When you suffer from mental health issues you’re often treated like a pair of curtains. People try to be sympathetic, lose patience, and suggest that you try harder or pull yourself together. They may not use those words but it’s implicit in the chivvying up process.
You can’t whip yourself together with one smart pull, so they sigh softly, feel lost, and worry every time they see you what mood you’ll be in. They can’t cope.
Are you the soft sigh?
As you may imagine I was. I also learned a lot from it. For one thing I was never an idiot. See if the following helps if you’re struggling and feel that you’ve lost yourself. If you’re as bewildered as those around you.
- You woke up one morning and found someone else in your head. Someone you didn’t recognise.
- You experienced for the first time a feeling so awful that you had no words for it and no way to explain it.
- It came out of nowhere, at a time there was nothing wrong. Acute anxiety hit me on a day I was feeling absolutely wonderful. I took one step and it was as if I walked into a wall of something so foul I still have no words for it. I became a foreigner in my own body.
- No one trained you for this, you’ve had to find your own way and it’s a lonely journey Even those who feel the same experience it and react differently.
This is a very personal hell, we need to accept that, but we don’t need to accept that permanently unless the condition is a clinical imbalance. In which case there is help in the form of medication that people seem to benefit from. But for the others…
Important points
- There is undoubtedly something wrong in your life. If it’s not clinical then events or people caused it. That’s important. It may feel like there was nothing but there definitely was something…or…
- A thousand tiny things over many years that added up, like children’s building blocks, then one more tiny, almost nothing, was added and the whole tower came down. My doctor told me that. So stop and think if you feel there is no reason to be the way you are. There is.
- You are brave and strong. I know you don’t feel like it, but you demonstrate more courage in a day by getting out of bed that many people do in their entire lives. Keeping going is an exercise in sheer determination. It demonstrates all the incredible things you don’t think you are. People are seeing it but not understanding it. Not recognising the strength it takes to be you.
There is hope
If your illness is clinical then you will have had help to understand that So you know that you’re ill and that’s not your fault. Anyone who can’t understand that has had a compassion bypass. You don’t need to be with those people.
Always join a support group if you can. No matter the issues with your mental health. Underneath those troubles are some really great people.
Think about the late Matthew Perry for example, Chandler Bing in Friends. His story is so tragic, so terribly sad, yet it’s also the story of a bonafide humanitarian and hero.
Briefly, he took one drink when he was 14, as most teenagers do, and then it was game over. He didn’t know that he should never have touched alcohol in his life. His chemistry dictated that not his choices.
He spent over $7.5 million on rehab, he was often travelling to and from the Friends set from a rehab facility. He spent years of his life trying to get clean and he never gave up. Turned in faultless performance after faultless performance.
Then he dedicated himself to helping others. Saying openly that he couldn’t help himself but that didn’t mean he couldn’t help someone else. Finally leaving his fortune to that cause.
He wasn’t weak. He was a hero. He turned adversity into compassion. I’ll bet you have that compassion and people in trouble feel safe with you. You always hold out a hand, maybe write, you try and just do something.
You are your only hope
Hard as that sounds. Impossible as it seems. You’re going to have to save yourself. No one else can or will. But you’re exhausted so how exactly are you expected to do that?
1. Stop. Accept where you are.
2. Don’t do the blame thing. Who did what to whom may be important, if so get help to work through it, but seek understating and freedom rather than blame. It won’t actually help that it wasn’t your fault, odd as that sounds, only healing and recovery works.
3. Recognise that the past is literally nowhere except in your own head, and you can stop thinking about it. If you find yourself saying “I can’t do that it’s not that simple” stop and think. What’s the magic remedy? There isn’t one except to interrupt bad thoughts and consciously choose better ones. Try the word ‘cancel’ then deliberately think about something more positive.
4. Learn about the Law of Attraction. Many people have written about it but the book by that name by Esther and Jerry Hicks is, to my mind, the best.
5. Classical thinking got you where you are, creative thinking will help you change that.
6. If your beliefs hurt you change them. No good priding yourself on being stubborn, and hurting yourself being that way. Why stick to what doesn’t work to prove what to whom?
7. Find your own way. Do what works for you Rebuild yourself the way you want to be. Define your own personality. Choose who you want to be.
8. The recurring themes amongst those who inspire others are that they often find a form of spirituality that works for them, and meditation is king. If your immediate thought is that you can’t meditate, expunge it. You can learn and there are many methods. Sitting still in silence, with music, or listening to a guided meditation. Exercise. Cleaning the house. Walking in nature. Whatever switches your mind to silent mode. Find what works for you.
You have the power. Only you do. Believe that and you can gradually and steadily walk away from this.
One last important suggestion. As far as possible eradicate unnecessary negativity from your life.
- No toxic people,
- Avoid the news if necessary.
- Don’t watch violent films or read violent books.
- At first stay away from articles and programs on ill health.
- Change your job if you hate it, or don’t resonate with your colleagues, or both.
- When you’re breaking patterns you need to avoid those still in the old patterns for a while.
Finally: Do one small, insignificant thing differently every day. You can’t create big change until you’re used to creating change.
Write a list of everything you’d like to change. Order it from easiest to hardest. Start with the easiest and work your way up. Start with the hardest and you’ll surely fail, and set yourself back.
Now breathe. I did this, many people do this, and we’re no different to you. We needed to change and we took one step at a time. That’s all we did. Nothing more adventurous than that.
This book
I wrote this to help you. It’s structured to help you identify what’s wrong, then get ready to change, and lastly, change. It’s on Amazon.
You can get a signed copy with a personal message in it from me. £10 plus P&P. It’s in both paperback and Kindle format.
Or you can contact me. Just whatever you do, believe that this can change, identity the things that need to change, then steadily take action. Only you can. I wish you luck and success.
Love Deb xx
Deb Hawken - Amorah 