – what it means is that you are paying more attention to it. The distractions outside of this have fallen away and the bare bones of your food reality is staring you right in the face every moment of every day. That begs the question.

What do we do now?

What we do is we start to pay attention. We start to pay attention to how we interact with food. We don’t need to change anything, we don’t need to judge ourselves, we don’t need to beat ourselves up – we just need to pay attention. Pay attention so that we can try and understand why we interact with food the way that we do. That is all we need to do for now. Once that awareness is there, that is when we can start to shift. That is when we can start to see food for what it really is – nourishment – and start to see what is really happening inside of us.

This is not easy – it is scary, because whether we mean to or not we have created a space where our interactions with food, our obsession with it, it is a comfort from what else is happening.  Deep breathes. This can be scary. This can be anxiety inducing. You are not alone. Support is always here. Be gentle with yourself. We need food to survive – but why do you need food right? Beyond physical survival – what else do you need it for? That is the place to start – with the gentle questions – no judgement, no repercussions – just curiosity – why do you need food?

xx

Alex

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Food Stress?!?!

Is it an eating disorder or just normal food stress? That is the question. Many people have a preoccupation with food, but would never consider it an eating disorder. Maybe because it doesn’t fit the diagnostic criteria of an eating disorder. Maybe because it doesn’t seem severe enough. Maybe because this preoccupation or focus on food is just “normal” food stress.

The truth is there is no normal food stress.

Food is not supposed to be complicated or hard or stressful. It is not supposed to be something that fills our days and our thoughts. It is not supposed to make us feel emotionally bad EVER.

Yes there are foods that impact our bodies in certain ways that can give rise to physical symptoms, BUT those are very different from the emotional guilt and stress that surrounds eating certain foods for many people.

Food is our sustenance, nourishment and social connection. It is to be eaten and enjoyed so that we have energy to live; energy to make it through the day; energy to survive.

Along the way, as we have evolved as humans, this fundamental value of what food is has gotten lost. Instead it has been replaced by diet culture. The obsession with thinness and fitness and health and the “right” diet has led to food becoming something that we should scrutinize, avoid, manipulate. It has become something that we use to avoid emotional pain. Over eating, under eating, obsessive healthy eating, eating junk food, thinking about food all of the time; these are all ways that food has become a tool in our lives instead of sustenance.  

Food is no longer seen as the fundamental nourishment that it is.

Instead it has become acceptable to use food as a coping mechanism, a distraction, a place to direct our stress and overwhelm. That can manifest in different obsessions and actions depending on the person.

While it may not be an overt eating disorder – many of us are using food as a tool to help us cope with our lives and what is happening in this. This is creating an entire society with an extremely complicated relationship with food. 

It does not have to be this way.

Part of understanding this complex and emotional relationship we have with food is for each of us to understand what is going on with ourselves. What underneath our day-to-day actions makes us need to use food in the ways that we are. What is safe about thinking about food versus thinking about other things? What does engaging with food offer us amidst the complexity of the world and of our emotions? This is something that all of use can take time to reflect on.

Underneath the preoccupation with food there might be something that we need help and support navigating. You don’t have to have an overt eating disorder to have thoughts, obsessions, guilt, dysfunctions, stress, or just an overall complicated relationship with food. It is the norm these days. But it doesn’t have to be.

Food is not meant to be hard. Remember that when you find food taking over your thoughts. Food is supposed to give you energy instead of taking it away. If you are finding that thinking about or engaging with food is taking more energy than it should – there is always support to help navigate it. Never hesitate to reach out – eating disorder or not. I am here to help you look beyond the food and figure out how to best support and nourish your body both emotionally and physically.

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When Stress Hits the Gut

Stress is a part of our daily lives – it is not something that we can avoid as it has become an ingrained part of our society in North America. However just because stress is part of our daily lives now that doesn’t mean that it is normal for our bodies to be in a chronic state of stress. In fact being under stress so extensively can have detrimental impacts on our bodies physically resulting in various symptoms.

