A Mental Health Check-In

If you should ask me a year ago about how my mental health was, I would say it’s a total mess. But, if you ask me today how my mental health is, I would say it’s way better than it was a year ago. I just got off a long phone call with a friend because I had so much to get off my chest and needed some advice on a few things. This should highlight how important my mental health is to me recently.

Over the years, I have experienced how bad my mental health has been and this affected me and even those around me in a very bad way. In Ghana where I come from, mental health isn’t something people used to really pay attention to. Once it’s not about physical health, no one really cares. But recently, I believe people are drawing more towards advocating for mental health and that’s a really great step for we Ghanaians as most of the youth need to so much help when it comes to their mental health.

Speaking about mental health, it’s been a long way coming for me. Over the past year, I’ve learnt to make drastic changes to so many aspects of my life in order have a healthy mental state. Looking back, I’ve had to make some very hard choices which I didn’t want to, but had to because that was the only way out. One major thing I’ve had to do for my mental health was to take a break. With the field of work I’m into, you’re always required to show up and give your best. But then, the job doesn’t give its best to you. No sort of motivation or break whatsoever. I was literally working my life away for people who didn’t even care about me in a bit.

You could go a whole day standing and be expected to show up at as early as 7am the next morning whether you had a good nights rest or not. This went on for months and months to almost a year. I got burnt out and I couldn’t take it again. And then, it just happened. I woke up one day and didn’t show up to work. I felt a lot better after resting for a whole day so I decided to make my vacation and week long which was a much required holiday.😂

Moving on, I’ve also had to make some though choices when it came to my relationships with people. Gone were the days when I cared a lot about if I lost friends , family and even acquaintances. But today, I really don’t care that much if I make friends or not. As they say, less is more and it’s best to have 1 good person in your life than have a billion fake and toxic people in your life. One thing I’ve learnt is that you don’t have to always be the bigger person in any of your relationships. Sometimes you need to give space to see how the other person would treat you if you didn’t always have to reach out or initiate stuff.

Life is simple, so don’t try to complicate it for yourself. Just do you and your people will eventually find you.

all images belong to me.