sophalicious

The thing about talking about mental health, that I’ve noticed at least, is that vulnerability is not always a welcomed trait. Sometimes, you find yourself opening up and regretting the fact that you ever did. And talking candidly about something so central to who we are as people is often looked at as a bad thing.
And so that’s why I’ve titled this thought process ‘Bleeding Out In Front Of Sharks’.

If you have spent any amount of time on the same social media platforms that I have, you may have noticed this analogy being used when the topic of mental health comes up. I can personally say that I have seen it attributed to opening up to romantic partners about past traumas experienced at the hands of those that came before them.
The reason I make this point is because when I sit down and think about it, it often is the best way to describe how it feels to be vulnerable at all. And it wouldn’t be an unfair consensus to draw that everyone has found themselves in the position where the things they have opened up about have come back to bite them.

As someone who advocates very strongly for mental health and a willingness to be vulnerable, I want to be able to readjust this line of thinking. Although we may be more willing to open up to a barrage of internet strangers, we are less open to being able to do so with the people in our closest circles. Suddenly everyone we know and care for is out to get us, and why do we think that?
What we don’t realise is that we, whether we like it or not, are more than willing to allow social media to tell us how to think.
For example, with a rise in influencers such as Andrew Tate, the viewpoint that men are not allowed to be vulnerable has only been further drilled into the heads of men and young boys that have any level of access to the platforms in which he frequents. And why?

Sometimes I believe that we have allowed ourselves to let the phone screens do all the thinking for us. It is a lot easier to be told how to think and feel than to sit and make peace with it ourselves. And so when the phone screen tells you that talking about the way you feel with the people you care about is only going to get you hurt (or eaten, to bounce back to the title), it is a lot easier to believe it then to take the risk and be candid.
But people will hurt us no matter what we do. It is an unfortunate risk in any friendship, relationship or complicated bond that you may hold. Talking honestly about something as central as our mental health is not going to increase the chances so drastically that it shouldn’t be done at all.

And maybe, instead of being inherently distrustful of everyone we care for simply because the internet tells us we should be, we should allow ourselves to bleed out in front of the shark sometimes. Besides, no person is ever alone in the water with a shark without a cage around them to protect them. We don’t have to deep dive in with no protective gear from the jump. That being said, I am no shark expert and I am also not a mental health expert. But I know from my own experience that I have benefitted greatly from the vulnerability and openness that I have allowed myself to carry, and I dare say I am a better person for it.
So in other words, maybe we should allow ourselves the freedom to be open and vulnerable and candid about the struggles we have individually and the traumas we have faced.

That’s my food for thought.