Life On The Other Side Of Mental Illness

When you’re in the throes of mental health challenges, you can feel like there’s no end in sight. You’re “taking it one day at a time,” you tell yourself, and just doing the best you can. 

Sometimes, though, it is worth reminding yourself that there is a world on the other side of mental health problems. Health problems can feel infinite while you’re in the midst of it. But then one day, you wake up, and the birds are singing, and suddenly, everything just feels okay. It turns out that there is a world outside of your mind that you’re free to enjoy after all. 

Thinking about the other side of mental illness is helpful because it helps to ground you. You can’t always do anything about how you feel right now. But you can focus on how you will feel in the future and how you did in the past. Thoughts like these act as a kind of ballast that helps keep your personality straight and narrow. You feel more anchored. And you’re able to put your mood swings into context. If you’re depressed on a Sunday afternoon, you instinctively know that you’ll feel much better come Tuesday morning. 

The Importance Of Getting A Diagnosis

Sometimes people live with mental health problems but never discuss them in any detail with professionals. They go week to week feeling terrible, but don’t find out what is wrong with them or causing their condition. 

Mental health problems typically come out of childhood traumas and abuse. They then manifest as chemical problems in the brain, which constitute the basis of modern psychiatric diagnoses. For that reason, they aren’t a deficiency of the person experiencing them. They’re just what happens to the mind after it experiences an assault.

Diagnoses can help a lot because it makes the condition something tangible and official. You’re not just “going mad.” Instead, you have a condition that affects millions of other people worldwide and is an intrinsic part of the human experience. It instantly makes you feel a lot better and allows you to plot a course out of mental health problems and back to well-being. 

How To Reclaim Your Mental Health

The great thing about the mind is how plastic it is. You can fundamentally change the chemistry and structure through therapy, CBD gummies, and by taking a sabbatical. Reclaiming your mental health is usually about addressing false beliefs about yourself at a deep level. Often you need to feel the love of another person to change the way that you think. They can be the parent you didn’t have or the great listener you didn’t experience as a child. 
Life on the other side of mental illness is a lot of fun and much more enjoyable. It’s worth keeping it in focus when you can feel your moods shifting in one direction or another. It reminds you of the prize at the end of the road for all your hard work. And it gives you hope that things will eventually get better. With the right approach, they do.