From Surviving to Thriving

My battle with mental health began before I can truly remember. There were key moments in my life that I was extremely withdrawn from everyone and spent a lot of time alone. Looking back, I can definitely see the pattern.

Throughout elementary & high school, the overriding sense of helplessness that comes with depression became very real for me. I’m a firm believer that your childhood shapes the way you think & act as a person. Looking back, my childhood was filled with different traumas from Domestic Abuse by my step father to having a Drug Addict biological father to being bullied by different groups of people. I tried to live my life with a constant smile but the world tried to tear me down & at one point, they almost succeeded.

Now this may be a trigger warning for some but I truly believe it’s important to be discussed and shed light on the topic. The culmination of these challenges led me to my breaking point. With the pressure building and building, I couldn’t help but crack and crumble until one day I completely gave up and gave in. When I was 13 I attempted to take my own life by taking an entire bottle of paracetamol. It was a desperate cry for help & I was hospitalized for two weeks. At that moment, I truly felt it in my soul that no one loved me & I’d be better off dead.

What I can say after reflection on this experience is that I came out alive, breathing and on the other side. That is truly a moment that is irreplaceable and I’m eternally grateful. From therapy sessions to antidepressants, to inner work - my journey has been the furthest from easy. It’s an uphill battle every single day until this very moment.

Being a business owner who battles daily with mental health takes its toll and I’ve wanted to throw in the towel more times than I can count. What I can say is, the true journey is from within. I’ve always been a person who is dedicated to work however, the true struggle with being a business owner is learning when to switch off and implement business boundaries. I thought if I just put everything I have into my business and just work non stop, my mental health issues would disappear. At least that’s what it felt like because I was masking everything I was feeling through being busy. After many attempts of trying to work insane hours in my business rather than deal with my mental health head on, burn out became real. Again. And again. And again. It was a cycle that kept repeating itself until I realized that nothing was changing but I expected a different result.

We are so hard on ourselves, want to be the best in whatever industry we’re in, want our lives to look a certain way, want to hit that next milestone but what if for a second, we took a step back and we were just happy, simply - being. This is when the shift happened for me. When I started to go inward and stopped worrying about everything that was exterior and instead focused on what was interior - I was able to internally grow which lead to greater healing. Today, I can happily say I am 3 months anti depressant free, manage my anxiety symptoms in much healthier ways through my breath and understand my triggers. You need a healthy mind in order to grow a healthy business.

Although I’m in the beauty industry, I started using my social media also as an outlet for mental health about two years ago when I grew the confidence to speak about it online. I started sprinkling it here and there throughout my page, talking about it on my stories & now it’s just natural to do.

Since doing so, the amount of genuine connections made and conversations had has been truly beautiful. You truly never know what someone is going through and most people now a days are living through their phone screen. The genuine connection fuels me because at the end of the day, we’re all still human and being a business owner can get pretty darn lonely sometimes.

If I can leave you with anything from this article, I want you to take this. Take the time & heal every single part of you. Don’t be ashamed to do the inner work. It’s really freaking difficult but going into the darkest parts of you will get you to the sunshine. It’s okay to speak about your emotions. It’s okay to not be okay. If there is one thing that I have learned throughout my battle with mental health is, you are so much more loved than you think. There are going to be bad days but it’s important to remember that it’s just a bad day, not a bad life.

And even if it feels like the whole world hates you or when it feels so insanely heavy, I want you to remember, I still love you.

The only one stopping you, is you.

Elisha Ide

BeautyXLish