How I found my own happiness |No stress

Hi guys,

Since a few of you wanted me to share this story, I couldn't think of any reasons not to. For me it's a great healing-tip to try to write my feelings down. So here the story goes...

When I was a young kid, I didn't have any fears and made friends quickly. When I strarted going to highschool, this changed. Due to bullying I started to feel insecure. Plus, I have dyscalculia, NLD and ADD, which made school a lot harder for me. I always thought that something was wrong with my, but I didn't know what. On the age of 14 I think, I got my diagnosis of dyscalculia. I thought that this would help me a lot. That people would understand why math was a total disaster for me. Sadly enough, this was not the case and I felt even more stupid.

My mom and I have searched for reasons why school wasn't going as easy as it should... And on the age of 18 I finally found out about my concentration problems.

But let's go back to highschool. I started to feel insecure about myself, since school wasn't going so easy and people didn't seem to understand me. I felt pretty alone... In my highschool classes, I did have quite a few really good friends and some of them are stille close to me, after all these years.

How I really felt about myself: I thought I was fat, which I never actually was (since I have a pretty slim bodytype). I think that I hated my body so much because it was changing a lot. My body was starting to get more feminine while I was still a child in my head. I didn't like the way my body looked in the mirror. Since then, I really believe that I got a bit of body dismorphia (which is a condition where girls have another image of their bodies in their heads than it actually is physically). Now, after all these years, I got over the fact that it was just my head messing with me, making me think that I looked way bigger than I actually was. Now, when I look in the mirror, I still don't like the way my body looks, but I'm working on it. I'm excercising a bit and this is really helpfull. All the small things I hated are getting better, less ugly?

Plus, I'm really not over-thinking about my appearance any longer. I want people to actually like me for who I am, not for only what I look like. I want to inspire others, be the best woman I could possibly be. So I'm working even harder on my personality now.

After highschool, I left my friends with a lot of useless fights and I lost a lot of them actually. I felt so much hatred against them, for what they've done to me. Now I realised that these fights didn't mean a thing and that I needed to be more forgiving. Now that I forgave everyone, I feel a lot more stress-free. Released actually.

I'm trying to love all, and let go all of the hatred. Okay, people will treat you bad, this is true but it's really important to not-stress about it. I'm learning to let things go more.

Letting go all of the hatred is my number one tip. This will give you so much freedom!

In my 24 years of living, I tried several methods and techniques to become more happy. I always felt like there was something missing in my life. That I was incomplete. I tried relaxationtherapy (several times), I went to a psychologist. I tried yoga and pilates. I tried mindfullness... And I took classes to deal with stress and anxiety. These classes didn't learn me that much, but it pushed me to try to change my mental state.

During that same time, I watched all of Mimi Ikonns video's on youtube. If you don't know her, she is super inspiring! She has her own youtube channel for Luxy hair, her hair-extentions business and also has a personal channel. I instantly knew that she would inspire me! She inspired me to try to change.

To be honest, I'm a really emotional girl. I experience things stronger than most people. It's always super great or super bad for me. Nothing in between. Stress is also expressed super physically for me. I get super sick and I get panick attacks. Then I start to sweat a lot, can't breath and I think that I'm dying. When I had exams at school, I couldn't sleep the whole night. Then my boyfriend used to try to calm me down and massage me. It's pretty bad having a pannick attack. You feel so alone and no one can help you out because it's all in your own head.

I learned to deal with them, to try to calm myself down and talk to myself. "Steph, it's in your head. You're making things a lot worse than they actually are, again... STOP now!".

I also want to talk about my break-up. Break ups are always super hard, pretty much for everyone. Especially when there's no particular reason why things aren't working out anymore. For me, in the beginning I felt like my world was falling apart. Literally everything was going wrong (my job too). I wanted to stay in bed forever and not talk to anyone anymore. This is just me, I'm an introvert and most of the times when things are bad, I collapse and totally shut down. I can't actually talk anymore and I just want to be alone with my thoughts.

To me, it helped a lot to finally accept all my emotions. I used to try not to feel anything because I thought that I wasn't strong enough to deal with everything. The moment that I allowed myself to actually let in all the feelings, I felt a lot more powerfull. It's okay to have feelings. They can be pretty bad and it will get pretty hard, but this is a learning process. I learned to try to feel everything, because I think that it's a lot more healthy than just trying to avoid things. You can't grow this way.

I accepted all my feelings against him and the situation. Even though it's hard for me to think about it, it will get better. I really believe that when you're allowing yourself to feel strong, that in the end you will actually get a lot stronger. I never thought I would ever get over our break-up, but now I know that this is not true. It was just me, not believing in myself. Now I know that I'm a lot stronger than I thought I'd be. This makes me feel so empowered. Like I can handle the weight of the world all by myself.

And even though I always thought that I would need him to be able to grow, I now figured that this was a lie. You really don't need anyone to help you grow. All you need is yourself and a positive mind.

The last things that I want to talk about are the things that actually worked out for me, to now feel all happy and complete, finally!

First of all my job. I have a bachelors degree in orthopedagogics, where you work with people with all sorts of disabilities. After this, I got my teaching-degree, so that I could work in schools as well. This year, I'll graduate for the 3rd time, in a more specific bachelors degree: about caregiving in schools. My job for this year is to teach disabled kids, in regular schools. I'm an inclusion teacher. So these kids are going to normal schools, even with their mental disabilities.

My job gives me so much love. Even though it can get super frustrating and my kids will really test my patience... I get so much love from them. Real, pure love. My job is my passion. Even when I'm on vacation, I read books about it! I'm a geek ,I know it and I love it!

Also: have hobbies that you love. My hobbies are ofcourse: braiding, but also ballet and photography. These hobbies really make everything better in my life. It's a perfect way for me to use my stress in a good way and to feel happy and proud of myself. After a good danceclass, I can feel so happy about myself. Normally I would feel bad, to feel so self assured about myself... but I learned taht this was NOT a bad thing. It's a good thing to feel proud of yourself.

Then: meditation. Meditation is super hard, but really effective. I'm a person who can never actually chill out. My thoughts never stop and I can't lay still for more than 5 minutes. It took me quite a time to actually be able to meditate. I think about 5 years?

Also going to my acupuncture where I just had to try this, because when your body is full of needles, you can't actually move... So I needed to push myself to try harder. Now I feel so much more relaxed after a good session of meditation.

And last but not least, fulfill your dreams. I can now say about my life that it's all good. I love everything I do. I love a lot of people and most of all, I'm learning to love myself. I'm not saying that I don't have flaws where I need to work on, but they aren't holding me back anymore.

I've accepted that I'm not perfect, and this only motivates me more to try to actually be a good person and to work on things that I don't like about myself.

So, this was a pretty long post... but I hope that it was helpfull to you. Even when I could inspire only one little girl out there, this would make my day better. Helping others is so important to me.

And how about you guys? Are you happy about yourself?

Disclaimer: all the pics are just random pictures from my photography gallery. I took them all myself.

Sending you a lot of positive energy and hopefully one day, you'll be albe to like yourself as well.

Thank you so much for reading this post. It wasn't easy to talk about everyting for me, but I thing it's important to do so. Sharing my story helps not only myself but it can help others as well. So that's why I did this.

x Steph