I am not my depression and anxiety.. or am I?
Sometimes it is hard to understand who I am and if I actually have a personality outside of my mental illness. As I said before sometimes I feel like I am living two lives, which also means that I feel like I have two person living inside of me. I know that I come up as a really extroverted and full of energy person at first when people first meet me; but then with time people can see more of my true self, which for how crazy and stupid I can be, is a type of person who is quite grounded and realistic. My mental illness leads me to some change in my behaviour sometimes like for example: I am very impulsive and fearless usually, but when I am in a bad mental period, it's like I can't make any decisions. But those really drastic changes in my behaviour don't make me doubt as much who I am, because I got used to recognise my patterns and knowing that these behaviours don't actually come from me, but from this sick part of me. On the other hand, sometimes I feel like if I had just one of the two person I would loose a part of me, the part that developed some coping mechanisms which I use so much now that I think became part of my personality, like my dark humour, my sarcasm and my ability to joke about myself, which in some way make me a better person. So sometimes I want my conditions to be a part of who I am.
This scares me a lot because. It's like for how much I wanna get better, sometimes I am scared of getting rid of those bad thoughts, and these battles that continuously go on into my head, because I am scared of who I will be when I will have just the healthy part of my brain in my life. I don't know if it's because I am so used to my bad thoughts, but I feel like the fact that I am never proud of myself, pushes me to be better; the fact that I easily feel responsible for my mistakes, forces me to be humble; and the fact that I know that no matter how I happy I seem on the outside I could be dying in the inside, helps me to better understand that everyone has their own battles, which is why I tend to be a kind and empathic person. Sometimes I am so scared of working on my self esteem because I don't wanna loose my compassion. I feel like that is a part of the journey of healing that no one talks about: the fear of getting better. I know that what goes on into my head is not normal, and it is not healthy for me, but what if once it's gone, there is nothing left of what I like about me? What if the parts I like of myself are so tightly linked to me not being okay, that I'll loose all of them when I'll actually be alright?
I just wanted to share this fear of mine with you guys, so that if it ever happened to someone else you know you are not alone. Remember though that it takes courage to do the things that scare us. So even though sometimes it's comforting to staying in our mental illness, because we know it so well, and we know how we think with it, but don't know what will happen once it won't be there, healing is the brave choice and at the end of the day, healing doesn't mean changing who we are, but just becoming a healthier version of ourself. Therefore we can only become a better version of ourselves, since we will find a way to stick to the qualities we like about ourselves, without though the unhealthy loops we are stuck inside right now. So be brave and try to work on your healing journey every day.
Lots of love,
Maybe I don't have a soul