A New Leaf

New Leaf growth from a tree

A new year, a new leaf to turn over.

This year, I have a roadmap of things I want to talk about. One of them is the fact that, for once in my life, I feel happy, I feel contented in my life. Others include mental health in a broad sense, and things like healthy boundaries and dealing with toxic people.

I want to remind you that I’m NOT a therapist. Anything I write here is my experience and not to be treated a substitute for mental health help. I am working on my education to become a fully licenced therapist, but that is well off into my future right now. If you are in distress, please investigate the resources linked here.

As the year flipped over, things started to fall into place for me, that proverbial new leaf got turned. Why this is a huge thing for me is that I’ve been suffering from depression (MDD) since I was twelve. I can remember where I was when that hit me like a ton of bricks, and my life was never the same.

I’ve been in therapy since I was twenty-nine. We’ve worked on so much, between CBT and medication, and while there was some relief, it came and went. But this felt different from the start, and at my last appointment, we discussed how a slow progression to being happier and content was better than a quick burst that ends with my mental state cratering.

My therapist is aware of what is going on in my life, and how I’m dealing with things this year that would, in the past, have knocked me on my butt. That the constant onslaught from an incredibly toxic person whose projection of a paranoid fiction would normally have made me terribly upset. Now I look at this as annoying as a mosquito and have the proper folks dealing with it. Their accusations I know are a complete fiction, and I refuse to stress over the delusions of a person who is, in the grand scheme of my life – unimportant. I do hope that they get the help and therapy that they need.

To help this, I have been looking for the good in every day. I have been enforcing my boundaries – which I’ll talk about in next week’s entry – with friends and family. The majority of which have responded positively – because we’ve had to work on learning what healthy boundaries are, and once you know what and how, it becomes easier.

Also, getting older, as a good friend of mine told me, you stop giving a fuck about most things, which leads to being happier overall.

So, while I abhor new year’s resolutions, this year, turning over that new leaf, has made all the difference for me.