Over the last six years, I have battled with understanding the necessity of my psychotropic medication. While over two weeks ago, I have totally understood the necessity of doing so, I have found it just as important to document or journal my moods and interactions through the day so that those that care for me can know what I really experience.

It is the reality that over the past year, I hid my destructive decisions as it relates to my lack of medication adherence to myself. Two times over the past year,  I have discovered and established that doing that never works. For the longest time my complaint was of excessive tiredness.

I would make this statement because I believed that one of my medications “knocked me out to sleep”. While it does help with sleep, it is not the sole thing that it helps with and now that I have realized that I fully understood the necessity of adhering to my medication regimen every dose every day.

Knowing what I know now, I fully understand the necessity of giving myself a little extra care than I had in the past. This can be in terms of understanding the need to practice more self-care, including napping to eliminate the past thoughts that I have had about my medication and know that those thoughts are untrue and that sleep a thing that all humans need to have, regardless of who they are.

Another thing that I realize that I must be more diligent in doing is the fact that I must document or journal my interactions with others and how my moods are every day so those that want to help me understand the way that my brain works can have more insight than I can remember on the cusp of being asked how things are going in a few weeks. It is important with a short amount of time and ultimately by retiring from bed to recollect what my mood is and how I am feeling throughout the day.

There are many tools, but I am finding that the traditional notebook paper is most helpful to me as I need to keep my printing skills active by working on keeping things legible so others can read what I am truly experiencing and how to best address or help me in a way that I can understand.

While I do understand that a journal is something that you yourself can enjoy, there can always be an additional book for that, but for now this is what is crucial for me to make others aware of what I experiencing in my brain and I can to relate and recollect how things are working with my brain and my medications to see if the dosage that I actually am prescribed is actually working for me or not. I never hurts to be too detailed when noting things as it can be helpful for others to have insight.

Ultimately, it is important for my mental health to know that I am doing what I need to do to be and stay well. It is something that I have ignored for the longest time and I now fully understand the necessity of taking care of my mental health in all forms that need to be taken care of. That there is no stigma about speaking out about it, taking medication or going to and asking for help. It is more than talking the talk, it is about walking the walk too. It is what works for me and while there are challenges, they cannot be addressed unless they are documented and attempted on my own part to make the necessary changes before taking them to the next level, hence the importance of documentation and journaling.