A mental-health practitioner explains how her own experiences with depression, anxiety, and joy help her understand clients who feel lost. She argues that life's ups and downs build empathy and purpose, and recommends gratitude and self-check-ins to navigate hard moments.
I do believe like God put me on these ups and downs very purposefully. It helps me relate so much to my clients. I mean, when, you know, someone comes in and they're like, they have this life that they've created and they're like, I should be grateful for this, but I'm looking around and I am not okay inside, but yet I've chosen all this. When they share that with me, I can totally relate. I've been in that moment before. When they come in and they're like, I just don't know who I am anymore. I feel like I've lost myself. Yep. I can relate to that. And so I feel like it is so on purpose, these dark moments that we have and these challenges that we have, because it better helps us for the next person that comes along. Because I have to remind myself, it is not about me. But going through these moments, and sometimes there are full seasons, it really does help with what our purpose is. And I believe what God brought us here to do. And those are the things we get to go through. And there's no shortcut around it. I always, you know, when I work with clients, it's like, it is normal to feel depression, it is normal to feel anxiety, it is normal to feel shame and regret. It's also normal to feel joy and happiness and all these wonderful feelings. So What is not normal or okay is when we're feeling those negative emotions most of the time, right? So that's where we need to work with a practitioner and, and get some support in that. But, but it is, we're supposed to have all of these emotions as we go through this thing called life. I mean, we're here to feel the spectrum of all of it.. And so, but I think it's just being mindful of like, okay, how am I feeling? Where am I at right now? And not judging ourselves, being like, okay, and where's that gratitude at? How do I— having those tools to pull us out. And so that's where I show up with my clients and am really able to help them grab these tools and do some different things that can lift them up in those moments when we feel like, oh goodness, how am I going to get out of this one?
