Mental Health: Consciousness, what it means to me.

Hello everyone, 

First off, welcome to this space! For a brief introduction, my name is Amelia and I'm the newest member of the Do Good Co. team. For my first blog post, and in honor of mental health awareness month, I want to create a space to reflect on consciousness and the meaning I have found from it. My goal is to process openly with all who are reading, and come to a conclusion together! So, that being said, let's begin. I want to start off by talking about my own journey with consciousness. I have generalized anxiety disorder, which has made it challenging for me to create conscious thoughts and habits in my life. I find myself overthinking or over analyzing things and as a result struggling to be present. For years I would think only of the future and how I was going to achieve everything that I had set as a goal. My anxiety manifests in lots of different ways and I have a lot of different triggers that cause different thoughts and feelings, but a common denominator is a lack of consciousness. I really started putting work in to help my mental health about 5 years ago after falling off the deep end hard and my parents realizing they couldn’t let me choose if I wanted to get help or not. It was more or less a life or death situation and they had to make the decision for me. I think that this is when I first started to begin understanding, or trying to understand what it means to be conscious. At first, I resisted every mention or thought that was consciousness in part of a rebellious act to try to prove to myself that I was fine. Which as we all know works great…..or not really. I ended up reaching a point of defeat and had to give in to the anxiety. Telling myself, I’m done with anxiety having control of my life. I had to make the conscious decision to take my life back by accepting what I dreaded the most: I am an anxious person. Fast forward 5 years to now- I’ve put a lot of work in to try my best to live consciously. I learned to value my anxiety and see how it keeps me safe. Before I go on, I want to say that it’s not easy and I still fall into old patterns everyday, but that is why I’m on a journey. 

Something that I have found interesting as I reflect back, is that my actions and morals became more conscious before my mental health and awareness of myself. In other words, what I mean is who I bought into. I started to educate myself on sustainability, and ethical production. I stopped buying fast fashion and started to buy more second hand. I learned about plants and how to grow my own food. I began to advocate for those with silenced voices around me. I think that this is key to where I am now. I value my actions aligning with my thoughts and opinions, although I sound biased, this is why I love Do Good Co.. Their morals align with mine, and consciously I choose to support that. I wonder if maybe this is the start to anything new we learn- we begin something new by applying it in our actions while we adjust and learn it’s safe to apply it mentally.  It’s like learning a language, you recognize words, and then begin to write, and after a while you begin to speak it. To be conscious takes time, practice, and patience, but when you reach a place of consciousness it's an incredible feeling.  

Over time, however, I have found that mental consciousness can be apparent in many different ways. As I have been in counseling or different seasons of challenges I have experienced different ways and developed my own “code” of consciousness. I think that for me, consciousness looks like an awareness of self mixed with selfless acts towards myself. What I mean is that it can be really hard to fight feelings that have been named by society as selfishness. I struggled for a long time feeling as though I made a decision for myself like taking tests instead of spending time with loved ones, I was selfish. But my mental health would suffer because I was not being true to who I am. I am someone who feels rejuvenated from alone time and space to allow myself to process and do my routine. When I lack that I begin to feel things like my mental health shake. Coming to this conclusion took a lot of untiringly listening to my body and feelings, which helped me build a conscious healthy practice for myself. In counseling I was given tools to help listen to how my body reacts to things and that in turn helped me to understand when I was feeling anxiety and what caused it. Learning what grace looked like for me and what boundaries meant was also a conscious practice I developed or worked to develop. I realize that as soon I saw through decisions I made in who to support that where conscious was when I could feel what it was. 

As I have processed more over the years on consciousness I have come to the conclusion that there are multiple definitions and ways to act consciously- it's not singular. Like I stated before, consciousness is to actively make a decision, understand the impact the decision has and be intentional.To be conscious is to have an awareness and intention behind something. Whether it’s deciding to recycle one day or shopping second hand, or perhaps it’s more mental like deciding to only set one small goal for yourself, or to talk to yourself in affirmations. Maybe it’s to be internal and listen to the sensations in your body. Consciousness can look like many different things and doesnt fit into a perfect mold. What consciousness looks like to me is specific and may look similar to someone else but is still wildly different.

In conclusion, what I am trying to say is, be patient and kind with yourself. There is so much pressure to consume and move as fast as possible and it's exhausting. It's ok to set boundaries and it's important to also recognize when you are suffering. Be intentional with where you give you time and your money. Do the people around you support you and value who you are? Are the places you are shopping supporting your morals as well? To be conscious is a marathon and not a race. It's ok to fall down and try again. I feel pressure all the time from society to break conscious habits, and sometimes my habits break because of it. One of the reasons I chose the photo to go with this blog post is because it reminds me of an unintentional change that was happening in my life. When I took that picture, my grandpa had just passed away and I was drowning in grief. I would go for drives during the sunset and blast music and cry. Everything around me was different and my life was changing. Looking back and being aware of the change helps remind me now of what it means to be conscious. When you feel overwhelmed, remember it's ok to breathe and rest. Let yourself feel the things that affect you, and live in the tension of change. I look forward to learning and practicing consciousness together. 

May the most peace be with you, 

Amelia.