The Hope Within: Lessons I’ve learned from years of mental health battles

Many here at Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF), myself included, are adopting new approaches to bring their mental health struggles into the light and to begin healing.

The process of healing fully is still a mystery. It’s not easy to identify what works for whom and why. So let’s inquire and make room for those of us in this world who need a little more time, care and compassion. Maybe, just maybe, we can find the route to wellness within and leave behind the scars.

I remember at one point in my life all I wanted to do was die. I could not fathom living in a world where nothing truly mattered. I was constantly having my stomach pumped because I would swallow pennies, pills, dirt, anything to take me from the house of chaos I lived in. I was alone. I was confused. I was a child. There could come no respite because I knew no cause.

Later on in my teen years, I continually had dreams where I was in my aunt’s house looking over the balcony and suddenly I was dropping through the air; spiraling to the wooden floor. Before I hit the floor I would wake up. Death surrounded me and compelled me to throw myself to the wind. I could not bear to have breath inside of me nor a heart that beat for most of my living days.

The fears inside of me were brought out through internal conflict. Fear of life. Fear of my parents. Fear of everything. These truths haunt me to this day and my nights are still filled with the terrors I cannot escape. Yes, I have those lived dreams that bring me to my knees, heart conflicted and rapid. I struggle every night and wake none the wiser. It could be said that life is what you make of it and so it goes that I destroyed my life. Or so I believed for many years.

Yet even in fear, the mind’s desire to have community is inherently plugged into our core as a human. To be without others is the equivalent of slowly dissolving into a pool of nothingness because all we, as humans, really crave is the warmth of another to understand us. Reframing the thinking processes in order to stimulate the brain out of depression is not an easy feat. There is a complex maze of therapy, drugs, and willingness needed to see where the person can turn and promote self into believing self is worthy of others.

The New York Times mental health reporter Ellen Barry wrote an article back in November 2023, about a new study on traumatic memories, conducted by researchers at Yale and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The study found empirical evidence supporting the notion that traumatic memories are experienced in a different part of the brain than normal memories. They involve the posterior cingulate cortex, or P.C.C., the place of introspection or daydreaming.

This finding is interesting because it means it could be possible, in a therapeutic context, to move the memory, so to speak, from the part of the brain that processes internal experience to the one that creates context, essentially turning traumatic memories into more manageable sad ones.

This gives a new slant to many who think they should just move through their days without validating their trauma. It surely should not be so. Healing means strength and that strength is necessary to build a trauma-informed community. It is in receiving trauma-based therapy through my current psychiatrist that I see the forest and the trees. The stigma of mental health treatment can no longer hold me down because I know I am more than what I used to be or what I used to do.

Additionally, I know there is a direct connection with quality sleep and negative thought loops, so I do my best to rest appropriately. As Dr. Alex Dimitrui, of Menlo Park Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine wrote in Psychiatry Today, “deep sleep renews metabolism, restoring insulin sensitivity to provide energy, and it boosts immune functions.” This can help move me through my days.

Should we choose to pick up a tablet at 9 p.m.? Certainly not! There have been many studies done by Harvard and other universities that conclude the “blue light” from screens can have a negative impact on sleep because it suppresses the secretion of melatonin, a hormone that influences sleep rhythm.

All this takes work. It takes trust. Thi takes time. Being vulnerable means hearing things about yourself that are difficult to hear. It is necessary work, in order for roots of change to manifest and take hold. I am certainly worth the work. And so is anyone who struggles with mental health.

I think poet S.C. Lourie says it best:

Be confused,

It’s where you begin to learn new things.

Be broken,

Be frustrated,

It’s where you start to make more authentic decisions.

Be sad,

Because if we are brave enough, we can hear our hearts’ wisdom through it.

Be whatever you are right now.

No More Hiding!

You are worthy,

ALWAYS.

I understand there will be days when my mind, mouth, and movements do not want to process my surroundings. I also understand that by not processing these surroundings, I am giving into a system that has slated me for failure. This cannot be. No! My potential is not designed to fail. I will overcome my mental health struggles. It is in the looking up and not around that I will see the beauty GOD ALMIGHTY has created for such a day as this. I believe there is hope for all who struggle within. Help is out there. It is in the work we do to rise.