What if I told you the past year was very challenging for me in terms of Mental Wellness? Would you believe me? I would not even believe myself in the recent years, but I have to be honest in sharing with you my dear readers that it was indeed challenging for me. Just like many of you, the effects of lockdown also contributed to my mental wellbeing. There were many stressors and I felt tired…emotionally. Practicing Self-Love was very difficult for me.
It was feelings and thoughts that I kept to myself mostly. I felt guilty for feeling less than positive. I was bothered that I couldn’t just snap out of it sometimes. There was an internal battle where I felt conflicted, always questioning myself and my worth. It just felt like everything that could go wrong at times, did. When I thought I was just over once obstacle, life presented itself with yet another challenge! I didn’t know how much of strength I had left within to overcome each obstacle. I got to a stage where I closed off. I hid it so well. I blocked it out. I withdrew myself from people and from social events. I’m certain that if I sought professional help, I would have been diagnosed with some level of depression or anxiety.
I chose not to go that route – not because I am not open to it but because I believe that it is a mindset change that is within my control. I guess I have that warrior attitude, but this can also be dangerous if you don’t know where to draw the line as to when you actually need some intervention. I know that I was sometimes guilty of negative self-talk.
Urrgh….PMS!
I also had two bad PMS episodes last year. The type you dread! The type where you don’t experience any tummy aches or any physical pain or discomfort – but for me, what is worse, is the erratic emotions – where you just feel so down about life, suddenly during that PMS day or two – everything in your life makes you want to cry! And I did cry!
And then you look back a few days and laugh at yourself thinking about how ridiculous you were for feeling emotional about the things you did! I would much rather have the tummy aches than this type of PMS I’ve mentioned!
Whilst I haven’t found a solution to work around the PMS emotions, I do have some tips for practicing Self Love and I decided that I would like to share them with you. It’s been just over a year since I last blogged and consider this my comeback! I do hope that you will find this useful and look forward to many more.
Self-Love Tips
Remember that this is life and in life we go through stages, and I am not letting myself drown in any stage where I can’t practice self-love. Blogging is something I enjoyed doing even if others didn’t read it – it was an outlet for me. It created some sort of inner gratification. Perhaps it was the hope that someone would read it and find it useful, to be inspired or aware or educated somehow. In practicing self-love, doing more or what I love and what makes my heart happy is my focus and this blog is going to get some love from me this year.
Over the next few posts, I will share Self-Love Tips which resonated with me. They may or may not apply to you but I will share from my personal experience and be candid about each of them with examples where possible. I am doing this because I want to highlight that if you’re experiencing any sort of challenging in practicing self-love, that you’re not alone. It can happen anyone at any time.
This is something I battled with for a long time and decided to share this with you as my Self Help Tip No. 1:
Don’t worry about what others think or say about you.
Stay tuned for the next post if this is also something you battle with.
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