Personal Statement

One of the most significant challenges I have faced this last year would be my

mental health. One of the biggest reasons I would say my mental health has been the
most significant challenge in my life is because it has heavily affected my work

attendance and my day to day responsibilities at work. One example of how my mental

health has affected my work attendance and responsibilities is on some days I wasn't

mentally or emotionally capable of just walking into work. My mood and energy was so

low. I lost the interest and drive to go to work which also made me lose touch with being

able to greet and carry my upbeat, happy, positive and welcoming energy and attitude

towards my customers. I had to learn to teach myself how to leave my feelings at home

and not bring them to work . I also tried to distract myself from my negative energy and

triggers.

A second example would be it affected my own health. An example of how it

affected my own mental health is I would became so sad I couldn't or didn't want to eat.

Not eating caused me to lose a lot of weight. It also caused me to have a lot of stomach

and head pain due to all the stress I was putting on myself. A way I overcame this was

eating a very small light bit of food and only soft light food. It took me to start training my

body to get used to tiny bites at a time before I could eat a full heavy meal.

Struggling with mental health has definitely impacted my academic achievement.

One reason would be with all the therapy and psychiatrist appointments I had. I became

so busy and focused on bettering myself, I never gave myself time to do school. I always

felt like my schedule was too hectic. I just never had time and this really affected my

attendance and the assignments and credits I was missing. Some things I did to try and

fix this is get a planner so I can keep track of all the things I have to do.
 Another reason as to why struggling with my mental health has affected my academic

achievement is because I've lost all my energy, drive and motivation to even get out of bed. I

didn't even have the energy to work on school. Another impact it has made is with all the

motivation loss. I haven't done the work so I fell behind. When I fell behind, I felt like I was

digging this hole for myself. My graduation day kept getting closer and closer. I had to spend
many nights staying up trying to catch up and still finish in time.

Some steps I took to overcome this big struggle of mine was to reach out to a

therapist. I used to think, "Why would someone pay for someone to listen to my problems?"

or ..."talking about my problems won't fix them". Finally I hit a low point in my life and I wanted

to try all the options available. I reached out and made an appointment with a therapist and it's

really been helping. Although the therapy did a lot, I wasn't quite as healthy as I wanted to be.

I talked to my therapist about some other available options and she suggested trying

medication. I was against the idea of medicating and depending on a pill to make me feel

better, but feeling so hopeless I decided why not? Both the therapist and medication together

made such a big positive difference.