Author: Callum Woodward
Mental health is a difficult road to tread. Poor mental health can make you feel hopeless, depressed, fiercely anxious: as if the worst thing that you can imagine will happen any second. It can even seem like you’re swimming upstream. You’re fighting hard to move forward, but everything around you is dragging you backwards.
Sometimes, your mental health can even make you feel guilty. Guilty for being sad, guilty for taking time for yourself. But you absolutely have to do it. You may have been told many, many times about self-care. It might even be annoying to hear about it so often, believe me. But, as annoying as it can be to admit it, other people are right sometimes.
It is important to realise that the person who should be your priority is you.
Boundaries are also important to have in place. Boundaries don’t mean that you are intentionally pushing people away for the sake of it. Boundaries are there so that you can prioritise your own individual needs and establish what is and what isn’t okay in friendships and relationships. It is very healthy to have boundaries as they establish good communication and mutual respect.
Especially when it comes to people-pleasing. You may feel the need to go out of your way for other people sometimes, even at the cost of your own mental health. But this isn’t at all good for you and you will only find yourself further down that stream if you burn yourself out.
As difficult as it might sound, you need to try your best to change the mindset of thinking that it is bad to take time for yourself, try to maintain those boundaries, and understand that it’s not bad to see yourself as a priority. Because you are a priority.
You are.
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