Written by: Hilma Anggita
Most people might have no idea about living with mental health conditions. Some people do not even realize they’re living with it for a while, or do not even know much about it. One in four people have it at some point in their lives, and it constantly makes them need to do things a bit extra to be able to feel okay. When it comes out of hand, professional help is very much needed, but two-thirds of people never seek it.
Do you know why?
It is because of the ignorance, denial, and embarrassment in seeking prevention treatment caused by labels, stigma, and discrimination that are often thrown in front of their faces, which is not supposed to happen.
Mental health conditions are not a personal failure, and living with it is indeed hard. It makes you lose control of yourself, traps you in a toxic continuous cycle, leads you to unconscious harm, even makes you feel abnormal, but it’s not hopeless. There are some common coping mechanisms to endure the effect of mental health conditions, which are totally worth trying. It affects our way of thinking and making decisions, and also does the job of how we emotionally endure and express feelings.
Every person copes differently, and the ability to do that known as emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence lets us know what triggers, identify the source of emotions, and effectively reduce the chances of making wrong decisions. Even so, you need to understand that it all originated from the same peak, which is the mindset. In order to have that, self-development is needed.
Generally, self-development means taking steps to be a better version of yourself by overcoming bad habits. It’s not some kind of ambition, it’s a continuous process that enables you to learn, accept, and consciously evolve as a person. You can set your goal as realistic as it is and slowly develop yourself to overcome that, walk along the process, and see how far the progress you’ve made, appreciate, and evaluate the steps gradually. It goes the same on how you cope with the bad things you do for your mental health conditions.
Self-development helps you strengthen your mind as you learn how to handle the emotions. Started from pointing out goals related to your conditions, for example:
- Not blaming anyone, including myself, for the conditions I have
- Overcoming fears to go see a psychologist
- Come clean on any harm
As you see, those goals are huge, take courage, and also patience, but it’s not impossible. After setting your main goals, you need to write down what are the specific things you need to accomplish the goals, for example:
- Accepting, train your mindset to understand — “it’s not anyone’s fault I have these conditions”, “no one’s going to judge me for having these, and I am normal just like everyone else”. “I’ll pour it down in any form of writings my heart could ever imagine.”
- Starting small — let’s just start with writing down your feelings in a journal, then maybe try to talk with a trusted friend, make a call to some mental health care line, and see if you’re brave enough to go. Slowly, no need to be in a rush!
- Try and try and try — let’s try not to cut, “but my mind still can’t control my body.” It’s alright, try the butterfly project. Try to draw butterflies on your wrist and write down the names of the people you loved, “each time I hurt myself keep in mind that I’m hurting people I loved”. Try it again! Each time you feel like hurting myself, you will just try to call people. “Each time failing, I’ll just try again.” Then, see through the process and the efforts, how you’ve tried, how you really am willing to not hurt yourself.
Self-development takes a lot of patience and that’s why it requires commitment not only from your head but also your heart, to understand, connect, and help yourself grow. It will create joy and satisfaction once you successfully develop yourself and by that, you’ll start to be able to do things you loved and always wanted to, more aware of your emotions, and slowly reframing your mental.
Be brave, be consent, good luck!
REFERENCES:
Andrews, E. (2017). Personal Development and Mental Health Issues During This Crisis — Careers in Government. Careers in Government. Retrieved 20 August 2020, from https://www.careersingovernment.com/tools/gov-talk/covid-19/personal-development-and-mental-health-issues-during-this-crisis/.
Pombo, E. (2019). Self-Help Techniques for Coping with Mental Illness | NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness. Nami.org. Retrieved 20 August 2020, from https://www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/January-2019/Self-Help-Techniques-for-Coping-with-Mental-Illness.
Taking Good Care of Yourself. Mental Health America. Retrieved 20 August 2020, from https://www.mhanational.org/taking-good-care-yourself.
WHO. (2020). WHO | Mental disorders affect one in four people. Who.int. (2020). Retrieved 20 August 2020, from https://www.who.int/whr/2001/media_centre/press_release/en/.
Zeng, B. (2018). What It’s Like To Live With Mental Disorder — PsychAlive. PsychAlive. Retrieved 20 August 2020, from https://www.psychalive.org/what-its-like-to-live-with-mental-disorder/.
