3 Ways to Re-Balance your Mental Health

Balance is defined as an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady.

Being born as a Libra, balance is something that keeps us happy and aligned. When I was 15, after my sexual assault, I was filled with all these emotions that I didn’t know how to handle. Eventually, I started therapy and began to learn how to balance all aspects of life but trust me it was not an easy road.

 At 15, I was filled with anger, frustration, sadness, and many other emotions that had me depressed and anxious all the time. Once I was diagnosed with PTSD, depression, and anxiety, the first they do is provide you medication to help with the adrenaline of emotion. While being on that medication, my feelings had vanished, good and bad, but it did help me go through my day to day activities as a “normal” teenager. The one thing that triggered me to want to handle how to balance my emotions was when my best friend’s dog died. She was crying hysterically, and I felt no empathy, compassion, or sadness for her or the dog. After that day, I decided I wanted to feel all emotions, good, bad, or ugly, but also how to balance and manage them so I could get back to myself again.

As I was preparing for life without medication, it was a rollercoaster ride. I immediately started to have panic attacks, depressive episodes, and was anxious about anything and everything. It even became harder to open up in therapy about what I was feeling because I didn’t have the sight I have now. Looking back at it, therapy taught me how to have balance in the following ways:

1. Find what triggers your emotions to go into depression and/or anxiety
   1. Man this can be one of the toughest things and it can change over time. Once I could identify my triggers, I knew I either had to avoid them or learn how to deal with them at that moment, depending on where I was located. Identifying them allowed me as an adult to shape the way I wanted my life to look like and how I wanted to live
2. Figure out what makes me happy
   1. This was a way for me to start over from scratch. It was like I was a newborn again and had to keep a box of the things that brought me joy. I started to rediscover myself as a teenager and immersed myself in things that brought me joy. Sometimes that could also mean people, which meant some friendships didn’t last through my high school years.
3. Keep a journal
   1. I know this can be sometimes a little strange, especially if you never did one, but it helps with the first two points. It helps with you identifying if the triggers you had years ago are still there or you have now learned how to survive. It also shows you how much you have grown in balancing your emotions and the lessons you have learned throughout life.

Learning how to balance my emotions has allowed me to be the person I was meant to be and will continue to become. It has allowed me to know how to remove myself from anger, not be frustrated with my past, and live for my future. It also allows me to leave freely and choose the path and person I want to become. I hope this helps you with starting to balance your emotions.