Mental Health, Toxic Positivity & Slowing Down
I’m back, baby! It’s been a few months in between episodes because life got really life-y for a while there. Just like you, I’m very human and experience some downs amongst the ups. In this episode, I’m opening up about mental health, being gentle on yourself, slowing down and letting go of the toxic positivity that gets in the way of healing.
If you’ve also been through the mud lately, I see you. I hope this episode provides you with some solace to know that you’re not alone, and that you’re simply human.
This podcast is for YOU, so if you ever have any questions you’d like me to answer on the show, or topics you’d like me to cover – reach out to me on email here or over on instagram @eleanorhadley
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The Sensuality Academy Podcast is edited and produced with thanks to Lucy Arellano. You can find her work at @lucy_podcastva
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Episode Transcript
Hello my loves and welcome to episode 38 of The Sensuality Academy Podcast. It’s been a while, huh? I’ve missed you so much and I’m so happy to be back in your ears.
Today’s episode is really just going to be a bit of an update on me and why I’ve been so MIA the past few months.
There was a tour, no home, a huge heartbreak, a battle with mental health, total burnout and overwhelm. To put it mildly, the past 6 months have been huge and exhausting beyond belief. In the past three months in particular, since my last episode, I just totally ran out of energy or time to create the podcast. Which broke my heart, because it’s something I really love creating for you. SO, I hope you’ll forgive my absence. But, perhaps you’ll resonate with some of the very human things I’ve been through recently. If nothing else, I hope that you can take solace in knowing that we’re all here living human lives and nobody has it all figured out. None of us. Regardless of what people portray on socials, it’s only ever part of the story. This isn’t to say that everyone is utterly miserable and we’re all just faking happiness all the time - not at all. But, if you’ve been through a rough patch lately too - know that I see you and I feel you. I’ve been there too.
It’s often only when we have managed to work our way through the mud, or that dark tunnel and come out the other side (which we always will, despite how bloody dark and messy it can feel when you’re in it) that we can look back with some hindsight and share with a new perspective.
I don’t know about you, but I have a whole lot of love and lighters in my instagram feed. And while I love spreading positivity, I feel that sometimes the abundance of positive messaging can almost make you feel like you’re totally broken for having a bad day. With all the rhetoric around manifesting your dream life and your thoughts creating your realities - I really feel like it can foster a fear of thinking negatively - to the point where you essentially end up in a spiral of feeling bad about feeling bad. Or feeling anxious about your anxiety. How bloody exhausting is that?
I know in my recent experiences, I had many times where I wondered - am I creating all of this? Is it my fault that I can’t find a home? Is it something that I’m doing wrong? And you know what? That didn’t fucking help. It just made me feel worse and more stressed than I already was.
For a bit of context - due to covid causing a lot of people to move away from cities, many places in Australia are experiencing a full blown rental crisis. There simply isn’t enough housing available in certain regions for the flood of people who have recently relocated. So, housing is scarce, competition is high and of course - in true capitalist style - landlords have been jacking up the prices in these regions to almost criminal levels. This has led to a lot of people being forced out of areas.
Now, I’ll admit - I’m actually part of the problem. I was one of those people that fled Victoria (a southern state, for the non-Aussies) in search of more sunshine and a coastal life. If I wasn’t allowed to leave Australia, I was at least going to live somewhere in the country that I actually liked. And for me personally, Melbourne wasn’t it. I was living in the shire of Byron Bay for a while until our landlords turned our house into an Air bnb and kicked us out. Since that happened back in December, I spent a full 5 months floating. I got so sick of searching after a couple months that I decided I may as well float around the country on a tour until the holiday rush cooled down. So, I spent a couple months teaching my workshops and mini day retreats in Byron, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sunshine Coast, Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
As much as I love teaching, the instability of my housing, along with burnout, overwhelm, with work on top of health issues and a broken heart lead me to a really dark patch. It’s funny that I am laughing about it now. If you would have talked to me about it a couple of months ago, I would not have been able to string a sentence together because I was struggling, I was really in a dark place. Now, as I record this, we are in June - May was mental health awareness month - and I think it’s a really important issue to open up about. I know I felt quite a lot of shame for feeling low. But how awful is it to add shame on top of depression?
The fact of the matter is that this past year has been rough on everyone in different ways, and - as a good friend of mine says - sometimes life is just really lifey. I had an accumulation of stressors that would have been difficult enough on their own - but when they all came down at once - as they tend to do, I felt kind of hopeless.
I’m sharing this not for sympathy, but more to be transparent. My experiences and recent struggle with my mental health does not define me - and I’m very grateful to have come through the other side, because I honestly didn’t know if I could when I was there.
My mental health doesn’t define me as a person, it's just a real experience that we go through and sometimes some people go through it more often than others, sometimes there’s periods of life that are really dark and you will always come through it.
I like to think of our lives like nature. To have those mountains and peaks and epic views, we need to have valleys too. It’s just a plateau otherwise, right? And just like the seasons, we go through periods of darkness, of stillness and introspection, where things fall away - those times of rest or recovery allow us the energy and perspective to shine and bloom more brightly when the time comes.
