you deserve to heal your mental health

You don't have to be drowning to use a life jacket. Don't want until you're in crisis mode to start healing your mental health - be proactive and realize that it's okay to heal when you're not at rock bottom. It's okay to start working on your mental health, even if you are still able to function.

Welcome back to Feel Your Feelings with Ethan Jewell! I'm not a psychologist, a doctor, or a mental health professional. Instead, I'm here to guide you through the world of mental health from a casual, relatable lens. I've been there, I've felt that, and I understand what you're feeling. Let's feel some feelings.

Poetry book and more on my website: www.ethanjewell.com

IG: @jewellboi_

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You don't have to be drowning todeserve a life jacket.
I remember when I was the most depressed I'd ever been.
I would spend 18 hours a day in bed, but I would get up for
maybe 20 or 30 minutes. And I told myself that that was
enough. Clearly I'm still functioning in
some way. I can still get up.

(00:21):
I can still do some of the work I need to from bed.
So I I must not be that sick. I was drowning, but I was not
allowing myself the grace to accept that I needed help.
You don't have to be drowning todeserve a life jacket.

(00:41):
You deserve help. You deserve healing even before
you get to absolute rock bottom.My name is Ethan Jewell and
welcome back to Feel Your Feelings.
I know that personal story sounds kind of ridiculous, but
if you've been deep into mental illness, you know exactly how

(01:03):
this is. Often our mental illness
convinces us that we have to be at the worst possible, that
we're never quite bad enough to get help and to receive healing.
According to the National Alliance of Mental Illness, the
average delay between the onset of mental illness symptoms and
treatment is 11 years. 11 years is what it takes the average

(01:28):
person to realize that they deserve treatment and they
deserve help. That is frankly disturbing, and
I personally have experienced this.
I personally have experienced that denial that I need help,
the fact that I thought I neededto have some big dramatic moment

(01:48):
in order to get help, but that'snot true.
If you're hurting, if you're dealing with mental health
issues, you deserve to feel better.
And you don't have to be at rockbottom for that.
So today we're going to talk about that.
We're going to talk about why wefeel this way.
We're going to talk about the dangers.
And then we're going to talk about the first steps we can

(02:08):
take to accept that it's OK to get help, that it's not a sign
of weakness, it's a sign of strength to be able to stand up
for yourself when you're not at your absolute lowest.
So why do we think that we need to get the absolute rock bottom
in order to get help? Why do we think that we need to

(02:29):
have a comeback story in order to heal?
Honestly, part of it I, I genuinely think is this is a
very glorified narrative. We see it in movies and TV shows
where somebody has to be at their absolute worst in order to
come back. And there's some kind of glory
in that, that you have to hit absolute rock bottom in order to

(02:51):
then succeed, in order to, in this case, heal.
But that's not the case. In fact, that is very harmful.
This narrative invalidates people who are struggling
quietly, who don't feel sick enough to ask for help.
It's like waiting for a house toburn down before calling the
fire department. Why not call them when you smell

(03:13):
smoke or when something just feels off?
You don't have to wait until your house is burnt to the
ground in order to receive help.You see, mental health struggles
are on a spectrum. Emotional pain.
It isn't binary, it isn't linear, it's not fine or broken.

(03:35):
One or the other. There's a whole range in
between, and anything on that range is valid.
For example, someone dealing with chronic stress, emotional
numbness, persistent low mood. They might not qualify as
depressed in clinical terms, butthat doesn't mean that they're
OK. That doesn't mean that they

(03:56):
don't deserve to feel better. That doesn't mean that they
don't deserve healing. Your pain doesn't need to be
measurable or diagnosable to be valid.
If you're hurting, that matters.If you're hurting, if you're
dealing with emotional problems,if you're dealing with mental
illness, that matters. You deserve treatment.

(04:17):
The same way if you had a brokenleg or you had a persisting pain
in your chest or in your abdomen, you likely wouldn't
wait until the point of literally like passing out to go
see a doctor. I would hope you know you.
You would you would identify thefact that something is wrong and

(04:39):
you would hopefully go and try to get help for it.
We should treat our mental health with the same level of
respect, with the same way of ohwe don't need to be at our
absolute worst. We don't need to be completely
non functioning in order to get help.
If something is wrong, you deserve it.
Some of the most emotionally distressed people can look fine

(04:59):
on the outside, going to work, smiling, being productive.
High functioning depression or anxiety.
High functioning mental illness can often fly under the radar
and often gets ignored by othersand by the person experiencing
it. I've dealt with high functioning
depression for years where I still get a lot of my work done

(05:21):
and I still do things and I get out of the house, but there's
just something wrong. And that caused me to ignore it
for years and years and years and think that this is just how
it is. But eventually it got to a point
where I, I, I convinced myself that I deserved to feel better.
I didn't have to just suck it upand deal with that.

