Let's keep talking about mental health

Assalamualaikum and hi everyone, how are you guys doing? It's my first post in 2025! Happy New Year!! hahaha

I would want to say that this blog has been the place that witnessed my mental health journey, good or bad. I've been publicly talking about mental health since 2016 on this blog. It starts with wanting to help people and slowly realizing that I also need help. I officially seek professional help in June 2021. Crazy to think how long it took for me to reach here today in 2025, it was not an easy journey but it was all worth it.

I would not say that I am all fine now, I am still struggling in lots of areas in my life. But I would say I am getting so much better. I can prioritize myself, take care of my peace and just learn how I can rationalize with a lot of stuff that happened. I will tell you more about what my journey looks like, hoping it may help anyone or give some hope to anyone.

Growing up, I've always felt like I have no purpose in life. I romanticized being unalive, so I could escape this world. With some stuff happening in my own life, how people treated me since I was young, I would say I have a lot of anger pent up. I was wondering why I can't be happy or why can't my brain just shut up? I felt there was something really wrong with me. 

As soon as I get my first job, I have all the means to make myself happier. I want to get out of the pain, I want to experience life, and I don't want to be stuck in the same pain memories, same anger. I do believe there is more to life than just being angry about the things I can't control when I was 5 or 15 years old. I went to my first therapy and honestly, it was really eye-opening, it taught me the basic tools of your circle of control, grounding rules when I'm having anxiety attacks, and a lot of other stuff. But I have to stop seeing that therapist because my schedule can no longer align with hers. 

I then moved to the next therapist on another platform, I took a package for 8 therapy sessions (I actually took it by accident cause I'm dumb like that) This one was the most brutal therapy I ever attended. Most certainly the one that leaves me crying, sobbing, and shaking during each session. I then stopped going cause man, it's brutal and I felt like I rather go through daily life pain than sit on those sessions. 

I skipped therapy for a year until I attended the ADHD webinar because I was suspecting myself. After the webinar, it wasn't an instant decision to get it tested or seek therapy because I thought I was just being overdramatic. ADHD symptoms can overlap with a lot of other mental illnesses including Bipolar, Depression, etc. Also, people are making ADHD a trend on social media cause it's a "quirky" or "I just can't focus" type of thing. I am against self-diagnosing and definitely can't believe everything on social media. Until I saw, that frequent burnout is a big sign of ADHD, this "sign" is rarely talked about and I was convinced.

I took the screening test and I was most likely have ADHD but my therapist said, let's go through therapy sessions first. She said there are 2 ways to diagnose, either after multiple sessions of therapy or an IQ test. After a few sessions, my therapist decided it was time for me to take the test and I did. The rest is history. I do make an entry about it, you can always go and check them out :)

Through my journey of getting professional help, I’ve learned a lot about people, including myself, others, and just how we all experience things. I feel lucky that I had some knowledge about mental health before really realizing what I was going through. I'm grateful for that because when your mental state is in a bad place, you can go down either a positive or negative path. Thankfully, I've been able to choose the positive one. This is why I don't like to judge people, what they’re doing might just be their way of coping. Maybe they never had the chance to find a more positive path. 

Another thing I learned is that seeking help from professionals does not make all your problems go away. I still remember my first therapist telling me, "I have no magic wand to make all your problem poof". You have and must work on yourself, the therapist is there to assist you to find the right tools for you. You know we are all different some things might work for some but not for others. That is where the therapist's role comes in to customize the good tools for you but it is a try-and-error process.

I also have to admit, that therapy does not work for everyone, especially when you are expecting a certain result after your session. Trust me first few sessions don't really make sense but you have to trust the process. In my recent sessions, my therapist told me "Do you notice how all these positive changes happen without you needing to make the changes actively?" that's true, I never have to write a list of my dreams or anything extravagant. It's just about how I cope with my own emotions and mental well-being. But hey, you know yourself better as long as you have the intention to make your life get better you are making progress even though some days it doesn't seem like having any progress at all. 

Lastly, your journey will never be ups only. There will be a lot of ups and downs. Sometimes you will question yourself as to why those bad days keep happening despite your efforts to make it better. All I can say is, that life always finds a way to mess you up. It's just maybe now you know how to deal with it. And like I always say to people around me, seeking therapy or starting your healing journey doesn't mean the end goal is to make you happy but rather enable you to feel your feelings like happiness, euphoria, overwhelm, sadness, anger, disgust, etc. What a lot of us missed is that during a bad mental state, we usually feel numb or a certain emotion intensely. If you can understand your feelings better you'll understand that emotion is there to help us, it makes us feel alive and we are human.

After all, we are all humans. We have the basic needs of safety, love & belonging needs. When one of them is missing, we react to protect ourselves. Be kind to yourself. You've gone through so much and hey, I'm happy to see you here. 

This is rather a long post, sorry if it bores you. I am not sure when I'll be back here. Let's keep talking about mental health, creating a safe space, and removing the stigma around it. Until then see ya <3