I’ve been learning a lot over the last year of my life, how to function
in the face of over whelming anxiety and soul crushing depression is probably
the greatest of all my lessons.
After suffering a particularly severe episode which saw me hospitalised
over March and April 2017 I fell into one of the most common traps faced by
those of us struggling to return to normality after major mental health
episodes. I assumed normal would be going back to my day job and picking up my
life exactly as it was before my breakdown.
Of course, that wasn’t possible and the more I fought to return to the
status quo of my old life, the harder it became to function at all. It has
taken me a year to realise, my old life was not good for me, in fact, it was
one of the reasons I found myself so far down the rabbit hole.
Why was I fighting so hard to return to a way of life which would see me
repeat the same cycle of ignorance, denial, self-harm and hospitalisation? This
was not the actions of someone who had their mental health under control.
For someone trying to glue the pieces of their life together, trying to
regain the trust and respect of family members, success is not returning to
life you had. Success is building a life that works!
So, one year on from sitting on a toilet seat with a handful of pills, (begging
my husband to take them with me so I didn’t leave him behind), what have I
learnt about living successfully with mental illness?
Well, to start I need to be accountable for me, I need to speak up more
when I feel myself starting to slip, I need to fight with doctors more when I
know something is not right. I also need to let go of my expectations of other
people and learn to deal with disappointment.
I need to accept, I am terrible at taking medication on a schedule and
knowing when my scripts need renewing. My husband is helping with this these
days because I will go a whole day forgetting to take medications and then
wonder why I suddenly so dizzy.
Most importantly I need to realise just because I could do something does
not mean I should. All choices need to be weighed against what I know I can
cope with, this lesson is hard. I want the big bucks job, I want to see friends
in larger groups and more than one day a week, but sometimes what I want is not
good for me.
Luckily most of the time I have found what I should, I could.
In what ways do you cope with mental or chronic illness?