I know I personally have so much resistance to those times - I just want to be in constant bloom. But what I’ve come to realise is that this desire to be consistently blooming, productive, positive, in our peak…it’s a symptom of capitalism. Think about it, capitalist structures as we know them would crumble if more people prioritised their mental health, took days off, operated at a slower and more intentional pace. We are of nature, and we don’t expect fruit to grow every single damn day, do we? Good things take time to grow, to flower, to fruit. And then, they always fall, soften, empty out before they can do it all over again.
I’ve been consciously trying to live a more slow and intentional life since I first relocated up north almost a year ago. Some days it’s easier than others. It’s certainly been easier since I found a home, that’s for sure. But, what I’ve noticed since slowing down and doing less, is that more aligned opportunities have flowed to me. I don’t know if this is just the projector in me. Sidenote, if you don’t know much about human design, definitely check it out. I’ll also have someone join the podcast to share in the future because it was a goddamn game changer for me.
When I stopped trying to keep up with what I believed were society's expectations of where I should be at this point in my life, of how I should spend my days, how much I should be working - all of it. When I allowed that to melt away and instead followed pleasure and nourishment - my life got so much better.
Now - I also know deeply from experience that sometimes it can be damn near impossible to feel any pleasure, let alone motivation to feel pleasure. I see you. If that’s you, or you know you can get there sometimes. I invite you to notice that voice telling you that you ’should’ be doing anything. And tell it to fuck right off. Because should-ing all over yourself, particularly when you’re already down, just digs you deeper.
Plus - and I know this to be true for me - sometimes the things I should about are legitimately not even things that I care about.
Here’s an example: societal expectation is that a woman in her early thirties *should* be married with children. I could - if I chose to - make myself so upset about not having these things that I feel pressured to have by now, that I have perceived I “should” have. But, if I instead take a moment to step back and tune in to my own damn self, I would realise my personal truth. And this is something that I only realised truly about myself about 5 years ago. For me, I don’t care about marriage at all and I certainly don’t want children.
What a fucking relief to be able to let go of all those weird societal expectations. Not to mention that we’re all on our own individual journey’s and there is no blueprint for when you’re meant to reach different goalposts in your life. It’s all just made up.
Okay - so, as I hinted to before, I did finally end up finding a home after 5 arduous months of searching, countless inspections, dozens of moves between friends and family houses, hotels and airbnb and more stress and tears than I can quite explain. But you know what? It looked different from what I expected.
One thing I’ve been craving way more of lately is community. If you’ve ever moved somewhere new - whether that’s interstate or to a whole new country - you’ll know how bloody isolating it can be. You’re fresh in a place where you know nobody. And look, I’m an introvert and someone who has spent years travelling the world solo, so I’m very comfortable with my own company and being alone. I also don’t equate being alone with being lonely. To me, they don’t go hand in hand. And honestly the times in my life that I’ve felt the most lonely have actually been when in relationships with people who don’t see or value me, despite living together. So, all this to say that I don’t easily get homesick or lonely. But damn, moving somewhere new on my own really tested me. And we all know how weird it can be trying to make friends as an adult - particularly in clicky communities.
Anyway, I had stubbornly been searching for a place to live within the Byron Bay shire for months with no luck and it wasn’t until I visited a very close friend of mine from Melbourne who had just moved to Burleigh Heads on the Southern Gold Coast that I even considered searching elsewhere. I realised I’d had so many judgements about the Gold Coast and didn’t think it was for me. Now if anyone knows the area - you probably think of the Gold Coast and think only of Surfer’s Paradise - which has a bit of a trashy reputation. Well, thankfully there are some really lovely parts, along with a beautiful hinterland that makes my heart sing.
So, I decided to shift gears and start searching up here instead and within a couple of tough weeks I finally found, and was approved for a beautiful home amongst the trees, with views of the mountains and a short drive to the beach. Plus I even have my own office where I can record this podcast for you. I’m pretty stoked and very happy to finally be able to exhale, ground in and rest.
Throughout the search for this place, I also badly injured my ankle which has been yet another lesson in stillness and slowing down. I really feel like the universe was like “just stop, Eleanor”. This is a lesson I’m really yet to learn, since I’ve spent far too much time on my ankle since I moved in here. But now that I’m all settled, it’s time to simply be. And rest.
I’ve got lots of ideas for more episodes for you all, plus a great lineup of special guests to share on topics wider than my own expertise and from experiences that I don’t have - so keep an eye out for those in the coming weeks.
Speaking of the podcast - on the podcast - I’m super excited to share with you that I recently won the award for Podcast of the Year courtesy of Beautiful You Coaching Academy. It was such an honour to win this award, and I want to thank you all for listening and sharing the show. It means so much. I was also featured in their magazine, the Inspired Coach and I’ll add a link in the show notes to read the full article if you’re interested to hear more about my vision for the podcast.
That’s all from me for now. Until next time, stay sensual.