One of the main internal systems that stress impacts is our digestive system. Our digestive system is meant to work when we are relaxed. In a relaxed state our nerves tell our stomach that it is time to produce stomach acid, and our pancreas it is time to release digestive enzymes. When we don’t enter this relaxed state our brains don’t send these proper signals. This means that it is more challenging for our bodies to digest food properly and we can end up with various digestive symptoms or conditions. Thankfully there are some herbs out there that can support this link between our brains and our gut helping to soothe these symptoms as well as support our brains and digestive system to work together even when stress threatens to derail us. While the most important tool to regulate these symptoms is to take the time to eat when we are in a relaxed state these herbs will help to support us when that isn’t possible.

Zingiber officinalis (Ginger): This is anti- inflammatory and anti-spasmodic making it very helpful for pain. It is carminative and a gastrointestinal stimulant helping to support digestion. It is a warming herb that can help to stimulate circulation in the body. It is also very helpful when chewed or drank as a tea for nausea and can help in motion sickness or morning sickness.

Mentha Piperita (Peppermint): THis is a carminitive helping to support the digestive system making it easier for us to digest. It is also a nervine and anti-spasmodic helping to relax the body and mind. It is cooling to decrease inflammation in the GI.

Agrimona eupatoria (Agrimony): This is indicated for tension of any kind in the body. It helps to remove constriction and relax the body. It is a nervine, astringent and bitter. This relaxing function makes it good for any kind of pain. the bitter quality makes it a good support for the digestive system. It also helps us have the ability to take a deep breath. It is ideal for someone who hides their tension behind a false smile, denying pain or who holds their breathe to hide the pain.

Verbena Hasta (Blue Vervain): This is a bitter, cooling plant that helps support both the central nervous system as well as the digestive system. Digestively its bitter nature helps to stimulate the flow of the digestive juices making it easier for the body to handle food. This bitter quality also helps to ground us back into our bodies by putting us in a parasympathetic state. In addition blue vervain helps to calm the mind causing both the body and mind to slow down and hopefully relax. This can decrease stress, tension and anxiety.

Matricaria Recutita (Chamomile): Chamomile is a soothing nervine providing calm energy for strong emotions like anxiety and irritability, It is also anti-inflammatory, soothing both the mind and the body, It has an affinity for both the nervous system and the digestive system with its bitter qualities. It helps soothe stomachs that get upset from stress and emotional trauma. It also helps relax the smooth muscles helping with cramps of any kind – digestive, menstrual and muscular.

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The Wonderful World of TEA

What if there was a simple, cost effective way to nourish your body and soul each and every day? Luckily there is: TEA.

Making a cup of tea has been something that has been used to soothe the mind, body and soul since the beginning of time. You might be familiar with classic black tea such as English Breakfast that is often used instead of coffee in the morning to promote energy. While this tea in itself is nourishing there are many, many different herbs and plants both caffeinated and not that can help support your emotional and physical health.

What many people don’t realize is the many ways that the herbs in tea support our physical bodies as we drink them. For example one of the most common teas used out there is peppermint tea. What people don’t often realize is the therapeutic benefit that peppermint has. It is a carminitive meaning that it supports the digestive system and makes it easier for us to break down food. In addition it is a nervine and an anti-spasmodic healing to relax both the mind and body. Finally it is an energetically cooling herb, which can help to decrease inflammation in the digestive system. Can you believe the ways that just having a cup of peppermint tea benefits your body? Each herb/plant that is used in tea has its own specific impact and benefit for the body. Whether it is black tea, or herbal tea, each time we drink a cup it is impacting our body far beyond just warming it up or calming us down. Learning about the physical impacts of different teas can help us to choose teas that best nourish our bodies.

Have you ever been have a bad day – whether you are exhausted physically, emotionally or sick and someone has made you a cup of tea? In this instance there is the therapeutic impact of the herbs in the tea, but there are other benefits that come with the act of having the tea. One of the most overlooked therapeutic aspects of tea is just sitting down and having a hot beverage. This small act helps to release tension that is stored in the nervous system. It decreases stress and actually makes us take a pause amidst the demands of our lives. This simple way of incorporating relaxation into one’s day can help long term to decrease inflammation and health changes that are associated with high stress. In addition the benefit of having someone make something for you in an act of love is nourishing for the soul. Human connection is something that each of us need in different capacities and enjoying a cup of tea together is one of the simplest ways to foster one form of human connection.

