Mitch Wallis: How I look after my mental wellbeing
Speaker and social entrepreneur Mitch Wallis shares how acknowledging all his emotions – even the uncomfortable ones – helps him feel more in control.
By Mitch Wallis, speaker, social entrepreneur, and mental health advocate. He’s the founder of Heart On My Sleeve, a global movement that empowers people to share stories of struggle and resilience.
Why is it that we avoid saying out loud or writing down the things that bother us most?
There’s a myth that by naming emotions, we give them ‘power’ or ‘energy’ over us. So instead, we sweep them under the carpet, and think “as long as we don’t name this feeling, it’s not really there”.
On a small scale, we might say things like “my day was fine”, when really it wasn’t.
On a large scale, we might say “I’m happy with my life”, even if we’re not.
When we do this, we aren’t being open with ourselves and the people around us.
And if this goes on for too long it builds up – our emotions are playing out in the background across our entire life, sometimes consciously, but most of the time, unconsciously.
I think we’re afraid of naming emotions because then we might have to deal with them or face the consequences.
That’s totally understandable. Why would we want to voluntarily bring on uncomfortable feelings?
In my experience, naming my emotions has had the opposite effect of being uncomfortable. Getting real about how I feel has actually helped me to feel more in control.
Here are some lessons I’ve learned from naming my emotions.
Clarity
Ignoring something doesn’t make it go away. Naming something allows it to come forward with clarity.
When you name how you feel, it carves it out from all that underlying chaos and makes it into a tangible ‘thing’ you can begin to address.
Understanding
By defining what’s going on and what’s hurting you, you have a better chance of processing it and letting go of it.
It’s hard for something to have power over us when we understand it well.
Ask yourself, “now that I know what I feel, why do I feel this?”.
Try not to judge yourself for what might come up – or to assign your feelings a label of right or wrong. Simply pay attention to the thoughts, memories, and belief systems you notice.
Release
When your defences are down (in a good way - when you are open to your emotions), you can let in your ‘truth’. You can rearrange some parts of the past that are no longer serving you, or that aren’t yours to hold.
You might even be able to forgive yourself or someone else for events of the past, or make peace with an area of your life you’ve denied for so long.
Most of all, you might be able to love yourself for who you are right now, in this moment, without needing to be something more.
You don’t need to go it alone
When working through difficult emotions, it’s very good to do this in partnership with a professional, such as a counsellor or psychologist. By talking it out, you might be able to get better at working with your emotions, and move past the ones that have been building up, and potentially holding you down.
We all go through tough times, and it can be incredibly hard to face what’s bothering us most. That doesn’t make you less courageous, it makes you human. But I believe you can. I believe we all have the capacity to shine light on the parts that hurt, in order to become more whole than we thought possible. Go slow, go strong, one bite at a time… we got this.