Mental health can be a tricky thing to write about. You are ultimately trying to articulate your view on human suffering in a way that does not undermine the visceral, sometimes unrelenting pain that an individual goes through.
When I started to realise I was operating on a different, darker plain to some of the people around me I began to lunge for answers and explanations. Why am I struggling with simple tasks? Why is my emotional amplitude so limited? Why do people look at me funny when I talk about my internal experience? It became incredibly disorientating having this deep sense that I was struggling more than other people around me.
Our most basic conditioning urges us to seek pleasure, avoid pain, find answers. In following this instict we commence the Great Google. Exert all of our energy into scouring the web for clues to why we are suffering so. We jump from diagnosis to diagnosis, becoming obsessive in our searches, latching onto the idea that this specific thing is wrong with us, finding people with similar experiences and listening to their stories, the same story, over and over again.
It became comforting for me knowing that I was not alone in this suffering at first — that I wasn’t a freak, there were other people who experienced similar pain and there were even suggestions to lessen the symptoms.
The sense of comfort one gets from finding a community of people who feels the same pain feels bonding, safe, family-like. I am not alone and I never will be again.
It is only natural to depend on this sense of security. Becoming coumpulsive with knowing everything there is to know about our condition. Hours and hours spent, consuming the same content, ‘this is what has gone wrong with you’, ‘this is how to fix it’, ‘change who you are to feel better’, ‘this is my story of suffering.’
At some point, there comes a subtle shift. A nuance that is overlooked by our desire to feel we fit in and have found a way to change, to lessen the pain and become acceptable.
Instead of being comforting and supportive, consuming the same content becomes a crutch. A crutch that increases the rate of deterioration of our ability to balance independently.
The development journey should take us to accept we are in pain, naturally try to find a reason why it might be there, use the expanded range of vocabulary from research to better label certain experiences that can help you understand and communicate your experience, (hopefully with a therapist after seeing the repeated suggestion that doing this is probably a good idea.)
That is where it should naturally end.
Unfortunately, it often isn’t. We can become attached to our diagnosis. We use it as a definition of who we are as a person, it suits our internal narrative: ‘See, I am inherently broken!’ Or can help prop up a poorly developed sense of esteem or importance: ‘I have a reason to feel worse than you and my diagnosis makes me special.’
We end up clinging onto the pain and actively finding more to support the self we are identified with — the self that believes we are broken or deserve to feel this way for example. This suffocates movement, keeps us stuck in one place and we stagnate. The very movement that urged us to find answers to our suffering ends up keeping us rooted in that very suffering if we become attached to symptom finding and diagnosis attaching.
As humans we become addicted to certain thought behavioural patterns, and we can quickly establish that listening to people with similar experiences can trigger us to feel a certain way , at first comforting, but later increasingly negative— self sabotaging our peace of mind in exchange for a elevated, depressed, anxious space we are more accustomed and familar with.
So what can be done about this?
I’d like to suggest several steps to help escape this tricky and seductive loop.
- Accept that there is nothing wrong with you.
I imagine some readers will feel on the back foot from that sentence. But the truth is there is nothing wrong with you, you already have all the tools you need within you And you are not deficient. All of you is loveable and acceptable as you are. It is incredibly unfortunate that some experience has taken you away from that truth but convincing yourself that you are inherently flawed is not only unhelpful but not really true. You do not need to seek a version of yourself that is loveable or acceptable to feel better. You already are those things, instead the energy should be directed to accepting that and finding a way to feel safe enough within yourself that you can start to disassemble barriers to your own goodness, love and light that were errected for your safety in earlier life.
2. Love yourself.
I used to hate seeing this advice. It seemed so vague and self indulgant and miles away from any possibility I could fathom myself ever being able to do. But it is so important and is the natural progression after step 1. Once we can see we are not missing anything, that we are whole and acceptable as we are, we begin to be able to care for ourselves and our past selves. The past self that is chastised for its mistakes and shortcomings, we begin to see that person was us, doing the best they could given the information they had and the circumstances they were in.
3. Repeat.
That’s basically it. Continue to do this, make it your full time job to remind yourself you are whole and acceptable. Show yourself loving traits when you get triggered or enter another depressive episode such as kindness, care, forgiveness, understanding. Slowly, these concepts replace outdated thought patterns that keep you stuck in perpetual suffering. You deserve to feel what it is like to be calm, accepted and loved.
So what is the real take away here?
People’s pain and suffering is not something to be trivialised. But taking your own suffering a little bit less seriously takes away its power. Use resources to find out some information and guidance about a condition you expect you may have but be mindful of how conducting such research makes you feel. Once you have an idea of symptoms and have been directed to a therapist (as every single website will do, trust me I’ve researched…) what else is there to gain? You have some abilty to choose how you feel over time. Rumernating over conditions that ‘prove’ you are broken will make you feel worse than spending that time doing something else and reminding yourself that whatever you are expereincing, whatever you have done, you can accept all of yourself, you are loveable and it isn’t that serious.
The Existing Human x
Disclaimer: This is an opinion piece on someone who is not a medical or psychiatric proffesional. If you expect you have a mental health condition contact a medical or psychiatric proffesional. If you are experiencing thoughts of self harm or suicide, please do take these seriously and contact your emergency services and support network. I express all of the above from the bottom of my heart and hope this will help people who exacerbate symptoms of mental health issues with excessive identification. I do not expect this is the case with all mental health issues and hope it will resonate with some people but expect it will not resonate with a lot.
