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Introduction
I have spent over a decade of my life silently battling conditions of poor mental health. The earliest memory I have of self-harm occurred was when I was 8. I never received any official diagnosis nor professional therapy due to a lack of understanding and access. Which resulted in a landslide of ails that affected my family’s wellbeing as well.
People always ask me how I do it. How do I keep going when…
- I’m in such poor headspace and health at such a young age
- people tend to invalidate, and even add to the turmoil
- life responsibilities only get heavier as you get older
- it feels like there is no reason to
Few things to put out there. First, it is hard, and it doesn’t always get any easier. Second, it’s less about curing and more about managing. Third, I’m no stronger or better than anyone else.
Six ways to cope with mental illness without professional help
Circling back to the second point I mentioned above. Getting better from any mental illness has a lot to do with management and less with trying to find a perfect cure. With years of stumbling around, here are a few tricks I use to make the standing-up process easier.
1. Surrender to the pain
I truly believe that in order to get better, you have to first accept you have a problem. I know, accepting in of itself sounds scary because it feels as though you are surrendering to your mental illness. And acceptance also means that you have to finally take responsibility of cleaning up the mess, even if it may be caused by other people or situations.
However, surrendering and taking responsibility is the only true way to take ownership of your life and your pain. Once you’ve acknowledged it, you can then take baby steps by educating yourself and seeking out the necessary resources to get better.
2. Brainwash yourself selectively
This means being picky about what you consume mentally, especially on social media. I personally like to anchor my feed towards self-help books, mental health podcasts, people sharing invaluable knowledge on YouTube, and a handful of puppy and baby videos.
While it may seem like I’m limiting my scope of information, I would say it’s more like a gluten-free diet for the mind. When your mind feels like it’s under the dumps, it’s sometimes because it’s understimulated by meaningful knowledge and overstimulated by unnecessary toxic information. If you’re already going to be on social media anyway, might as well make it a little more intellectually beneficial. Even better if you can do a social media detox challenge every once in a while.
3. Nurture the mind-body relationship
Especially important because mental illnesses often disconnect you from your physical body, three non-negotiables for me are:
- Movement: I don’t just mean exercise, just pure movement. It doesn’t matter if it’s going on a simple walk or doing chores. Or if being a CrossFit bunny is your thing, go for it. Ultimately, you want to get the blood flowing up from your body to your brain.
- Keep a no-brainer healthy lifestyle: I’m really emphasizing the “keep it simple” message here. Hank Green mentioned on his Tiktok the other day, “You shouldn’t need a high level of specificity to live a healthy lifestyle.” While you don’t need to count every single calorie or macro, you need to give your body what it needs to restore its daily expenditures. Even more so when having a mental health condition depletes you more quickly. And intuitively, it’s simply by getting adequate sleep, a good balance of nutrition, and of course some chocolate.
- Showers: Stepping into a cold shower is probably the quickest fix when I need to snap myself out of a ruminative episode. And a warm shower to calm me down when my nervous system is panicky and heightened. Feeling clean is a plus.
4. You don’t need a lifechanging reason to keep going
I may come off as an ambitious person. That I have a big purpose in life to keep me going. The truth is, my will to live isn’t strong at all. Suicidal ideation is not uncommon to me.
What keeps me going is simply being connected to life, and it doesn’t have to be my life per se. Actionable protocols for this includes going out for walks in nature, playing with your pets, talking to a friend, engaging in religion if you practice one, or meditating to get in tune with your breath.
5. Community
Challenging yourself to connect with people helps refresh your perspectives and forces you to temporarily step away from ruminative thoughts and harmful behaviors.
If you’re a socially anxious mess like me, online support groups and forums are a great place to start. One of my more unconventional practices is to attend group classes. I love this because I don’t necessarily have to talk to others, but am still engaging in the activity together with people.
6. Prepare for the worst
Mental illness relapse is often inevitable. Hence, the best way to deal with it is to welcome it with open arms. Just like how there are clear skies, followed by weeks of hurricanes. Even when the worst is over, there will be remnants of pain that will tag along with you for a long time. That’s why it’s important to build a strategy toolkit to always have on hand.
Closing thoughts
Although I have overcome quite a handful of my inner battles, I’m still finding my way out of the woods. There are still days when I’m completely dysfunctional. However, I’m glad that my toolkit has become rather handy and that I’ve recently gotten some professional help to tie up some loose ends.
I guess a little ending note for you is that acknowledging yourself for taking small steps really does have a compounding effect in the long run. Especially when years of pain are unlikely to be corrected in a few days, do give yourself time and forgiveness. The day will eventually come when storms become less frequent, or even better, you get better at weathering them.
