Visible vs Invisible us!

We all live 2 lives at once: The visible and the invisible.

The visible life is the one everyone can see. When we have time to properly cut our hair , you get accolades from everyone around you. When you forget to brush your teeth, people around you will let you know one way or the other. Every decision we make about our looks come with constant feedback. All the strange social media pictures we post, are for others to see and react to our visible life. For most of this, we have no say about the feedback we get. If you get a black eye, others will see and question. Whether we like it or not, whether we allow it or not, our environment sees us and lets us know how it feels about our personal decisions! Our visible life is so complete that even trying to hide is visible. If you are not at work, at school, at a friend's , it is noticed and your attention is sought.

Our invisible life is between the ears. No one sees your thoughts! No one knows what you are really thinking or feeling at any particular time. The injury process and the healing process between the ears is between you and yourself. Where no one can see, no one can help, unless they are let in. This is the reason why mental illness can be so hard to handle. The injuries are hard to identify because even the patient does not realize they are injured until it is sometimes too late.

When you fall and bruise your skin, everyone sees it and you are bound to find some ointments for it. If you do not care, your mother/loved one cares and will hound you until that is done. When an incident occurs that mentally injures you, no one notices and since you do not see a bruise, well, nothing happened!. That bruise can go untreated for as long as it does not create a stir. While walking down an alley, if you run into a mountain lion that makes you associate alleys to mountain lions, you will always be fearful of alleys, even after you forget the reason why. Unless something as drastic as you burst into tears while walking with friends down that alley, you will never think it necessary to handle that fear.

We scar mentally, just like we scar physically. The mental scars rarely get any attention because no one can see or touch them. They remain in place for long periods until we are forced to deal with them. Mental health is arguably worse because our brain determines all decisions we make. If the mind is not healthy, your whole life is directly affected. There is little we can do to keep tabs of all our mental bruises. However, if we keep conversations about the mental state open, we can greatly improve our chances of dealing with issues early on before they become scars we cannot heal.

Invisible vs visible.

Mental Health vs physical health.

Ladies and gentlemen, our lives are so much more complicated today than it was even 3 decades ago. Today, we have so much more information at our finger tips than ever before in human history. Challenges of a decade ago were localized to where you lived. Modern media has made it possible for us to have unfiltered access to so much information, far beyond our geographic location. We live in the same cyber world with the rest of mankind but in different geographic locations. It takes strong discernment to isolate relevant information. Information is good but too much of it can be detrimental and confusing. Decisions that were normally straightforward become mazes. There are fewer norms, making life more complicated for young people. The examples are endless!

What can we do? Just talk. Keep expressing yourself honestly to the people who love you. By speaking and sharing challenges, you make your invisible side visible. Thus you start getting the kind of feedback reserved for visible things. Much like visible wounds, when there is serious injury, you need a serious doctor. However, there are many small injuries that would never become serious if there is someone to tell you of them. Always remember that you are the only one seeing your metal wounds so the feedback you get will be proportionate to the story you tell. If you tell all of your story, you are more likely to get all of the feedback necessary. If you tell just a fraction of it, that is the likely feedback you are going to get as well.

We are here! We care! Tell us what you know so together, we can avoid making our small invisible wounds any bigger.

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