'Part of me'

‘Parts of me’

“Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one's being, but by integration of the contraries”

Carl Jung

Throughout my previous blog posts I talk about acceptance, my personal experiences with mental health and many topics that stem from not only my ‘story’ but also with the aim to bring hope to others who may be struggling with their mental health. In this blog posts I will discuss the language we use when we talk about how we feel, usually we make statements like ‘I feel anxious or I am anxious’, as an example, but what if we changed our language in order to be kinder to ourselves and see that how we feel isn't permanent and it doesn’t have to identify our whole selves. By changing how we talk to ourselves around our mental health we can bring awareness without labelling ourselves and without judgement of our feelings, separating ourselves from the story we tell and accepting that this too shall pass. Everytime we make a statement like I am anxious or I am really struggling, we can try and replace the start of the sentence from ‘I am’ to ‘a part of me’ this can encourage us to remove ourselves from judgement and change our perspective around how we talk to ourselves, and how we tell our story.

‘A part of me is anxious’

‘A part of me is really struggling today’

Therefore this approach to altering our language works from a holistic approach at being more than just our mental health, as we may feel anxious in that moment and it may feel like that feeling, that emotion, even the experience is our whole self, however using this method can help us in changing the narrative of our the story. This perspective can give us self-autonomy to recognise that although in this moment ‘a part of me is feeling anxious’, it is just one part. Self-autonomy refers to our own self determination, and promotes our ability to make our own choices, not that it is a choice to feel a certain way but recognising that these emotions are just a part of us can empower us to look at the other parts of ourselves. At times when ‘a part of us is really struggling with our mental health’ it can feel consuming and even debilitating, looking at it from the point of view of ‘a part of me’ can bring vulnerability and also self-acceptance into how we are feeling, really giving us space to listen to our body.

In relation to the mental health sector, a lot of the practices are moving into a more holistic approach of care for clients, this approach means that people who work in the sector provide support to people by seeing the individual as a whole person. As mentioned previously we are so much more than a mental health diagnosis, holistic care involves looking at not only our emotional wellbeing but other aspects of our lives, like our physical, social and spiritual wellbeing. In my weekly reflections I look at myself as a whole, using tools such as the wheel of life, to ask myself on a scale of 0 not at all to 10 feeling great how I feel about each life area. The best aspect of this tool is that you get to choose what life areas reflect you, what matters most to you and it can show you what ‘part of yourself’ you may be disregarding each week.

The wheel of life is a visual tool that can be used to look at how balanced your life is, the circle represents your life, the whole of you, helping you find a balance in what makes you feel whole and what matters most to you.

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

Albert Einstein

To find your own template of the wheel of life, google 'wheel of life' and you can find an example template.