bettsfic:

this is a tall order, anon, but i’ll see what i can do.

• find a way to express yourself creatively. sometimes you gotta get all the gunk inside you out, and you do that through creativity. find anything that interests you – writing, drawing, dancing, singing, etc. – and focus on using it as a means of self-expression rather than something product-oriented. with writing specifically, there’s no better way to understand your inner thoughts than to be able to put them on paper and let them stare you in the face. creativity turns the internal and abstract to the external and concrete. only by expressing yourself can you let things go.
• practice mindfulness. set aside a few minutes every day to do a simple activity that requires your complete focus. draw a spiral. listen to a song and attend to every word. pull up a youtube video of an aquarium and follow one fish through the entire duration. once you do this long enough, it can open a lot of doors in you that were once closed.
• do regular self check-ins. ask yourself every hour or so, how do i feel right now? put it on a numbered scale of 1 to 10 if you have to. write it down maybe so you can see how your mood fluctuates throughout the day and in correlation to your meals and energy and sleep schedule. it’s hard to listen to yourself sometimes, so you have to make time to ask yourself how you’re doing.
• make friends with someone older and smarter than you (who isn’t creepy or predatory). they won’t be your mentor or anything, but you’ll be able to learn from them, and they can give you a better picture of what it means to get older and have gone through more shit than you have. i’ve learned a ton from having friendships with people older than me, just by listening to them, without relying on them as any kind of emotional mentor. 
• self-reflect without judgment. take time to think through the things that have happened to you, what mistakes you’ve made, and the ways that you’ve been wronged. let yourself think through these moments objectively, and ask yourself questions as to why things happened the way they did. consider: in what ways do you seek validation from others? why is it that you’re unable to validate yourself in these situations? what would internal validation look like, and, if you obtained it, how would you behave differently?
• imagine your best case scenario. often times, we don’t let ourselves consider what would happen if everything in our lives were *realistically* the best they could possibly be. we throw spaghetti at the wall: i’d be a millionaire! i wouldn’t have to work! i’d sleep all the time! that’s not realistic though. that’s a 15 on a ten-point scale. consider instead: if i weren’t depressed or anxious, how would i be different? what are the things i would be interested in? what activities would i do? if i had all of my needs met and felt physically and mentally secure, what would i do with my day? it took me years to find my answer to that question, because i think i was afraid of that answer. what if my dreams were too big? what if i failed them? but i found the further i pushed my dreams, the more realistic they became, the more excited i was to pursue them. i don’t want to work in an office anymore, i thought. okay so – where do you want to work? in a school, i thought. it took a whole year of work, but eventually i found my way back into a classroom. 
• be good to yourself, all the time. i think one of the most powerful realizations i ever had was this: i never have to be mean to myself ever again, and i don’t have to accept meanness from others. i will never endure harm or put it on anyone else for the rest of my life. learn to treat yourself the way you want others to treat you. for me, this is as big as the strength to cut toxic people out of my life, and as small as forgiving myself for the tiniest mistakes, like sleeping in too late, not calling my grandma as often as i should, saying something embarrassing that i later regret, forgetting to text someone back. i am allowed to accept and love myself for exactly who i am this very moment, and i’m allowed to love past-me too, and every iteration of future-me. this does not mean i can’t also be critical of my behavior, but that’s why we self-reflect and consider our best case scenarios, so we have the tools to dissect our problems and a goal to work toward.

i hope this helps! thanks for the challenging question <3