Mental Wellness and Growth: Overcoming Challenges with Modern and Traditional Methods

What happens when traditional coping mechanisms fall short? This July, join me on Have a Cup of Johanny for a new theme on mental wellness. In the first chapter, I open up about my personal journey through the gauntlet of work challenges and health issues that have tested my mental resilience. Raised in a Dominican household where prayer was the go-to solution, I learned to expand my toolkit with self-help books and the unwavering support of my Army family. As a single mother, the combination of modern and traditional methods helped me build a solid mental foundation, leading to valuable insights about the limitations of conventional coping strategies and the importance of seeking additional resources.

In the second chapter, "Self-Discovery Through Books," we explore the transformative power of literature and meaningful community connections. During a period of uncertainty, especially while preparing for motherhood, books like "What to Expect When You're Expecting" became my sanctuary. They not only alleviated my anxieties but also offered practical guidance. "The Four Agreements" revolutionized my understanding of personal interactions, allowing me to manage anger and emotional triggers more effectively. This episode highlights the crucial role of self-awareness and personal growth in fostering mental well-being, underscoring how community and insightful literature can guide us through life's challenges. Tune in for a heartfelt discussion that will equip you with the wisdom and tools needed for a journey towards mental wellness.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Oh we could, we could fly. Welcome to this new season of the have a Cup of Johani podcast. So I want to title this new season that I'm embarking on with I'm Growing, so this is going to be the season of growth and that's what I'm going to share with you throughout the season. So I thank you for coming over here and sitting with me and I hope you enjoy, hello everyone. So for the month of July, for the have a Cup of Johnny podcast, we will focus on the theme of mental wellness.

Speaker 1: 0:41

So this summer my life has been challenged tremendously with things that had happened at work and with things that have occurred to my health as well, which has really tested not just my resiliency, as we discussed that before, but also the foundation that I have built for my mental well-being. And because all of this is happening to me, I have to apologize firsthand in that this may be a little bit short, as I try to protect my spirit from having to rehash certain things Just because, if you don't know this, and I haven't said it on the episode, I usually have to have like several months, years sometimes between an incident that occur and my ability to be able to openly talk about it incident that occur and my ability to be able to openly talk about it. But I just feel that mental well-being, particularly now because I'm going through all of this, so it's fresh, but also as we're carrying into the holidays and I know that the holidays can be a depressing time for folks that I want to talk about it. I want to share this with you all so that way it can be fresh or you all can replay this or re-listen to it or find some more resources when it comes to mental well-being that works for you, can ensure that your soul, your spirit, it's good, or at the very least, good enough to walk in this world because it is so important, so very important. So, saying that, that is the theme for the month of July and for this first episode of July, we're going to talk about the foundation, how I acquired that foundation. Are you all ready? Let's go. All right, listeners, or if you follow me on my Instagram broadcast channel, you will know that I call y'all vasitos there, little cups Four have a cup of Joannes. So y'all are my little cups that come here to get your fill and yeah, so I think it may stick. I don't know. Hopefully it doesn't offend anyone but if it does send me a message.

Speaker 1: 3:30

But the foundation, the foundation of my mental well-being, happened through self-help books, and there's an episode here where I talk about the self-help books that change my life. And I have to start by saying that mental well-being was not something that I grew up understanding. I come from a Latina household, specifically a Dominican household, that I was telling this to somebody. We are in my family. We pray the hurt away and we like heavily. We solely rely on religion to heal our emotional wounds, our wounds of the soul, of the heart, of the spirit and so forth. But as I started growing up and understanding what mental health was and at the same time, becoming more self-aware and saw that I was lacking certain things that could make me be a more resilient person and be able to walk through life, I noticed that Praying the hurt away was lacking. It was not the one-all-to-be-all solution for mental health. Now, talking to someone about this, I understand that praying helps, in that it's good to say things out loud, sometimes In the confessional right I'm Catholic, so in the confessional or whatnot it just because it lessens the impact or, as I like to say, it makes the devil that you're dealing with less frightful, because now you are looking at them straight in the face and telling them I see you, you're there, but I'm not going to allow you to have power over me. And sometimes that's what. Saying it out loud in the form of prayer or confession, or talking to somebody that you trust or a therapist that may be where that helps and why some people may feel like praying it's helpful, but me, as a writer, I found that I needed a little bit more than that. You know, saying it out loud does help, but I needed a little bit more. I needed to reframe my mind. Really, that's where these self-help books came into place.

