Tari, the founder of the mental health platform Wondermind, speaks about her experience of mental wellbeing during lockdown and how to embrace this beautiful journey that is life ✨
It is hard to see light in the dark but trust in the process of healing and allow yourself to grow with each experience and emotion you are going through.
As I’m writing this blog entry, I try to find words that describe my feelings and emotions and certainly, I don’t know where to start, maybe I start with the fact that we are now almost a year in a global health crisis. It is quite ironic as I truly thought this year would be the year of me traveling the world, finding my dream job, and really the year of self-fulfilment.
It was the start of march, I had just finalized everything for my final major project when I started to become ill. I thought it was a normal cold but after a week I started to feel pain in my chest and had difficulty breathing, my first thought was “Oh god please not another panic attack” keep in mind that this was before we first went into lockdown, nobody was wearing masks at this point and most people did not take the virus seriously. Anyway, the feeling did not settle down, I constantly felt dizzy and like I couldn’t breathe. I don’t want to go into detail but to sum it up, I had corona not knowing I had it because they refused to test me in a hospital in London. I came back to Germany and got tested positive as I should have been in the first place.
The reason why I’m telling you this is the fact that anxiety and panic attacks are part of my history but going through this experience really put me in the worst place I have ever been mentally and physically. I knew that I would have to really focus on myself and my own health journey again in order to get out of this hole of uncertainty and panic. While continuing my own mental health platform I started to follow a variety of other health pages on IG which all started to post tips and tricks on how to stay sane during the lockdown. At first, I was motivated and excited to really focus on myself again while forming a new routine, but quickly I realised that I felt even more stressed by my obsession to keep up with the long list I forced myself to complete every day. Don’t get me wrong some of the things were very beneficial but and this is the whole point of this post
NOT EVERYTHING IS FOR EVERYONE! If you find yourself in a position where you hate your routine, forcing yourself to do all the things that are according to those pages (my platform included) or even your friends beneficial, but it just doesn’t work for you personally STOP! Don’t compare your own process to anyone else. You are unique and so is your journey
This is not another video in which I give you a long list with things you should do to stay mentally well during this pandemic. I can’t tell you what works for you, but I can share my experience and how I started to really fall in love with my own process and why I think that looking at your childhood is the key to exploring your inner self. I would love to encourage you to embrace this beautiful journey while reconnecting with your mind, body and soul.
Words courtesy of @tari.lafauci
Tari is the founder of Wondermind - a mental wellbeing platform that allows creatives to share their stories of mental health without judgement.
