Mentality Monday: Joshua & Niki on loneliness & self-esteem

If your mental health ain't right, odds are that a lot of other things ain't right in your life as well. That's a harsh truth.

If you deal with any type of mental health struggles (which these days puts you squarely in the majority), how do we combat that truth?

I've made comment here on mental-ity before about how important being self-aware is. Self-awareness is a superpower, as I say.

To raise your self-awareness within the context of mental health, you have to have discourse about your mental health by making use of your outlets. That outlet can be writing in a journal, moments of self-talk, blogging/vlogging, or chatting with a friend. The latter is what brings you this project from NikiMarie and myself: Mentality Mondays.

Friends and podcasters.

On Mentality Mondays, Niki and I look forward to fielding many conversations about various mental health matters & concepts.

As Niki and I both consider ourselves mental health advocates, this project is as much for us as it is for you -- trust me. In this first episode, we discussed the topic of loneliness -- and what it really means to be & feel alone.

Being alone and feeling lonely sound like the exact same thing, but they're actually very different. Being alone is a physical state. Feeling lonely is an emotional state that can serve as a litmus test for where one's self-esteem & mental health is at.

Individuals with high self-esteem can be perfectly fine being alone, going on "solo dates" and all.

On the other side of the coin, individuals with low self-esteem can really struggle with the feeling of loneliness -- and can even feel cripplingly alone while in a group with other people.

Here's another harsh truth when it comes to mental health: no matter how old you are or how far along into adulthood you are, the things you absorbed in your childhood and a lasting impact on your mental health for the remainder of your life.

Whenever you feel a significant sense of loneliness in your life, that is directly tied to where your self-esteem stands, and that is largely tied to whatever childhood wounds or trauma you may still be harboring as an adult. Niki and I got into that subject as well, and even offered up some personal examples of some of the childhood wounds we still wear to this day.

Listen to Episode #1 of Mentality Monday below! We hope you enjoy the show; if you do, don't hesitate to follow or subscribe to the podcast feed as well as all things TRB!