Growing up tea has been my own form of personal therapy. The tea calms me and brings me back to myself. It helps me to sit with whatever is going on physically and emotionally as well as transcend them. This is what makes me want to share it with each and every one of you. Phases Tea Blends is a passion project – a local Toronto based brand that uses nourishing herbs to create loose leaf teas that nourish our bodies and minds. Check us out at www.phasesteablends.com.

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Beyond Food: Eating Disorder Awareness Week

Because in my mind I am not okay

Eating disorders are one of the most complex and challenging illnesses to both treat and experience. They can be close to invisible, hidden by a “healthy” looking exterior of perceived calm and collection or they can be as evident as an emaciated human being.

Types of eating disorders:

Anorexia nervosa: Anorexia is an eating disorder that is characterized by a refusal to maintain a normal body weight (usually less than 85% of expected body weight), intense fear of gaining weight, as well as a disturbance in experience of one’s body shape or weight. This can be either restrictive, which involves not eating or binge-eating and purging, which involves large amount of food and then purging it out of the body in some way. This also has an increased influence on one’s body image and self-evaluation.

Bulimia nervosa: Bulimia is an eating disorder that is characterized by recurrent binge eating over a specific period of time that feels as though there is a sense of lack of control. After this binge eating there is often a recurrent, inappropriate compensatory behaviour such as vomiting that gets rid of the food that has just been ingested. This also has an increased influence on one’s body image and self-evaluation.

Binge eating disorder: binge eating disorder is very similar to bulimia however without the purging or compensatory behaviour. It is characterized by episodes of eating large quantities of food in a short period of time with a sense of lack of control over this. It is often followed up an experience of shame, distress or guilt following the food eating episodes as well as the feeling of being uncomfortably full. This also has an increased influence on one’s body image and self-evaluation.

Orthorexia: A form of fixation with food that resolves around obsession for proper nutrition resulting in a restrictive diet, a focus on food preparation and ritualized patters of eating. This is often has an obsession with food quality or nutrition leading to much of their mental and physical energy going towards thinking about food so much so that it interferes with daily life.

February 1st marks the beginning of eating disorder awareness week.  While this is a week that specifically works to bring to attention to struggles of those with diagnosed eating disorders, it also asks each and every one of us to evaluate our own relationship with food and hunger. Food is something that is so tied with human emotion, and human experience that it can become a method that we use to cope without even realizing it. Whether it is emotionally eating, emotionally not eating, choosing junk food when we feel bad or refusing to touch unhealthy food when we feel bad, our ways of interacting with food are often based on how we feel emotionally instead of looking at what our body needs. In this sense each of us engage in disordered eating patterns at some point or another.

The truth about food is that it is our nourishment. It is what our body needs to survive each and every day. We MUST have food every day. This is what can make eating disorders so incredibly painful for the person who suffers from them. Unlike other addiction such as drug addiction or alcoholism, a person with an eating disorder cannot avoid the trigger of all of their mental and physical pain. They have to eat. No matter how much pain it causes them – they have to eat.

For most people if there is something that hurts them –they don’t’ do it. For example when you touch a hot element on a stove, it burns and causes pain in the area that touches the element. In order to avoid this pain you take caution when you are using the elements and try not to touch the element whenever possible. For someone with an eating disorder it is eating food that causes this similar sensation of mental, emotional and physical pain in their entire being. The thing is they can’t stop eating food. This makes it incredibly challenging to recover from an eating disorder. At the same time that you are trying to work through all of the things underlying the disorder such as anxiety, depression, OCD, past traumas etc. you are continuously being triggered.  Can you imagine trying to heal that burned hand if you are constantly being forced to place it back on the hot element? It takes incredibly hard work and time and strength to overcome this trigger and truly start to heal.

This is the type of resilience that characterizes people who are in recovery or who have recovered from an eating disorder.

