Check on your strong friend. Your busy friend, your happy friend, your quiet friend. Check on your neighbour & on the stranger next to you 💛
Not feeling OK can feel incredibly heavy & isolating. It’s important to remember that it’s OK & that we all experience down days, flat days, depressive days, & overwhelmed, anxiety-filled, simply shitty days. We all have the capacity to feel sad, mad, out of control, afraid, worried, stressed, out of place, burdened, unsettled, or like we don’t belong anywhere. After all, we are human, not robots. It’s completely normal to feel all the lows.
So what can we do?
Self-help - take some time out, read a book, watch a movie, cry, move, listen to some music, take a nap, go outside, exercise, connect with nature, ground yourself, reach out, call or message a friend, or a professional.
But most of all ALLOW yourself to feel how you are feeling. Ride the wave. ACCEPT it BUT make sure to MOVE through it. In fact, that’s what protects our bodies. To move through these emotions. To not allow them to manifest into an illness or disease within our body!
It’s also important to remember that feelings do not discriminate. They affect everyone and anyone. Just because someone appears to have it good, doesn’t mean they do.
When you are down and feel alone - the people around you may be suffering too. If they can’t be there for you, reach out to someone else instead: respect everyone’s boundaries & accept that it’s ok to not be ok and it’s ok to seek help elsewhere (compared to where you may be comfortable or used to).
When helping others - make sure to ASK how they would like to be supported. Not everyone has the same needs or way of communicating. So if you want to be there for someone and be helpful to them, then ask them what they prefer; to just have an ear to talk to, a shoulder to lean on, advice, a cuddle, advice, a solution, or just being there in silence with them, watching a movie or anything to take their mind off it. Or simply checking in with a call or text to let them know you are there whenever they need.
Together we can lighten each other’s loads. From personal experience I know how much it can really help to open up, no matter how resistant you may feel or ‘embarrassed’, it’s so worth it! Every time. You are not a burden. You deserve to be supported, and happy!
& when you support someone, make sure you care, not carry. Make sure you have the ability and know-how to hold space and assist. If you don’t have that or the capacity to be there for someone else, and/or listen. Be aware not to force it, you would be doing yourself and the other person a disservice. Ensure you are in the right mind frame yourself first, otherwise redirect, and help them seek help elsewhere.
One decision can make a positive change to your day or a huge impact on not only the rest of your life but on the people around you too. You deserve to live and enjoy life. We are stronger together, we are here to lean on each other, it’s in our nature. Just like trees lean on each other, and stand tall, so can we too.
Even the toughest/strongest of people have these emotions and experience hardships. Dark days and nights. Even psychologists, mental health practitioners, and healers all experience the same as anyone else. But what they have is the tools to more easily navigate through those tough times & come out the other side. We may not be able to help our feelings, but we sure as hell can direct them & choose what impact they have on us. This may be a hard one to swallow but, studies show that an emotion only lasts 90 seconds, after that we choose how we respond & ultimately how it affects us. We must learn to speak up, to use our voice, and speak our truth. Even if it doesn’t feel like it comes naturally, even if your voice shakes and breaks… ‘we cannot always remain in our corner of the forest waiting for others to come to us. We need to go to them sometimes.’ - A.A Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh.
Hello, World!
Our inbox is always open, and we are always more than happy to connect you with the right help. So please don’t hesitate to reach out!
& lastly - Good news - Nothing in life is permanent and this too shall pass…❤️☀️💛
Love, peace, and power to you,
-Z