The Aftermath of Let's Talk About Mental Health

   So it has been a week since I wrote Let's Talk About Mental Health, and six days since I posted it. I remember being so nervous and scared when I wrote it, and those feelings doubled when I decided to actually post it and put it out into the universe. I really wanted to, but opening up in such a way is very, very scary. But once I actually managed to post, I was overwhelmed by the wave of positivity that hit me.
    I come from a commonity (and a country) where you can't really talk about mental health. It's viewed as a taboo of sorts, and if you talk about it, people will shush you and tell you to stop overreacting. That doesn't mean people don't care about you, they just show you that they care in different ways, like ask if you've eaten, tell you to drive safe and so on. But this has always frustrated me, and I have never understood why the condition of our brains (which is only another body part of the human body) was to kept secret, and I have always believed that this contributes to our country's high suicide rate.
   But back to the wave of positivity that made me feel all warm and loved inside. It started the instant I posted it, when I started receiving snapchats from my friends who had read the post, and wanted to tell me they were proud of me, and love me. I then decided to open my snapchat for followers too, if someone wanted to send me something, and they did. During the past six days, my snapchat has been flooded with positive things (follow me on snapchat btw: myspotfordreams (because shameless plugs)), my DM's on Instagram has been filled with messages about how brave I was, how much the person who wrote the message admires or loves me. And let me just say that I love you all right back.
   And here's the things: I don't think that a person who talks openly about mental health, especially their own, should be considered brave. I want talking about mental health to become  a social norm, I want people to be able to be open and honest about the way they feel and think. If you're having a bad day, tell me. If your week is sucky, tell me. Just freaking tell me, you'll feel a lot better and I will feel like you trust me. The thing is, unless you've known the person you're talking to for 30 years or more, the Finnish culture doesn't consider it okay to so much as hint at mental health. And if you want/feel the need to have a really deep conversation, you have to have known them for 50 years, you both have to be women, and it's prefered that the other party is either your mother or sister. Because men, men don't have the right to talk about anything besides technology, sports or everything that has an engine, because other subjects aren't manly enough to talk about.
   I feel so happy about people thinking I'm brave, I'm not going to lie. I love being loved by my friends, it's an amazing feeling. But please, don't leave me here to talk about this alone. Mental health is such an important subject, and I think everyone should be able to talk about it, even if it's just for the sole purpose of feeling better, because talking about it really does help (despite how cliché that sounds).
   There's nothing wrong with feeling sad/depressed/stressed/worried or whatever you might be feeling. There's nothing wrong with having a mental illness. There's no need for you to be happy all the time, that's just unrealistic and a very high standard for you or the people around you to have, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with you having to ask for help or advice from your friends, family or maybe even a professional when you need it. It's perfectly normal and human to have feelings of distress, to feel the need for help from people around you and you feeling that you have the need to express what you're experiencing.
   Also, I want to thank you for being so supportive, whether you're just here to read the post and never leave a comment, or you're the person who gives me feedback on absolutely everything you read, whether you know me in real life or just click in here to read my thoughts from the other side of the globe once in a while, even if it's your first time here: thank you for your support.
   If you're wondering if this theme of mental health will become a common theme here on the blog/other of my social media; it's not. I'm going to write about it whenever I feel like it, but it's not going to be a new mental health post every other day. It'll appear every once in a while tho, but if you're not into the personal sharing is caring type of thing, then you can just ignore these posts.
~
   Time for an overall blog update! I'm back to working on my youtube channel again, so make sure you check out that by clicking here. I also want to thank you for us reaching 70,000 unique visitors on the blog, because that's absolutely amazing and I'm so weirded out by the fact that people are sharing my content, and that you're here to read my weirdness on a regular basis. So thank you for that.
   I've also been getting more support on Instagram lately, so thanks for that! Also, make sure to follow my Instagram @myspotsfordreams if you want updates on my life a bit more regularly.
   Thank you so much for your support, whether you're just here or you stalk me on all my social medias, because feel free to do that! ❤