Today I have had a productive Sunday full of exercise and good food, along with some organization. I'm feeling quite reflective on the journey I've had with this illness, I'm almost half way through my allocated 100 days and it's helped me a lot, and according to you lot - it's helped you all too.
I’m going to talk about something very delicate and give you a tough love approach, whilst I understand that we all need nurtured and a degree of kindliness in regards to mental illness… we also need three words: Get Over It.
Before you shoot me down completely as an impervious being,
this is a mental health blog I am aware – I just wish sometimes, people would
tell me to ‘Get Over It’. Lets establish some things: You can’t just ‘Get Over’
mental illness, as much as you want to. What I’m referring to is after all the
things you’ve been through and it is indeed all over – how do you move on? How
do you accept happiness and not torture yourself over whether or not it will
last? You have to get over it.
Terrible things happen to wonderful people in this world, mental
trauma is lasting. I was petrified when at 15 I had a big health scare. I kept
thinking – is it there? When will it get me? Then I got over it. It took a long
time but there are key stages of ‘Getting Over it’. In this post I’m going to
help you ‘Get Over’ the mental scars of your illness. I know how much
Depression affects us, even when we are not depressed – we are anxious that it
will come back.
I used to pine over old boyfriends, all the time. I had a
team of friends full of sympathy and would give me a lot of love and acted very
soft with me. I think to a degree it’s okay to get sympathy – but I genuinely
found it helpful when I got a friend who was like ‘Okay I felt bad for you at
first but cut the shit and get over it’. Maybe it’s because I have a first-rate
sense of humour. I will again state that if someone is deeply depressed or
troubled – ‘Get Over It’ will not cover it at all. But for the person who has
bad habits that are not a trait of illness but a trait of personality – they
should get over it!
I’m not quite over ‘it’. Being mentally ill has really
emotionally stunned me where I’m like… oh god I am going to end up ill again!
Just waiting on that moment, but there are things that I can do that help me
get over it.
If something happened several years ago and it’s finished
and you’re still talking about it then… you need to Get Over It. I had an
eating disorder, yes sometimes I pick up bad eating habits and calorie count
however I’m not worried that I’ll get so obsessive again. I had an eating disorder
more than 5 years ago, hence why I don’t mention it every two minutes. I was
malnourished and the state I got my body into was horrendous. I don’t mind
telling my story when appropriate but if I sat hashtagging every image I post
on instagram like #anorexiasurvivor, it would be damn annoying. You can tell your stories without letting them
consume you and take over who you are. I’m not known for my illnesses and
neither do I endorse that idea, I help get myself over it by not making
everyone in the room uncomfortable by changing every single topic to that one
bad time that happened ages ago. I’ve been around so many people like “I find
_____ really annoying because all they talk about is ______”. It’s not annoying
to share your story, but to genuinely only ever talk about something that
happened years ago is a sign that you’re not over it and you may need
counselling, or at least stop yourself talking about it.
The second thing that will help you get over your traumas is
actively seeking help, so support groups. They will really help you get over
the traumatic moments of your life. Mental Health needs nourishment and talking
therapies are super helpful for these kinds of things. Even if you have a super
supportive friend or partner that you can talk to about these things just so
you can move on with your life and get over it. I talk to my boyfriend when I’m
not doing too well, however – it’s not our only conversational point. It’s so
refreshing to live a life outside of this illness particularly when I have to
write a post everyday on my mental health!
The best thing to help you get over mental trauma is just
being productive – try and push yourself to do things you normally don’t. Maybe
switch off the Internet for a while because that really helps me. Go outside
and explore, travel and try new foods. As much as things like watching Netflix
and playing games may help you, you’ll find it’ll make you lazier, less active
and in turn you may naturally sulk into a depression or be taken aback with
compulsive thoughts about your traumas. Make friends! Making friends is so
important, people who can’t get over their situations tend to be quite lonely
and so all they do is think about it all day and can’t move on with their life
at all. Concerning yourself with other people’s lives and seeing how they live
helps take you out of your hellish residence of the mind and opens you up to
the wider world. It’s fantastic not to be all about ‘your’ problems and just
listen to other peoples!
I hope these tips have helped you although I will endorse
that these are almost self-help techniques, I would not recommend anyone to say
to someone who is mentally ill to ‘get over it’ as the picture is so much more
difficult than that. By doing these things you can distract yourself from your
traumas and help yourself move on, which is an essential piece to the recovery
puzzle. I know that I react well to tough love, we may not all but what we all
want is recovery.
I would love to hear how you guys “Get Over It”, and I hope
you all are winning the fight against your mental demons. Love to you all.
*Cuddles like a fluffy bunny*
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