Overcoming mental health challenges with self-compassion

Reflecting and giving affording yourself compassion is essential to managing your mental health, writes Naomi Fryers.

I HAVE MADE a litany of mistakes in my life. I've drunk way too much, smoked too many reefers and even put faith in the wrong people. I am also still trying to decipher the real from the surreal while being tempted to run from my problems. And occasionally it feels like I have stuffed everything up, too often relying on the broken promises of escapism.

Time and again though, life has taught me my problems can't all be outrun. Mental health challenges can leave you feeling like a shell of who you once were. Unintentionally, I've made a habit of masking: my feelings, my emotions and even my pain. I've been kidding myself that if you're okay on the outside you'll be okay on the inside.

Sometimes the placebo even works for a bit.

I try not to let things break me and yet I find myself riddled with panic and a kind of fire that feels like it's burning my insides. The truth however is it's that fire in my belly that keeps me going. It burns to tell me there's more out there. We ain't done yet.

Mental health reforms dying at the altar of politics

An announcement by the Victorian Government of a new mental health commission is worthless when mental health laws are being routinely broken.

I have trusted when I shouldn't have and even believed the world to be just, sometimes when that justice did not actually exist. I've also pushed away people who cared and legitimately wanted to help. This fact alone means I am scared that if I start crying, I won't stop.

Between confusion, grief and regret the sorrow is immense and the lack of mental clarity never helps at all.

Exposure and vulnerability scare me and is simultaneously a lifeline by giving me self-expression and a voice But also like many others, I struggle to ask for help.

This is despite knowing that at different times everyone needs it. Once your trust has been exploited it is extremely hard to trust again. So then your only hope is to create a light that forges your own path out of the darkness.

I have immense gratitude for those trying to help me to recover. Despite it being so easy to believe otherwise I am trying to remind myself that by some I am loved immeasurably and I am worthy of that.

For all the mistakes that I've made; as older me, younger me and even little me I can only hope for redemption. I am reminded of that infamous Julia Roberts line in Notting Hill, except for the point of difference. I'm just a girl standing largely naked in vulnerability and tears, only asking for your empathy. Because no one on the planet should have to go through what I and others have been exposed to by illness. Least of all the deserving is my son, who so desperately needs his mum.