Unlearning a lot of the shit, you were taught by people who didn’t know what they were doing either.

As you grow up, you think your parents and teachers know everything! You look up to them, you hang off their every word and somehow, we are trained to believe elders know everything, we therefore; subconsciously allow them to coach our minds and this can affect us massively. I personally found myself stuck, if I asked for advice and I didn’t then take that advice, it meant I was instantly wrong and was most definitely going to make a mistake.

What did this teach me? It taught me to double guess everything, to even stress about a small decision because if I make the wrong decision it will hinder my life so much and it will damage my life. I was never taught mistakes are made and making those mistakes is what makes you stronger. I was never taught to listen and go with that fire in my belly feeling. I was taught to think things through so much, to question it, to make ‘no rash’ decisions.

As children, young teenagers and being in our 20’s we are looked at as resilient, but the truth is sometimes we don’t know what our subconscious mind is taking in, the trauma, conversations and issues we face and at the time, we are expected to absorb and handle it all, like a “grown up”, until we actually become a grown up and we realise ‘ohh this isn’t okay and what we had to deal with is not okay’. It felt at the time, we weren’t allowed to have emotions or "stresses" as ‘What did we have to be stressed about?’. It felt like there was an expectation that we should be able to get up and carry on as normal even though we were screaming out for a re-charge day or a conversation!

So NOW, in adulthood, we have to teach ourselves how to deal and process emotions!

We don’t even know where to begin! I did not know how to process emotions such as; happiness, pain, anxiety, worry, failure, success even laughter; none of these emotions were explained to me and worst of all I was not taught how to deal with these feelings and if I feel like this HOW do I get past it all. Laughter is probably a weird one for people to understand; but it got to a point in my life where even laughing with family was not a thing, things were always just so serious!

You find yourself literally having to unlearn everything you were taught, if you were taught not to talk about your problems, then most definitely do the opposite; talk to someone about those problems. If you feel like laughing, then laugh! If you need a cry, then have a little cry! The most important thing we need to learn is to be able to pick ourselves up when we are down and out, coping mechanisms are so important for us to learn and teach people, spread our stories our techniques; who knows who it could help.

I was lucky to have a very good network of people in which I confided, however once I offloaded my emotions and thoughts, I soon became to realise until I took care of myself mentally, no matter what others say, to try and get me through those times, I had to work on it myself. I had to work through the thoughts, the confidence issues, the feeling of not feeling worthy myself. You HAVE TO LOVE YOURSELF. This is where self-care techniques comes in use; every human has different self-care needs for me after talking it through it would be a selection of colouring; meeting friends; washing some dishes, writing allllll the thoughts in my head down; a to do list of jobs that are making me feel overwhelmed and a form of meditation, which is actually washing dishes for me.

We can only hope the younger generation of parents and teachers allow that safe space for children / young adults to express how they feel; after all kids can teach adults too!