Mental health problems are, by nature, individualistic. Whilst they sit under extremely broad names and descriptions, what you feel is only applicable to you. Your experience will never be identical to anyone else’s, so it’s important to remember that recovery is individualistic too.
You are the only person that knows you, how you work, how you operate and that is your strength. But unfortunately, you are probably your own worst enemy too. The human brain is a marvel like that: it can be so self-aware that it can identify when something is wrong, but it is also so self-destructive that it will keep you from fixing that problem for as long as it can.
Living with the constant terror of your own existence, with an all-encompassing feeling of self-hatred, isn’t life. Life has its own intricacies and quirks without mental health getting in the way.
Some people like fishing, others like finger painting, and some people like bondage sex with clamps and elephant saddles and stuff, people are really different. One of the biggest battles for a human being with a baffled noggin is simply trying to live again. Or at least finding something that feels a little bit like living, a small sense of normality in the absolute chaos that is your head.
How do you find the calm amongst all the nonsense? How do you tear yourself away from a spiral of melancholy, duvet blankets, and out of date crisps? This is the hard part. (In all fairness there are lots of hard parts, there is no easy side of mental health, it likes to test you as much as it can). It can be as simple as finding one tiny thing that gives you a moment of clarity and holding onto it tight.
For me it’s writing. I spill my guts into Word documents, knowing that most of the time no one will ever read them. But once it’s down as a set of words it has become A Thing. It’s a beast I can battle and it helps me understand myself. I know this sounds clichéd but this is what works for me.
I found that discussing my own mental health in a raw and unfiltered way allowed me to make myself feel bigger than it. Other people don’t feel comfortable with this and I am not here to preach and tell you this is the ultimate cure.
As I said before, you know yourself better than anyone and you should never put yourself in a position in which you are unhappy. You are looking after yourself, you are allowed to worry about yourself, you are allowed to be selfish. You only get one brain and until they invent brain transplants where you get the charisma of an Instagram famous fitness guru or the confidence of a coked-up hedge fund manager, then we will just have to work on ourselves for now.
I decided to do the stupid thing and write a book about my anxiety, which in turn has caused more anxiety, and now means that I have a good few months of imposter syndrome screaming ‘what the fuck have you done? why would you put yourself in a position to fail? Everyone will hate this and you will become a failure and everything will be ruined’ in my ear.
Whilst half of me is swallowed by the fear of putting my brain onto paper for people to see, the other half is now thinking, fuck it, what’s the worst that can happen? It’s the rational part of my brain fighting the irrational part, a common theme for people like us. We are used to the irrational part winning, drowning out the irrational part with a symphony of negativity, but if we can find a little bit of self-confidence, a little bit of a ‘fuck yeah why not’ in ourselves, we can help that part grow.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BZ6n4bxHtrD/?hl=en
As well as writing about my own issues, I have read and heard thousands of other stories from other human beings who are struggling. This is another thing that can be forgotten in the thick mist that is Being Bananas: we are not alone. We can feel isolated, unloved, abandoned, misunderstood, but there is always someone that can help. That help can be sitting down for a pint in the local and having a quick chat… or sitting watching movies in silence while stuffing your faces with cake… or a simple message from a stranger on a social network site. Help can come from anywhere, just try to remember to keep one eye out for it.
What I am trying to say here is that you will be okay. We will be okay. We have the strength to get through this. At the moment that strength is currently buried under a mess of insecurities and evil thoughts but it’s always there. And it doesn’t matter whether you find that strength through therapy, exercise, nipple clamps, or (like me) writing utter nonsense. All that matters is that you know it’s there.
