I’m a hypocrite. I fully admit that, and I’m not happy with it. The truth is as much as I preach about therapy and how much I encourage people to go, I’m not so great at accepting that I need it myself.

I just referred myself to wellbeing. It was difficult to do because I’d convinced myself that I could do without it for so long. I can’t. It’s not nice feeling so out of control that you have to bare your soul to a stranger in order to help yourself.

My boyfriend asked me why I didn’t like doing it. I answered honestly; I feel like I’m asking for attention. I feel like by getting help I’m making the problem real, and I can no longer just say it’s just something I’m going through, and that I’ll be better on my own terms in due time. By referring myself for therapy I’m admitting defeat, and admitting I’m weak and sacrificing the ability to deal with my depression on my own.

While this is all true, I’m genuinely a huge advocate for therapy, and I do strongly believe that it shows courage and acceptance (as mentioned in my previous post) to admit that you need help. I’ve never been good at taking my own advice, and I know that’s not exactly a good thing when I run a blog that’s supposed to strongly advocate self-help.

I decided to write this post with the previous post in mind, particularly when I mentioned I should write when I feel shit. I feel like I should be ‘relatable’ in a sense for anyone to take my advice seriously. So yes, I completely understand how difficult it is admitting that you may need help from a professional and yes I do completely empathise with everyone struggling to come to terms with it. No, it’s not going to be easy for me to go into therapy again and completely bare my soul to a stranger about things that I still don’t fully understand about myself but the important thing for us all to remember is that these people you’re talking to want to help.  Why else would they go through all that training?

I want to help people understand the hardships of their mental health. I want to let people reading know that what they might or might not be feeling is normal, and others feel it too. So yes, I will continue on my mission to advocate positive mind-sets, but I also want to aim to make everything seem normal, for people to read things and think ‘thank god I’m not the only one’ even if I risk exposing myself as the only one who does something or feels a certain way about something.

Hope you are all well, and please remember that it’s okay to feel defeated when asking for help, but try to remember that ultimately it’s going to help, and there’s truly nothing wrong with knowing when you can’t handle something by yourself. It shows a certain strength I feel.

Until next time,
-M x