This discusses struggles with depression and bullying in this podcast episode.
Transcription
Gabriela discusses her struggles with depression and bullying in this podcast episode. She explains how she overcame her depression with the help of her mom and by finding joy in horse riding. She advises against spending too much time on social media, as it can worsen depression. She also shares her experiences with bullying and emphasizes that it's not about her, but rather about the insecurities of the bullies. Gabriela credits her parents for supporting her through these challenges, particularly her mom, who helped her pull herself out of the dark place. Despite the hurtful words from bullies, she remains determined to pursue her goals in horse riding and not let their negativity affect her. Hello, my name is Gabriela and this is A Teen's Perspective. This is the second episode where I'm going to be talking a little bit more about my struggles such as depression and bullying and how I overcame them and found friends and the right people. We're just going to jump right into it. I became depressed in the beginning of 2020 and I was in a relationship which was at the time not great for me mentally. I just switched to online school at that point so I had a few things that I was going through. To back up a little bit further, I was bullied a lot, still am, and when I went to traditional school I had a class of people who was a majority of boys. Now I've always been told that boys just like you if they're bullying you. Now I don't truly believe that, anybody can believe what they want, but I don't truly believe that they were bullying me because they liked me. I think there was other reasons to it, such as one of them being a horse girl. To be quite honest, I am not a horse girl, I am an equestrian, they're two very different things. I can go over that in another podcast if you guys want me to. Backing up to my first podcast, I did mention I do online school and I've also mentioned that in this podcast. I moved to online school for two reasons. My main reason was to pursue my career in horse riding and the second reason was because I was tired of getting bullied. I really, really, really just wanted to switch to online school to get out of it because at the time I didn't know how to handle it and I have now learned how to overcome that. I think that just kind of covers a little bit. I wrote a few questions down and I'll answer those, such as how did I overcome depression? That's a really good question, I do have to thank my mom a little bit for that, she kind of helped me through it. My mom was a big help in the middle to end of 2020 when she started realizing that I was struggling. She always had that gut feeling that I was struggling and she wanted me to learn but she never really had to take action until I became really depressed and to the point where I didn't enjoy horse riding anymore. I never told anybody that though because I enjoyed it but not as much as I did and I re-found the joy in it and that's part of the reason I got over depression. I actually wouldn't say I overcame depression, I would say that I worked through it and have learned to manage my feelings and thoughts and for a 15 year old that is a lot and being depressed is hard in a world like today because social media just really doesn't help. It controls your mind and it can be good but it can also be bad and in that time, jumping to the next question, how did social media affect me? It just did not help me. Social media does not help in times like that so if you're depressed, I would recommend trying your best to stay off social media and find the reasons why you're depressed. Once you can find those reasons, it might take a few days, it might take a month, it might take a year, I can't tell you how much time it's going to take. You could maybe find it today. Think about it and think what is making you think that you're depressed. Sometimes we do think we are depressed even though we're not and we're just sad and I sometimes get that thought sometimes but it is not true. I'm just in emotions and with those emotions, it comes negative thoughts and once you learn to control those negative thoughts, you're going to be able to control and help yourself out of depression. Again, social media is not a big help so if you have social media and you're depressed and you find yourself scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, I really do recommend putting a limit on how much time you spend on any social media platform whether that's TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, whatever you have. Whoever's listening, if you feel depressed and you feel like you're overwhelmed and you find yourself scrolling on any of those platforms and it just seems negative, the quotes are negative, delete it. Just delete the app. Go with it. In my opinion, just do it. Take it away for a week. See how you feel after that week. Now in 2020, since I wasn't in such a great relationship, I didn't know and my mom helped me see that. She took my phone for, I don't even remember how long, at the time I was very unhappy that she did that but now I look back and I'm like, thank you so much for doing that. It really did open my eyes not being on social media and when I got my phone back, I felt better. I felt happier. This doesn't mean delete your social media. This means maybe take a break and see how you feel. Try to spend less time on it. The dopamine, that's what's getting you. You don't have a lot of time in life and spend that time not on social media. Go spend it with friends. For me, that's a little bit harder because I am consistently riding horses but every chance I can, I'm trying