I prefer Mental Wellbeing Day to Mental Health Day. To my mind the latter definition has an inherent disempowering connotation because it often has negative associations.
I am very interested in Mental Wellbeing because of the years I suffered unnecessarily because of how I felt.
I’m sure at some stage we have all had the thought: am I mad? What is wrong with me? Or what is wrong with …?
The feelings of confusion, sadness and the sense of deep loneliness are overwhelming! These feelings are even heavier when you do not seem to have ‘valid’ reasons for feeling that way. I also know that there are no quick fixes and that no one can do it for me. I often ask the question: “how can we promote mental wellbeing in a way that is not experienced as an imposition or wanting to fix, but rather as a free choice?”
My young journey
Until I started the long journey of self-discovery and wanting to find out what was really going on in my head, I did all I could to forget about my childhood and teen years.
As a young person, I felt lonely, sad and confused. I could not work out why I felt this way because my family circumstances were good. My family did the best they could to give me what I wanted, somehow though I did not feel I was understood and could not make too much sense of my emotions.
The solution… or so I thought
The immediate solution to me was to take myself away from the place which I thought was at the source of my issues. However, I soon realised that whatever I was running away from, came with me – it followed where ever I went.
Education and awareness could go a long way to prevent the issues from arising. It is necessary to address the impact mental health has on both the person who suffers and the people indirectly involved. We need to learn how to deal with the ‘invisible’ elements of mental health.
With my book: Defining Moments – Reclaim Your Power and Live The Life You Love, I wanted to emphasise the importance of understanding how to take responsibility for our own lives, learning how to manage the conditioning from the past and develop the skills to communicate effectively our desire to have our needs met. The sooner in life this is done, the better.
Community support
In addition to developing a Coaching Practice, my commitment is to work within the community as a Mentor for year 10 and 11 at local schools and as a Practice Health Champion with the local Medical Practice. It is becoming more and more important to have professionals, like myself involved with schools and the community.
Together we can make this a better and caring world!
Anna Stapleton – Mental & Emotional Freedom Coach