(05:42):
So I started doing things and taking action.
Of course, it was not easy. This is all much easier said
than done, but it was something.It was more than what I had
already been doing. Just because you're carrying it
well doesn't mean that it's not heavy.

(06:02):
Just because you're functioning well with your depression or
your anxiety or your other mental illness, doesn't mean
that it's not ripping you apart from the inside out.
If this is you, if you're the person who keeps pushing through
telling yourself it's not bad enough, then I'm calling you out
right now and saying you're allowed to ask for help early

(06:27):
and often. You deserve support at the first
sign of emotional discomfort, not at the breaking point.
So here are some practical tips to start taking action.
First you have to admit it. You have to admit, OK, I'm not
doing as well as I think. OK hey, feeling this emotional
numbness is not normal. Feeling anxiety all the time

(06:49):
about everything is not good forme.
You have to 1st acknowledge the fact that these things are are
things that you can heal and they are feelings that you can
face and deal with and they shouldn't just be your status
quo. That's one of the first steps.
Then you can start taking actions for your mental health.
You can journal about your feelings even when they feel

(07:10):
minor. You can talk to somebody about
your emotions all the time, weekly, not just during
emergencies. You don't have to be on the edge
of a Cliff in order to talk about, hey, this is a really bad
situation I'm in. You could try therapy
proactively, not reactively. So instead of going to therapy
to react to an absolute rock bottom, you could go to therapy

(07:33):
to prepare for when you have those more difficult times.
Even if you're doing well right now, even if you've been
struggling in the past, but you're doing OK right now.
Now you can go to therapy or do these things proactively instead
of reactively. You can set up a system for
yourself where you become more confident in yourself, your
emotions, your ability to deal with those crisis moments.

(07:56):
You could set mental health check insurance for yourself,
almost think of it like doctor'svisits, you know, maybe where
you sit down and journal what you're feeling.
You can compare those journals to previous entries.
There's so many different thingsyou can do out there to check in
with yourself and to be proactive instead of reactive,
or to acknowledge that you need some help and you need some

(08:18):
healing and you need to take action against that even though
you're not at rock bottom. Mental health is maintenance.
It's an oil change, not a tow truck.
So let's make getting help the norm, not the exception.
Let's normalize the tune UPS instead of waiting for
breakdowns. Let's normalize being able to

(08:38):
get help and to start working for healing even if we are still
functioning. You don't deserve to suffer in
silence and your pain, your struggle, is valid no matter
what society says. It doesn't matter if you think
you need to be at absolute rock bottom in order to get help.

(08:59):
You deserve help and healing no matter what.
You don't need some big crisis or breakdown or diagnosis to
take your pain seriously. Emotional discomfort, big or
small, is worth exploring, and you don't have to prove how bad
it is to justify getting help. You're allowed to take up space.

(09:23):
You're allowed to say I'm not OKeven if no one else sees it.
You are enough, even in your quiet struggle.
If you're thinking, man, maybe Ido need help, then take this as
a sign not to wait, not to downplay, just to reach out.

(09:46):
Whether it's being there for yourself, texting a friend,
finally booking that therapy session.
Healing doesn't wait for rock bottom.
It starts the moment you say I deserve to feel better because
you do. Don't lose yourself waiting for
a breakdown. That's going to wrap it up for

(10:09):
today's episode. Thank you so much for being
here. If you need help feeling your
feelings, you should check out my music on all platforms under
the name of Ethan Jewel. I almost guarantee it might
bring up some of those feelings that you've been suppressing or
ignoring. Also, drop me a comment and let
me know what you thought about today's episode.
Let me know if you think that maybe you have been dealing with
some things deep down. Maybe you have been kind of

(10:30):
waiting for a crisis or breakdown, and maybe this is the
moment that you start taking that stuff seriously.
So thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for understanding thatyou don't have to wait for rock
bottom to deserve healing. And as always, thank you for
feeling your feelings. I'll see you next time.