Wait! I have Emotional Needs???????

After a life of checking the boxes towards what I thought led to a happy life, i.e. making sacrifices, working hard, practicing law, and so on, I had a mental breakdown. A decline in my mental and physical health left me forced to leave my career as a new attorney to start a mental health journey that I did not want or feel prepared for. After much self-work, I came to understand what did me in – avoiding what I felt for so long didn’t mean I had mental health, it meant I lacked it. I had unaddressed emotional needs that had been weighing me down for a really long time and were going to continue to do so until I started understanding and addressing them directly. I was able to map out the unhealthy psychological infrastructure that led me to crumble and that inevitably changed my life. In this episode, I share about that infrastructure and the steps I’ve taken to identify my emotional needs, inform myself on healthy emotional relief, and rebuild a healthier mental framework where the old one succumbed. I share the fruits of the emotional labor that helped me come back from breakdown and participate meaningfully in my own life, because we are not born with mental health, we must learn it, and maintain it.