Accepting mental health challenges

This is a rather personal piece of writing for me. I was never open to the idea of putting personal insecurities out there and talking about them openly in order to get past them. But, things don’t change just because we aren’t ready to accept them and problems don’t vanish just because we are trying to brush them off under the carpet.

All that emotional burden and bottled up anger & frustration somehow finds the way out and it might even result in potential damage to the mental health of the person and their loved ones.

About acceptance

A diseased person would never be able to heal if they don’t accept the fact that they have the illness and need external help to deal with it. It doesn’t mean that they are any different or abnormal.

This rule isn’t only applicable to physiological problems, but also to the ones crawling under our skin, trying to eat us alive slowly - as we try to ignore them. Again, by ‘brushing them under the carpet’.

If I were to speak about my experiences with acceptance, it was no happy time accepting that I have Chronic anxiety and clinical depression, along with a potential panic disorder.

The first time I had a panic attack, I was scared to death but confused at the same time. I was all miserable, trembling with a fear of losing control and constant palpitations.

Dealing with panic attacks in the moment is no piece of cake, even if you happen to know a thousand methods to reach back to the non-anxious stable state, they simply won’t come to the mind at the moment, and even if they did, it’s too overwhelming of a task to be done.

So, it gets challenging but what can be done to accept your mental health challenges truly?
The answer to this question may vary for every individual, for me acceptance came after practically experiencing difficulties with anxiety in daily life at a level where it practically got impossible to get past a day without dealing with the constant worry, overwhelming thoughts and raging negative overthinking.
But, there are of course healthier ways to do the same (while dealing with the anxiety)

• Identifying Anchors to rely on:
  Having an inner circle of people that you can trust and reach out for help is extremely important. People struggling with mental health often try to isolate themselves from their loved ones, creating a rigid wall between them and their support system.

Doing this would only escalates the anxiety and depression in the longer run. Not talking about feelings and emotions would ultimately fuel the struggle.

• Finding/ developing new areas of interests:

Anxiety feeds on an empty mind, it will keep making up worse scenarios inside the mind to keep the vicious cycle of overthinking going.

The first step is to identify the triggers (keeping a data of it can help in evaluating the causes of anxiety too) and using stabilization/Distraction methods to get hold of your consciousness at the moment to exit the ‘cycle’.

Healthy hobbies such as reading, music, writing etc. are proven to be effective.

• Maintaining a ‘therapy-diary’ or record book:

One important thing to understand here is that anxiety or other mental health challenges don’t appear out of nowhere. There are probably behavioural patterns related to the triggers of your distress.

Finding out those patterns to one by one pick up the slack and deal with it is what we’re aiming for in the long term.

The most practical way to do this is to maintain a journal or record book where you record your triggers, responses, symptoms, mood, behavioural changes, sleep routine etc, and on analysing it over the period time, you will find out certain leads so as to where to start from.

• Writing letters to self / letters of forgiveness:

I remember a couple of months ago I had this unidentified rage trapped inside me, probably coming from the period where I was going through a difficult time dealing with bullying. I thought that ignoring the people involved with the acts would somehow help me get past it, but it didn’t.

There were times when I was too conscious of my body posture, way of communication etc when those people were around me. It was affecting me in a way that I was too naive to figure out.

That’s when my mental health professional suggested that I should vent those thoughts and feelings out by writing a letter, imaginatively addressing it to that particular person who started it all. I thought of it as a stupid therapy thing at first but it did help me get a closure on it.

Practicing this can help you let your thoughts and emotions out without practically communicating with the people that could be potentially toxic to you.

Writing letters to your future/past self about gratitude can help at times too.

I wrote this out of the sudden thought of putting my individual experiences with challenges in life out there. So, I guess, this is the start and I hope to keep writing…..

Feel free to reach out if you want to communicate or pitch in suggestions and follow for more such interesting pieces!