When the Mind Gets Too Loud

Yesterday, I felt like the world was collapsing on me. What made it harder was that, until then, I thought I was doing okay.

There was too much noise in my mind. I could barely think. The emotions weren’t just in my head — I felt them in my body, in my bones.

It had been a long time since I last felt this way. I had almost forgotten what it felt like to fall back into that place. The kind of place you assume you’ve already left behind, until it quietly finds its way back in.

In short, I had a crisis. Not a dramatic one, not obvious from the outside — just real enough to undo me.

A crisis whose trigger I still can’t fully identify. All I know is that, suddenly, my mind became overwhelmed. The noise of negative thoughts appeared without warning, and I broke down. It was real crying. Deep crying. The kind that comes from the very core of who you are. I hadn’t cried like that in a long time. It felt uncontrollable, but also strangely honest. Like my body was releasing something I had been holding in for too long.

More than six months ago, I experienced a time when I felt unusually confident and complete. I thought I had finally reached a place where effort was no longer necessary. I wanted to be myself without questioning anything, without adjusting, without restraint. At that moment, I truly believed that feeling good meant being cured.

Looking back now, I can see how seductive that belief was, and how easily confidence can turn into certainty.

While I was on medication, I felt stable, functional. I could show up. I could get through the days. However, over time I noticed that my emotions had slowly started to fade. I didn’t feel great joy or deep sadness. I didn’t cry. I didn’t react. Everything felt flat. At the time, I didn’t question it — I thought this numbness was part of being “okay,” part of what stability was supposed to look like.

What appeared most often was a constant sense of discomfort and irritability. A low-level tension that never fully went away. It was as if my emotions — both the good and the bad — had been muted. Looking back, I realize how quiet suffering can be, and how easy it is to dismiss it when there’s no visible crisis.

If someone makes it this far, please take care of your mental health. I say this as much to myself as to anyone else. Sometimes caring for yourself doesn’t look like progress or healing. Sometimes it just looks like paying attention, like noticing when something feels off instead of pushing through it.

Today I’m okay, but I know the crises can return. I have many things to work through, and I’m slowly learning that “being okay” doesn’t mean being finished. It just means being here. The sense of danger and desperation I felt yesterday wasn’t real, even though it felt that way at the time. Fear can be convincing when it takes over your mind, especially when you’ve felt it before.

No one prepares you for the fragility of feeling unwell, and even less for the fragility of feeling well. There is a fragility in well-being — one that makes you doubt, that makes you believe you can handle everything, that makes you think you no longer need help, when in reality what you need is to keep working on yourself. Slowly. Honestly. Without rushing to be “fine.”

I’m aware of how fortunate I am. I have a family, a home, a room of my own, a roof over my head, food in the refrigerator. On the surface, I lack nothing.

But what I’m missing isn’t something money can buy. I can’t buy the emotional stability I long for, nor a mind free from such dark and disturbing thoughts. These are battles that don’t show up on the outside, and that don’t disappear just because life looks good from afar.

Still, I’m here. Not healed, not certain, but present. And writing this is also a way of holding myself together.