Life Experiences & Supporting Others

'Through our life experiences we become more equipped to support each other.'  

Life experiences are the events, circumstances, and interactions that shape an individual's journey through life. They encompass a wide range of situations, including both positive and negative occurrences, challenges, achievements, relationships, and personal growth.

Life experiences can include things like traveling to new places, pursuing education or career goals, forming friendships and romantic relationships, dealing with loss or adversity, overcoming obstacles, and discovering one's passions and purpose. Essentially, life experiences encompass everything that contributes to a person's understanding of themselves, others, and the world around them.

Life experiences allow us to learn, grow and develop a more open-mind. We are then in a better position to support others around us & share our experiences & how we have navigated through them. This can help others feel less alone & more empowered in similar situations. This is particularly powerful when it comes to negative situations and challanges in life.

When we experience hardships and navigate our way through them, we then develop the knowledge and growth which can help others who are going through similar experiences. Too often people can feel as though they have nothing to give, we can feel as though we would'nt be able to help someone out who is struggling, but the truth is we are more than equipped to do so because life is our greatest teacher.

Lived Experience & Mental Ill Health

This runs particularly true when it comes to lived experience of mental ill health. Living a life where we may experience mental health difficulties no matter how mild or severe means we have the experience to understand how it feels and what comes with such difficulties.

We may know how it feels to be depressed, isolated, anxious, hopeless and so on. We can then empathise more with a person because we have been there ourselves and understand the journey. And likewise for other things in life, this goes for all life experiences not just mental health difficulties.

If you are a person that has experienced mental health difficulties or are experiencing them now, then know that you are special to this world. You matter and you are important to the world. Your experience and pain is not for nothing, you are strong enough to work through it, you will heal and you will live a good quality of life again even if it doesn't feel it right now.  

Too often we feel that we are a burden or a nuisance to others around us when we struggle with our mental health. I have felt this way myself. As a teen and in my early tweenties specifically I felt as though I was better off not here, I felt like my life was not important and I felt that my mental ill health was a burden to all the people around me. I know now this is far from the truth, but when we are depressed and anxious we are very suceptabile to feeling this way.

Actively listening and showing compassion and empathy toward others

Though we don't need fancy words or a degree to support others in our lives, we do need to actively listen, show compassion and empathy. There are many things in life where our experiences as a human can provide great support to another human due to relatability and understanding, & due to the fact that we have navigated our daily lives with these different parts of us at play. We are all perfect examples of how it is possible to live and experience struggles or challanges and still grow, heal and be happy.

In saying all this we should always make sure we are in a good mind space ourselves to support others and never fear stepping away from situations to protect our own health.

No matter who we are or what our lives look like, we have something to give in this world. We have a purpose and we have something special which is invaluable. We may not know what it is yet but be patient because we are all so very important.