Speaker 1: 6:14

Self-help books came into place because at that time it was I was in my twenties and that's when, kind of like that, the wheels just fell off the truck per se, right, and I was running just on the rims like a getaway car that have gone completely wrong. I found myself a single mom, completely wrong. I found myself a single mom. I found myself depressed, and I don't know if that was because of the hormones, the hormonal change and all of that. I found myself very alone as well. I had just gotten to a new duty station. So I didn't know people. But thankfully, thankfully, those leaders kind of like just welcomed me. They embraced me so quickly that I didn't have time to realize that I didn't know anybody. And I do want to say this about the Army, which is something that the Army has given me it's just that family right and that's what happened here. I was brand new to being a mom.

Speaker 1: 7:13

My son's father at that time, while we were together, he was overseas still, and so there was a separation there. Eventually, right after I would have my son, he would just ghost me and leave me. So, as you can imagine right now, looking back at that, around that timeframe, as I was gearing up to have my son, because I got to this duty stage, I want to say two months before giving birth to my son, he was already separating himself. But I was too busy nesting, setting up a house and doing all of that to realize Now, looking back at it, hindsight is 20-20. Now I can see the signs that were there and so forth, but back then I mean, that was not, you know, wasn't even the forefront of my mind, not even close to it, and that's why I think it caught me by surprise when the ghosting happened. But so I had that right.

Speaker 1: 8:10

It was the being far away from family, from friends, from my son's father, that got alleviated a little bit with my army family that just came together. It was like Transformers, more than me, right. They just pulled up, pulled up. It was like we don't know you, you don't know us, but we're family and let's give you a baby shower. Let's do this Very inquisitive, as they should be right, so that way they can get to know me and they can see where I was lacking and all of that. So they helped me get secondhand furniture. I wrote a story called the Secondhand Table. That is very touching, a tribute to this brand new family that came to my rescue at this time, because really that's what they did and it was one of them that was at the birthing of my son and that cut my son's umbilical cord. It wasn't blood family, it was army family that was there.

Speaker 1: 9:14

And I'm getting a little teary, I just think about that because that is so important when it comes to mental health is having that group, you know, having those ties, because I keep saying like we're human beings and as much as we may want to pretend that we are robots and we don't need people. We do, and this right here now. Looking back at it, I realize how much I was nurtured by these people. I just derail my own conversation, but, yes, so they, they took me in like an orphan and but then on the side as well, I I've always been a reader, so my go-to has always been like books, right like when I see that there's a gap in knowledge for me, I I go towards books right away.

Speaker 1: 10:15

And one of the books that I read and I went to a library it's called Fort Liberty now, but back then it was called Fort Bragg and I went to the library there and I took out books because I had no money for anything, for any books. So libraries have always been this source of knowledge, kind of like this, my golden token, my golden coin to life, and I love libraries and I love librarians by the way, I think they're superheroes. So I went to the library and I got what to Expect when You're Expecting, because a very old, very, very old book, I think is probably like on its 10th edition right now or something like that. This was way back 2002. And got that because some of the anxiety that I was having was that I didn't know what to expect about being a mom.

