Employee Spotlight: Mental Health Awareness Month

From Heather Reller, North Olmsted.

I am taking a moment to share some of my own experiences relating to mental health and finding tools to feel better. 

I was snapping at my family, sleeping a lot, and just generally had a feeling of ‘blah’ much of the time.  I knew I had unresolved trauma from my past and had a heart to heart with a dear friend of mine and she told me what I did not want to hear, but I needed to hear.  It was time I faced my fears, faced what was slowly eating away at my mind and soul.  

I rejected and avoided counselling for YEARS, for a variety of reasons.  It was way too expensive, it was embarrassing to even consider talking about these experiences in my life that had caused me so much pain.  Truly, I did NOT want to face it, to feel it, to do the work that it takes to ‘get better’.  I mean, really, how is talking about this stuff going to make me feel better!!?!?!? 

I was partly right - it was challenging, and it was a very odd feeling to share such personal things to a stranger.  

But I did it, I faced it head on.  I shared, I cried, I laughed, and I found a pathway to letting all the anger, resentment, sadness, loss, etc., out of my body and mind.    Slowly I started to feel a little better, I found the joy in things that had lost their shine for me.  My husband even noticed, I complained less about simple things that did not go my way, I was gentler in my approach to people and things in my daily life.  

Am I cured? No.  

Am I always happy now since I have been in therapy? No, I am human.  

Did all my trauma’s magically go away? No.  

So, what did facing all this in therapy do for me, you may ask?  

I learned that I am not a sum of other people’s bad choices that were directed at me. 

I learned that I must accept responsibility for the state of my own mind; it doesn’t work to blame others for my confusion or expect them to encourage or confirm or validate me.  I must look to myself as the source of my own confusion—and my own enlightenment! 

I learned to work on being the person who breaks the cycle. Where I was judged, I choose understanding. If I am rejected, I choose acceptance.  I learned to be the person I needed when I was or am hurting. 

Vow to be better than what broke you - to heal instead of becoming bitter so you can act from your heart, not your pain.