Coping with mental health is hard. You start out and you feel sort of defeated. You don’t know how to deal with it, and it scares you. Then you move onto the time where you’re angry about it. Personally, I was angry because I felt like God had scolded me. Like I had done something wrong and this was my punishment. I felt like this shouldn’t have happened to me. Then you get really sad. It is this deep, soul wrenching pain that is not fun to deal with and it really make you hurt. I know I felt really lonely during this time. I felt like no one had experience what I had and I didn’t really have anyone to talk to, which made it even worse.
Then you finally get to the stage where you cope. You start to learn that there are ways to deal with it. Personally, when I was diagnosed with my depression and anxiety, I went through all of those stages and I didn’t understand how to cope with it. I was pretty young, like 9 or 10 when I truly realized that something was wrong and I was scared. I ended up just shutting down instead of coping properly. There are some really great ways to cope. Here is a list I found on psych central.com ( Linked down below):
- Know your limitation and strong points
- Figure out who will accept you
- Don’t let people treat you bad
- Get treatment
- Get support, and don’t let your illness define you
- Give back to your community
- Hold yourself accountable
- Gain wisdom from your setbacks
- Don’t compare yourself to others.
When I was diagnosed, I was doing everything wrong. I limited myself, I was comparing myself to those around, blaming myself for what was happening inside my head, I wasn’t learning from my past, and I wasn’t getting treatment.
Getting treatment, to me, was one of the biggest changes in my life. I started going to a therapist in the summer before I entered 10th grade. I started going and it was hard. I had to confess everything I had trapped inside of me for years to this person that I didn’t know, that didn’t know me and it was scary. Therapy is not for everyone, so I am not going to tell you that you HAVE TO go to therapy, but it is defiantly helpful to at least try it. See if you can connect to a therapist, or psychologist, or psychiatrist. Personally, it helped me to have a non-bias person to help me work through what was going on inside of me.
Coping for everyone is different. You don’t have to do anything on that list I listed above. Coping can just be taking time to yourself. Doing something you enjoy and not needing validation or confirmation that you can, and just doing something. I found photography. All the photos that you will find on this site have been taken by me. Photography was that outlet that let me get out of my own head and not worry about everything that was going on in my head.
Coping is what is going to ground you. It will help you to calm down and bring you through the stress and pain going on in your daily life. You don’t have to have a mental illness to cope. Anything difficult going on in your life, these steps I have provided should help you to deal with hard times in your life and maintain good mental health practices.
Link: https://psychcentral.com/blog/9-ways-to-cope-with-having-a-mental-illness/
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