Congratulations.

Thank you! I'm waiting so long for this.

Good luck finding a job out there. [sad sniff]

everyone's scared of us [emotional out burst]

Oh no! Here you go; here's a scarf.

[crying goes on] [hilarious clown joke btw]

Lately I've had more and more days where I just don't feel okay. With all the news and entertainment

And politics and life in general I feel more depressed and anxious than ever and when I usually express these feelings

I met with the response "I know but you just have to think positively"

"I mean thoughts influence your mood, so.", "Just fake it till you make it, and then eventually you'll believe that you're happy"

"Oh, honey, all you have to do is say affirmations. That's what I do, like this:

YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL!

YOU'RE SMART!

YOU'RE WORTHY OF LOVE!

YOU'RE GONNA BE OK!

And though positivity and resilience has its place,

it feels like this sentiment is coming from a discomfort with negative emotions rather than

prioritizing the process of healing or working through them. And to be honest, I'm just really tired of trying to mask my negative feelings

Hey Anna, can...

What's up dude [sad voice]

Eh... [sad sniff from Anna] are you okay?

Yeah, no... I'm totally fine. I'm just like "yeah I'm hanging out, working, living my best life" [sniff]

What can I do for you?

Ah, I just want to know if I could borrow a highlighter?

Oh ya, you got it.

I'll get you a highlighter

Here you go, dude.

Thanks for stopping by

Maybe we could get lunch later

Alright

Cool, cool, catch you later, dude [voice cracking]

Every time I've run from my feelings or try to smile them away, this buzzing

Feeling of my anxiety only worsens, and I don't want to live like that anymore

I've touched my therapist a lot and and he's suggested that you want to operate inside of your feelings and

Successfully navigate them, you want to be fully present with them

Then let them go. It's much healthier to be okay with not being okay, then pretend everything is okay when it's not..make sense?

As I slowly approach the corner of being thirty years old. I've kind of started to realize that we're probably going to be

Not okay more than we are okay, and I have to learn to accept that and

Live with it and just accept that suffering is part of being alive and of course there are things that we can do on a daily

basis for the long run that helps our mental health right like you can make sure you're getting enough sleep and

exercising and

meditating and seeing your therapist regularly so many fun things and of course eating healthy cuz we all love food and

Speaking of eating healthy I do want to say today is sponsored by hellofresh. We're sponsored by food!!!

I got to try Hello freshest vegetarian plan and since I do freelance work

You know I'm often ordering out and not eating as healthy as I want to

But since they deliver on the days that I want I can customize it for my schedule

and I can pause it for those weeks when I'm out of town, each recipe only takes about 30 minutes

And it's great if you are a stickler for time management like me and it comes with this card that has like step-by-step instructions

So you don't necessarily feel overwhelmed in the kitchen you can go to hellofresh.com and use the offered code

AKANA30 for $30 off for your first week of deliveries

That's hellofresh.com and AKANA30

Bye [cute smile :3]