Listen
By: Luna Akane
Tags: Feelings, Listening, Journey, Self Love, Mental Health

Listen

Photo by Nicholas Barbaros on Unsplash

There’s been many times in my life where I feel like I have not been listened to and boy, did it bother me a lot.

I felt like I was wasting my time crying and being upset about my feelings because I felt like things I told my loved ones were going in one ear and out the other. I felt like I was burdening someone with the things that were on my mind, even though I was encouraged to “open up” to them.

Although I had their undivided attention, I would say how I’m feeling and then they would tell me that I don’t feel that way.

It would bother me A LOT. I would spend hours and hours laying in bed after those conversation, unable to really move with tears streaming down the sides of my face trying to understand the way I was feeling.

But I already knew how I was feeling. But I kept asking myself the same questions over and over again.

Was it wrong to feel this way?

Was I over-exaggerating my feelings?

Was I actually not feeling this way?

I contemplated how I felt so often, and I spent many days focused on invalidating my feelings. My grades were beginning to drop, my mental health deteriorated even more. I eventually decided not to let my “friends” and loved ones in anymore because they had already determined that I was not feeling the way I was feeling.

I felt like if I talked to them, I would feel worst. I assumed they would be annoyed because I would just repeat myself over and over again. I was afraid of them telling me that I don’t feel that way. I didn’t want to hear it again from them.

I decided to take alternative routes in order to release the feelings I was experiencing. I tried writing, I tried journaling, I tried reading but my mind was so distracted with telling myself that my feelings were a fraud. That I was a fraud and that whatever I was experiencing wasn’t serious.

But my actions and thoughts would try to tell me otherwise.

The mind chatter could not stop, and I ultimately turned to self harm to shut the voice up in my head. As unhealthy and toxic it was for my mental health, I believed it worked for me. Every time I felt my feelings coming back up, I’d push it back down with the ways I knew.

Looking back now, I wish I was there for my younger self to lean on, to wipe her tears and tell her to get some new friends. So that I can tell her that she’s not a fraud and her feelings aren’t fake. I wish I could tell her that it’s okay to feel the way that she feels, because someone else can’t determine how she’s feeling at any point in time.

So, if you tell someone that your favourite colour is blue, and they deny that YOUR favourite colour is blue, would you agree with them? Probably not. It’s not a statement that’s up for debate.

Your friends aren’t listening to you share your thoughts and are providing their own ideas about you.

If someone does open up to you, it’s important to share your thoughts as well on how YOU can help them, but don’t invalidate the way they are feeling.

If you are someone that is opening up and someone invalidates your feelings, walk away because you don’t need someone to tell you you’re not experiencing something when you know in you are.

I made the mistake of opening to my loved ones, when they aren’t mental health professionals who can make more accurate assumptions to why I feel a certain way. If you are experiencing overwhelming thoughts and feelings, please make an appointment to see someone instead of turning to alternative options like I did.