This is what eating disorder awareness week is all about. It is about recognizing the complexity and the challenge that comes with trying to overcome an eating disorder. It is about recognizing that recovery does not stop when someone is at an appropriate weight – instead it is a constant struggle each and every day on the inside. It involves overcoming certain thought patterns and core beliefs that are so ingrained that they feel true. It involves going beyond food and learning about who you are beneath this disorder. It is about healing all of the parts of  the self that have been hurt, fragmented, broken. It is about looking at all of the parts of the self that are scared, anxious, depressed, traumatized, alone and working with them to create safety in this world. It is about finding a way that each and every person with an eating disorder can feel safe in the world so that they do not need to hold onto their eating disorder to feel okay.  It takes time. It takes strength. It takes patience. More than anything it takes support, no matter how long it has been, no matter how long it will take. There is no right way to recover from an eating disorder, no right treatment. It is about working with each individual, to support them the best way possible, no matter what that support looks like.

Naturopathic Medicine is one of the many tools that can support those who are trying to recover from an eating disorder. The many modalities that Naturopathic Medicine encompasses including mind-body counselling, acupuncture, Traditional Chinese Medicine, homeopathy, and nutrition are all tools that can support someone with an eating disorder. No matter what direction your recovery is going, never be afraid to reach out for support with me, Dr. Alexandra.

Remember that you are not alone in this. Support for eating disorders is available through Naturopathic Medicine and may other tools. I am always sending so much love and support. Hang in there.

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The winds of change

Change: the unpredictable journey through uncertainty

There is one thing that we as human beings know and that is that life is full of uncertainty. As much as we as we try and create a path – a system – of how our journey through life is “supposed” to go, it is close to impossible for life to turn out the way that we expect.

Life is all about change. It starts when we leave our mother’s womb and enter into this new environment on Earth. After that, each year as we grow older and develop, aspects of our lives begin to change. These include things such as what grade we are in, what school we go to, what we are studying, who we live with, what job we are in, what our most important relationships are, how we cope daily and the list goes on. These changes can be exciting, but can also be sources of extreme anxiety and fear.  This can make change particular challenging for people to undertake and to cope with.

What is so derailing about change?

It is terrifying because it is new, it is different and it is unknown. Change can be great or it can be the opposite. The hard part about change is that it is impossible to know what things will be like on the other side. There is no way to know what change will bring. It is a concept in life that is characterized by extreme uncertainty and for anyone who likes order, routine, and certainty change is terrifying. We can spend hours thinking about all of the different paths that change can lead us on. We can obsess about what our lives will look like when we undertake change and transition – but in the end there is no way to know.

The only thing to do is to just jump right in and see what happens. And that is hard.

There is a reason why people like to do the same things for their entire lives. If they work the same job and live in the same area and socialize with the same people, then more or less they will always know what to expect. There is a sense of safety in what we know, in our routine. This sense of safety and “knowing” makes us feel like we are keeping our lives manageable when they have the potential to be volatile. The less risks we take, the less chance that disaster or the unexpected could happen. The more comfortable we are, the easier it can feel to cope with life’s challenges.

Then again, this same comfort keeps us from experiencing what life has to offer. Our world is versatile and exceptional for a reason. It is meant to be experienced. It is meant to be seen. If we stay comfortable for our whole lives, if we stay stuck in what we know, then we don’t actually live. We never get the chance to experience the world. We are meant to live. That is why change will always find us.

Change tests us. It tests the way that we interact with the world –the way that we cope. It makes us shift things up. It makes us question the things that we do on a daily basis. It makes us re-evaluate how we cope with our mental and physical states on a daily basis. Change makes us change how we cope. When we are forced to abandon our routines; our coping strategies, things that we have bottled up inside and chosen not to feel, whether in the present or the past can start to arise. These can be things that are both physical, mental or emotional such as pain, grief, stress, overwhelm, fear, panic etc.

