The SOVA Project is happy to feature this blog post written by one in our team of fantastic SOVA Ambassadors—these are young people who help create meaningful blog posts from adolescents’ perspectives.
Living with depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues can sometimes be taxing. I know I have come across this a lot—I feel down, anti-social, or just plain exhausted! While it’s true that we are starting to talk more about mental health conditions, lots of people still find it difficult to talk about what they are experiencing. It’s especially hard when you feel like you were doing so great the past few days and today you just feel like … ugh.
I often don’t know what to say on my ugh days when someone asks me, “How are you doing today?” or, “Do you want to hang out later?” Most of the time I end up just saying something like, “I feel a little tired today—must not have slept well,” or, “I think I’m just staying in tonight, I have a lot of work to do!” Usually, what I really want to say is:
My depression/anxiety symptoms are acting up, and I’m just having a bad mental-health day.
I just feel like people can relate to tiredness and stress a bit more than a real confession of mental-health difficulties. And I don’t want to feel like I’m being a downer or burdening people with my current symptoms.
However, some friends of mine have recently started being completely open about their bad mental health days!