In today’s blog I am going to focus on the following:
- Communication is key
Disclaimer:
None of this should be treated as professional mental health advice. As with my podcast, social media and any other materials I produce on topics around mental health, self esteem, confidence and personal growth this is me sharing my own experience as an individual, working with a coach, being formerly a coach and other unnamed individual stories (unless permission gained to share their name). I am not a qualified mental health professional. Please seek professional help where appropriate to do so.
Today was weirdly the opposite of yesterday. I woke up stressed and not feeling great all morning, yet as the day went on I felt better and more energetic.
The gym and weight session helped massively. Also I was very careful of my nutrition today. Having cut out bread and upped my water intake, I can feel things picking up a lot. The challenge now is thoughts, although there are only a couple of areas of life where the thoughts are challenging. When I get caught up in those thoughts I experience a lot of cortisol and adrenaline in the body, a significant amount.
It’s then, like today, when I need to do physical activity and sit with myself. The communication I have with myself has made a massive difference in my mental health. The ability to sit with oneself even for 5 minutes is a very challenging one. Yet when I do it I experience a great dialogue with myself and become more aware of my needs.
Also communication with others makes a massive difference too. Being able to open up to a couple of close mates has really helped me. Having someone to vent too who can also challenge me in the right way massively helps. Having an outside perspective from some of the nonsense in my head helps.
On the other side I’ve also had it when talking to someone has just made me purely feel worse. I’ve learned to recognise which people to talk to. Important to note that the people who make me feel worse when I talk to them aren’t bad people, they are usually caring, it’s just the way they see things. We all have different models of the world and some I find I interact and get more energy off than others.
I also had a refreshing conversation with someone last week that I had not realized I had upset and in truth, I thought they were being short with me and wanting to ignore me. Had they not communicated to me that something I said upset them I would not have had that perspective, so this for me is why communication is so key. We both expressed ourselves and it felt great.
For me the communication I have with others is vital, sharing with the right people and expressing. When we don’t express ourselves we suppress which can build up a lot of negativity. Even more important is the communication I make time for with myself.
Jonny Pardoe, 9th May 2023
