Student Mental Health - How to Use My Voice?
For #UniMentalHealthDay, current student Jack talks about voice.
I would like to use my voice to tell you to use yours. Our voices are incredibly powerful and can be a real force for good in this world and to those around us. Our words can carry love, goodness, peace, wisdom and kindness. Though, I'm actually going to tell you to use your voice for none of those things and instead use it for yourself.
Using your voice doesn't need to be as scary as giving an invigorating speech in front of thousands or approaching a stranger and telling them they're amazing. Perhaps the most beneficial way we can use our voice is simply chatting with a friend, telling them about our worries and stresses, unpacking them and unravelling them.
The voice is a great cleanser, it has the power to lighten a load, to solve a problem, to ease a burden. By expelling our problems through voice, their weight on us mentally is lessened, their complicity is made simpler and our mood is lifted. Our voices are a great way to alleviate, stress, worry and fear. Though our voice only holds this power when it is used.
A silent voice has not got the power to heal or alleviate its holder's problems. By not using our voice, by staying silent and not talking through our issues, we retain them within us. Each one of these problems carries with it stress, worry or fear. Anxiety or negativity, pain or sadness. When we stay silent, when we keep our problems to ourselves, we keep all the attached baggage. We keep stress, we keep fear, we keep worry, we keep pressure, we keep pain, we keep anxiety, we keep sadness.
Why? Why would any of us want to keep those things within us? Why do we stack problem after problem in our minds until we break down under the pressure?
Perhaps, because we are not often enough encouraged to communicate our problems. But when we do talk about our issues, out loud to another, we go a long way towards alleviating them in our minds. Our issues don't stack up in our brains like a big pile of mental waste, festering and poisoning our mental health. Using our voice to communicate our worries, our fears and stresses is a mentally healthy practice that can clean, clear and cleanse our minds. So today, on Uni Mental Health Day, give it go. Tell your friends what's troubling you, let them know how you feel, express your issues. Use your voice.
If you're interested in reading more about mental health issues, the human mind or just general life talk, check out this personal blog. Thank you.