to spend time with friends. I'm also doing school. I'm super busy. How did I come back from bullying? Just jumping into the next question. Being bullied is still one of the things I struggle with most. I've struggled with it in school before I switched to online. I struggled with it online, social media and I also struggle with it in the world of horses. It's hard to say I overcame it or came back from it. What I have learned though from bullying is that it's not me. I am not the reason that they're saying these things. There's something deep down inside that they're just hiding and they can't let go and they have to take it out on somebody. It just tends to that person is me and I'm sure a lot of people relate to this. The next time somebody is saying something about you or talking behind your back, they're probably just insecure and support them as best you can. My next thing is also related to this. My mom taught me a very, very good saying. I don't know if she made it or where she learned it, but she's been saying it to me ever since I started talking to her about my feelings. The saying goes, imagine everybody has a light bulb up their head. If you have a bright light and somebody has a dim light, they're going to want to try to take your bright light so theirs gets brighter. Let's say that a person with a dimmer light, so somebody who may be insecure or comes from a background not so great, let's say they are just coming after you about something and you can't understand why, you don't know why, and you're just questioning yourself and you're like, why did they say that to me? I thought we were friends. It was just so out of the blue. It's coming from deep down. It's not about you and that's the first thing you need to think or anybody needs to think. Now imagine this is you, say you're getting bullied, just think about maybe they don't have the best home life or maybe their group of friends isn't being the best to them. There's something going on that does not relate to you at all. That is not your fault and I would just recommend trying to uplift them and support them because that's what they really need and that's what they don't have and they need your support. They're just asking for it in the wrong way. I talked about this a bit earlier about how my mom helped me but I'm still going to answer it a little bit on its own. How did my parents help me through depression and bullying and all this? And I'm going to circle back to bullying eventually but my mom was a huge help as well as my dad. I actually became really close with my mom and was able to share my feelings with her to the point I did tell her that at some point I did want to kill myself and that did shake her a little bit as it should and it was just very eye opening for her. She didn't realize that I was hurting that bad and I was just lost and she just really helped me through it and my dad was very supportive and he was great. He always just tried to support me in the best way possible but my mom was my go-to about my feelings which I appreciated her for and to be honest she is the reason that I pulled myself out of that hole. Now I did mention that I'm going to circle back to bullying and this is where I'm going to circle back. Being bullied has done a lot to me and the things that have been said to me are unforgettable. I have been told that I'll never make it to where I set my goals. I've been told that somebody's going to beat me to a certain height in show jumping and before I'm even at a certain height and it's like, okay well let's take into consideration I just got my horse. I've had an old friend tell me things right before I walk into the ring that really mess with my mind and my round didn't go well because I was focused on what she said when I shouldn't have been. The things in school weren't any better. Some of the things were physical and some of the things were mental. I mean I was punched by a kid. I mean I was physically punched and I didn't understand why. I was like, why would a guy punch me? Like physically? And I was just, for days I was like, why? Like it doesn't make sense. All I was told was, oh he just likes you. No, that's not an exception. Why would a guy punch me if he likes me? He should respect me if he likes me. And yeah, we were in like sixth grade but I was just so lost on why a guy would punch me. I was told by guys that horse riding wasn't a sport, that the Olympic team of horse riding was just non-existent and was in my imagination and I'm like, look, here is proof. These are Olympic riders riding in the Olympics. Like what else do you want me to explain? Like it's right here, here's the proof. And I didn't have to prove myself but I felt like I had to because of the words that were being said that I'm not going to mention because it's just not necessary to mention. It's not necessary to dwell on it and it's not necessary for me to obsess over it. I don't usually obsess over these things but I think it's good to talk about and it's good for people to hear. To this day, I still get bullied and now I just kind of like shrug and I'm like, okay, I've had people talk about me behind my back and I've had people who also have talked behind my back come and tell me that they're talking behind my back and I'm like, okay. So the reason you know this information is because I came up on a topic and you probably both started talking like that about me, which cool, okay. You can talk all you want behind my back but you don't actually know me. There was a quote I heard that says, if you have a problem with me, call me and if you don't have my phone number, you are not close enough with me to have a problem with me. That is the one thing I will stand