I've been living life acting like I'm ok with everything going on and that I'm satisfied when really I'm not. I came to the realization on how much I've been doing this recently and also realized that it's all tied back to the way that I was raised.

Anytime in my household when I said I was stressed or not happy I was always met with the response from my parents that they had it worse than I did and that I was overreacting. I have a younger brother with autism and they would also go on about how he has it worse than I did. It got to a point where every time I opened my mouth I was "causing my parents stress" and I would just get invalidated. They would basically turn the whole thing into their problem and how I was causing their lives to be hectic because I was upset. This ended up leading to me holding back tears till the middle of the night when everyone was asleep or only crying in the shower where they couldn't hear it. 

When I was younger and expressed that I had depression I was told that I would be put on medication that would make me infertile and that if I wanted kids I would just have to find a way to "get over my feelings".  A couple years later I spoke up about needing therapy and my family seemed shocked. They would only pay for therapy at a religious establishment since it had "godly views". The sessions were basically my therapist staring at me in silence while I vented for an hour and offering no advice. This only contributed to the feeling that what I was going through didn't matter.

I'm 21 now and going into my last semester of college. Moved out of that household and already have a full time job lined up for when I graduate. I had enough room in my schedule for this semester to add a mental health class and this week we had an assignment on being vulnerable with our feelings and how being open and honest about your feelings helps to contribute to better mental health. We also had to write about how this has affected us in our lives and what we need to do to change.

It's made me reflect on how I've been bottling up my feelings through my life and that it's been hurting a lot of the connections that I have with other people. I realized that all four relationships that I've been in have ended because I wasn't being honest about how I was feeling in fear of conflict or invalidation, and it has also lead to me losing some of my close friends. I recognize that it's a problem that I need to fix but with growing up that way for 20 years I'm struggling to take the steps to change. I'm the kind of person that'd rather keep quiet if it means other people can be happy but that that can also be hurtful to me and the other person. I wish I wasn't afraid to openly express my feelings and I'm frustrated that I'm even struggling with this.