à la Suisse

Mental health. This is something I have been meaning to write about. It is a topic near and dear to me and one of utmost importance to us human beans.

A few weeks ago I was at a really great presentation at UBC on mental health. Although it is a topic that I have actively engaged myself with for a significant part of my life, there is still so much I am still learning every day about it. We were presented with a diagram at this presentation that I thought was really great and wanted to share:

I really liked this because I thought it gave a great perspective on the difference between mental health and mental illness and acknowledges their existence as two separate entities. Neat.

So wait, exchange and mental health, why was this so important to me?

Rewind to grade 12 Yuliya. Acing classes and extracurricular’s (not to brag but..), somehow also finding significant amounts of time to dedicate to friends and non-academic activities. Now fast forward to first year Yuliya. Aha… well that is where things changed for me. Grades dropping, not really able to focus on schoolwork, not being able to balance my social and academic life, feeling overall stressed and overwhelmed. And well, it did not exactly go uphill from there. My experience at UBC has been a rollercoaster, with many ups, and many down as well. Consequently, my mental health was often in the bottom half of that diagram^^.

Okay, now fast forward to fourth year. Yup, haha it took a while. I was back home living with my parents, saving money and getting slowly ready to go on exchange. A more focused study environment at home and a need to manage my time to fit in the 3 hours a day spent on the bus. It was tough, but who said it was gonna be an overnight journey of improvement. I had to make new changes in my routine, and things were starting to look up a bit.

And then I packed my bags (this was also not an overnight journey). And off I went to land of the Swiss. Everything was unfamiliar, new, and confusing. I had to take steps out of my comfort zone if I wanted to experience exchange the way I had hoped. Well I didn’t have many expectations of what my experiences would be like, but I did have some ideas about what experiences I did want to engage in. I wanted to learn French and make new friends. I also wanted to experience the true cheese loving lifestyle (in balance with other healthier food options). I wanted to find a new balance that will positively influence my mental health.

And at one point some time into my exchange, when I stepped back to make sense of things I realized how great my time there was. What I realized at this point was that if I wanted to see changes in my life I needed to change my perspective. To open up to new ways of seeing things and learn to experience change, and be okay with change. I needed to make time for the things that positively influence my mental health. And no, it wasn’t all a smooth ride, but when is it really. And part of that change was also accepting that bad things do happen some times, things that negatively influence your mental health, but one thing that we can do is to try to dig a bit deeper to see what may have caused this negative influence, and why it is making you feel that certain way, and start there.

As for one of the changes I made during my exchange: I made a big effort to connect with people. Social situations were something that have led to some of my anxiety in the past few years, but I knew I wanted to find ways to address it. I tried to find a new balance for myself. Here are some things I found:

1. Be open-minded in new social situations but know your limits, don’t overwhelm yourself. Don’t forget the importance of down time and taking care of yourself

2. This is also an opportunity that is not going to repeat itself. With homesickness I thought about how excited I will be to re-see all friends and family once I am back.

3. Challenge your inner boundaries as they are not set in stone.

4. You get what you put in. Engage with others, and really learn from them.

And some of the most important things I learned during my time on exchange was from friends I made and at the university. They helped me to shift my mental health balance positively and I am very thankful to these people and experiences.

Currently playing (~˘▾˘)~
Do you realize – The Flaming Lips

à bientôt:-)
Yuliya