by. I will stand by that 100%. If you don't have my number, you don't know me well enough to have a problem with me and if you have a problem with me, talk to me about it. If you cannot talk to me about it, you don't have a problem with me. You just have something deep down saying that you have a problem with me when in reality, you don't have a problem with me and that's just how it rolls, I mean, there's several people out there who have said things behind my back and I'm like, oh well, I mean, I didn't do those things, I didn't say those things. I confronted a friend a while ago and she just said straight back to me, she's like, you've been saying these things about me and I was like, okay, I haven't but if I was, why didn't you come to me, to me, not somebody else, and talk to me about why I was said saying those things and she was like, I don't know and to me, it's common sense but to others, I just don't, I just sometimes don't think that, like, people don't think that and it's hard for people to understand that talking to the person they have a said problem with is okay, it's okay to talk to somebody about a problem you have and I really do hope that people eventually start communicating because that's the key to relationships, friendships, really anything, like, if I want to be friends with a guy and I want to date a guy, I'm going to have to communicate with the guy I'm dating, be like, hey, he's just a friend, if you're uncomfortable with me hanging out with him, why don't you come along, like, you know, to me, there's simple solutions, to others, there's not so simple solutions and same goes for guys, like, just communicate, I know it's hard, communicating is hard sometimes but if you have something on your mind and you're like, I really want to talk to this person about it, go talk to that person about it, you don't know how long they're living, you know, like, it's just, why create a problem and then blame it on the other person because you didn't communicate and that's just part of what bullying taught me is communicate your feelings and communicate that what they said wasn't okay with you and wasn't nice or it was just hurtful and when you communicate that, people start to realize that they shouldn't be saying that thing because it could be hurtful, it shouldn't be a thing where it's like, oh, I can't say this around her because she's too sensitive or he's too sensitive, no, it should never be that, it should be, oh, this may be hurting people, you know, maybe it's okay in my friend group but maybe outside my friend group, it's not okay. I'm just going to mention this because I am making a podcast on bullying today, there's a kid on my Snapchat who I'm not going to name or really give any detail about but this person swiped up on my story of the description of the last one and said, get a job, I'm 15, I have priorities and goals right now and if you're going to tell me that, honestly, like, come on, just be more mature. In my opinion, it's just, I'm not going to respond to him on Snapchat because I'm just, it's not worth my time to respond to and argue but it is worth saying here being that I am talking about this today and to me, my job currently is to focus on my goals, my school and just the extracurriculars that I am focused on. One of those extracurriculars being starting a business and this podcast, yeah, it may not make me money as a job at a clothing store might be but to be honest, I don't have that time, I don't have time, I ride in the mornings, I ride at night and I do school during the day and taking the time to do this podcast is when I have a little bit of free time and I'm doing it when I can. I'm about to be home showing for four weeks, I'm probably not going to be able to work on the podcast but I will try my best to interview people and schedule these podcasts and have people be able to listen to them. I will do a podcast at the horse show of riders there and how school can affect them or just really anything like, I'll do a podcast there with riders, I'll just go up to riders and interview them real quick and it'll be fun. I'm doing it to interview and give people a teen's perspective and for somebody to just say get a job to me makes me laugh a little bit because, okay, you have a job, cool, like good for you, I'm glad you're making money but for me, this podcast means more than money to me and yeah, money's important today but this podcast and getting people to realize that they're not alone is more important than money. I'm not going to go get a job just because they said I needed to go get a job. To wrap this up, I am going to say that through all of this, I found God and I found people who truly support me. I think those people to the max. I found a Bible study through horse riding and I just truly found a passion for that and I'm really excited for it to start again and I have found that Bible quotes and verses have been something that has really affected me in a good way and some of you may not be Christians or Catholics, some of you might be atheists but give God a chance and if you don't, I can't control you but if you give God a chance, give him a chance to really re-show what he can do for you, honestly. He can do a lot for you and sometimes I know it doesn't feel like that and I've definitely felt that before but it's worth giving it a shot and if you do, just keep believing and let him lead your path. I'm going to finish this out here and thank you for listening, I appreciate the support. The next episode or podcast should be about me interviewing somebody, I'm not sure who that person is yet, I have a few people in mind but I hope to have you join the next one. That was a teen's perspective.