Daily routines can help us cope with unwanted emotions or physical sensations that we don’t want to face. It helps to mask them from our minds so that it makes it easier to accomplish what we need to do. We can use routine to suppress thoughts from our minds, but our body will always remembers. Bodies remember the emotions that our minds refuse to feel and the messages that our soul is trying to share with us that our minds refuse to hear. When we don’t let these soul messages enter our minds, they don’t disappear. Instead they still come to the surface only through our feelings and physical bodies instead of our thoughts. It could be exhaustion, it could be a pit in the stomach, it could be aches or pain or nervousness or anxiety, but some way or another our soul will still be heard. The things we are trying to avoid feeling will always make themselves known in some way. Often it is a change in routine that will bring them to the surface.

Change will always come. Sometimes we must make it ourselves and other times it will find us. Either way we can only accept the inevitability of change. The same way we accept that people are born and will die or that the leaves of trees will change colour with the seasons, as a part of life. To fight change is to fight life. To avoid change is to avoid living. That doesn’t make change any less terrifying. That doesn’t make change any less hard. But change is a part of nature. It is our way to grow as human beings; our way to experience all that life has to offer. It makes us face things stored up inside us that are hidden by routine. By trying to accept and embrace change we can try and make it easier for ourselves by decreasing the inner turmoil that accompanies the change. It won’t necessarily make the physical act of change easier, but at least it is an attempt to decrease the disruption within us the change can cause.  

As Abraham Maslow said “you will either step forward into growth or you will step backward into safety”. Neither is right or wrong.

Sending all the love on whatever path your life takes you today

xo Alexandra  

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It is okay to not be okay.

To anyone struggling with mental illness and to all of us struggling to deal with our own minds day in and day out,

I know there isn't anything we can say to take the pain away, but now more than ever we can be there to SUPPORT each other. ALWAYS remember that you are never alone. No matter how terrible things are there are people who care deeply and who understand the pain that comes with grappling with your own thoughts and emotions. The same way families, friends and practitioners support each other through physical illness they CAN support each other through mental and emotional illness. Despite how isolating mental illness can be, there is so much HOPE for each and everyone of us. Never stop fighting.

 

The hardest thing in the world to feel is blackness. It is a physical sensation that encompasses the entire body. It hides all love, hope, happiness and connection. It replaces it with hopelessness, unworthiness and darkness. In the blackness nothing matters. Everything seems unimportant: life, love, and connection all mean nothing. It all feels like a never ending put of doom and despair.

 

The blackness encompasses every bodily sensation. It takes over emotions and replaces all good emotions with negative one. It takes over the physical. It is like a shadow gliding over the inside of the whole body. It makes you feel heavy and like you are being slowly crushed by an overwhelming sense of despair. It zaps every ounce of strength and energy in your body. It makes it feel as if there is nothing good in the entire world.

 

The blackness hides your soul. It hides your essence, the part of yourself that could help you to remember that there is more to life than blackness. By shadowing your essence it makes it so much harder for you to escape this sensation. The essence holds the love, your love and your strength. When that energy is hidden from view it is so much easier for the hopelessness and despair to take over. It makes it so much harder to overcome the blackness.

 

The blackness acts like a knife, cutting you off from reality. It is hard to connect with people or be present in the blackness because it those moments, it feels like there is nothing else.. It is like drowning in the world, unable to feel or experience anything as it happens around you.

 

If someone hasn’t experienced this sensation it is difficult to understand it. It does not make logical sense. You can’t just tell someone in the blackness to be happy. There is so much more then the blackness then just happiness or sadness.

 

It takes a special type of connection with oneself and one’s surroundings to be able to let in any light. It takes a special type of strength to feel the blackness and fight to see the light. It takes a special kind of strength to recognize you are drowning and choose to fight to get to the surface.

 

This strength cannot be described. It is a feeling. Some days it is accessible and some days it seems that you will never be able to find it again. This strength can allow us to overcome anything in our lives: the worst experiences, the most pain and the most hurtful rejection. This strength is what lets us survive when we know that we can’t on our own. This strength is our best friend. It is always there when we need it. We all have it. I promise. It is often hidden, so hidden that we don’t even know it is there. But just because you can’t feel or see something that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

 

Support is available everyday from friends, family, healthcare practitioners, hospitals, private and public treatment centers, help telephone lines. It may feel like we are alone when living with our own mental health but I PROMISE that no matter how alone you feel you are NEVER truly alone.

 

Sending all the love and hope and strength xx