World Mental Health Day

For years I had no idea I had been suffering with depression and anxiety.  For years I went through life using drugs and alcohol just to feel alive.  For years it was all I knew to do. 

I know I am fortunate.  One, I am fortunate to have found treatment for a substance use disorder.  It was in treatment that I learned that I had massive underlying mental health conditions.  After treatment was when I started really peeling back the layers that would bare the underlying causes of much of my lifelong pain I always carried with me. 

To that point in my life I thought having ongoing and sometimes highly pervasive worry and anxiety was normal. I thought having pervasive negative thoughts about myself and the world around me was just how things were. I thought having super high sensitivity to situations around me was just how I was.  All of this was just how thing were for me. 

I will never forget, with some relief, being diagnosed for the first time with depression, anxiety and PTSD.  I was near 30 yrs old and for the first time in my life I felt some sense of relief. For the first time in my life I learned I could, with counseling and medication, heal and see life through a different lense.  That began a years long process for me with counselor and doctors to beging the healing process. 

I say today I have been to thousands and thousands of dollars worth of therapy, I have used medication when I needed it for depression and anxiety, and in the last decade, have learned to use mindfulness, education, and exercise to maintain the healing that I had been able to achieve since first being diagnosed years ago. 

I know I am fortunate.  Just like the knowing that I am fortunate to have years away from drinking and drugs use, I am also fortunate to have had access to resources to heal from mental health disorders.  

My life today is one where I for sure still have days.  Days where I struggle with some anxiety and depression. I have some days where I just stay home and do the things I have learned to keep myself in a neutral state of mind.  I talk to those close to me, I do self care, I take each day as it comes knowing how I feel today, on those tough days, those days are temporary. 

My work is to help people find a path to recovery from substance use disorders.  I do that work because I know if one can find that path, they can than navigate a path to healing from mental health disorders.