Speaker 1: 11:18

I didn't know what to expect about the stages of life, that I would see my child because at that time I didn't know whether it would be a boy or girl what my child would go through, how I can support that child through those stages and so forth, and that gave me anxiety and I didn't know that at the time. I know now that for me preparation is very important because it lessens my anxiety and things. So I'm like a big fanatic of preparation, of rehearsals, of practice and all of that, just because it eases my anxiety before I do certain things, just because it eases my anxiety before I do certain things. And it's the same thing in my personal life. So through this book I was able to understand a little better and not feel so stressed about what would come, because it gave me a clue, it gave me an idea of what I would see and it gave me something to hold on to so that way I can prepare myself for the really fast approaching arrival of my son. What would be my son? Because I didn't know. And another book that I grabbed that became my foundation for my mental well-being back in my 20s was the four agreements.

Speaker 1: 12:38

I was very angry a lot of the time. I was very angry I mean I'm not even going to sugarcoat that I was very angry. I felt like it was me against the world with most of the situations that I would encounter and it was so taxing and being hormonal, pregnant and then after giving birth that just got amplified so much more. And I didn't know. You know, back then I didn't understand the hormonal factor. I didn't understand postpartum depression. I didn't understand any of those things. I didn't know. No one talked about it, at least not to me, and since I didn't know, I wasn't of the mind to go look it up in the library.

Speaker 1: 13:28

So I just knew that I was feeling heavy emotions, feeling heavy emotions and I knew that I was reacting very angry-like and very harsh to interactions that I would have. And I kind of put two and two together in my head and understood that if I continue on that path I will find myself alone and kind of understanding that will make me really like an island without no help. I kind of knew begrudgingly so, but I knew that I needed to make a change so that way I can be around people. You know I'm just like neglect, trauma, disappointment, trauma as a child from my family right being bullied for like almost every day of my life. You know. All those things piled up and turned me into a very angry person that didn't know how to connect and that was triggered by almost every single thing.

Speaker 1: 14:36

So the four agreements became kind of like this Bible per se that guided me and helped me to see that we are all living in our own worlds, like the book says, in our own dream, and in what somebody does, even if they're doing it towards me or at me, it really is a reflection of the dream that they're living currently. And that is in the introduction of the four agreements. That's before I hit the actual four agreements and read in depth about those and it just it clicked as soon as I read that and it's just something you know when you're giving a piece of knowledge or something and how it just clicks and it opens up your mind to so many things and you start tying things together and then gaining even more knowledge. That's what happened here and these microseconds that followed me reading that paragraph. It was just so many connections that I made off of that I was able to look back at interactions, understand why I was doing the things that I was doing, how I didn't really know what the other person was going to, but in my head I was already making them into these antagonistic villain and building up a whole story about them when I didn't even know that person, like that, you see. So it was like somebody just splashed cold water on my face and was like fucking wake up, joannie. It was like somebody just splashed cold water on my face and was like fucking wake up, joannie. It was like that and, like I said before, it wasn't night and day change. It happened slowly and it took years.

Speaker 1: 16:27

But this was a book that I reread a lot of the times, and it's a very small book too, that that is very feasible. But I reread this book quite a lot of times at the beginning, and actually I read it again last year and I'll probably read it again during the holiday break this year, because it's just it's things that, for me, are important to keep reminding myself when it comes to these four things that one should agree upon so that way you can live a peaceful life. And that's what I needed. I needed to have a peaceful mind in order to go through life, and now go through life with this small human being that will be fully dependent on me, and I needed that. So those books were really the basis of what I used in order to start understanding myself, because it wasn't really about the other people, right, it wasn't really about them or how they were jerks or narcissists or any of that. It was never about them. It was always about me and how I can take care of me, how I can center me, how I can ground me so that way I can have better interactions with people. And when I realized that, when I did that, then that enabled me to do much more. And what much more is is what we will discuss on the second episode of our chat.

Speaker 1: 18:09

This is a very quick chat today. I hope y'all enjoyed it. Let me know what you liked or what you didn't like. Leave me a message, send me an email at joa at haveacouplejoanicom, or you can follow me on social media. Talk to you next Wednesday. Bye, thank you so much for listening. I want to hear from you. Leave me a comment, do a rating, if you can on the podcast, share it with somebody you love, but, most importantly, come back. See you next time, bye.