Picture this: Something is wrong…You feel anxiety and depression increasing
lately, but you cannot assign it to a specific stressor. Your feelings are increasingly
uncomfortable and difficult. What is making it worse is that you are not sure
what is really bothering you. Maybe you can identify several things that could
be triggers, but it is not clear in your mind what the real deal is. This state
of not knowing why you feel this way may even be making you feel even more anxious
and depressed.
Have you ever felt this way? Sometimes our mind wants a direct
answer to our struggles and problems as if a puzzle piece is missing and we need
to just identify the missing piece and then put everything back into place. As
if this will suddenly make everything all okay at once. Unfortunately, when living with chronic mental
health or substance use issues (or both) sometimes we may feel this way. So, if you find yourself grinding through
life in this way, then here are some thoughts of things to do especially when
you don’t really know what exactly is going on and what you should do to make
it better.
Not
everyone will be able to identify with what is being described here. However,
there are certain people who will know exactly what this phenomenon feels like.
Either way, when reviewing this information, try to take away what you believe will
be helpful to you mentally. Below are some thoughts to consider for recovery
and positive change in difficult situations:
Review and discuss
the following points:
· Knowing why
a problem is happening can be helpful in solving that problem. However, it is
not necessary to know the cause for you to start to get better. For example, if
someone breaks their arm, it can be helpful for the doctor to know how and why
the arm was broken, but it is not necessary for the doctor to know that in
order to fix it and put it in a cast for the arm to heal.
· Sometimes
mental health just “flares up” similar to other health conditions. Compare
depression, for instance, with a physical back problem. Sometimes someone with
a bad back will be sore from doing too much physically the day before but there
are other times their back may hurt for no identifiable reason (aka a sudden
flare up of back pain). The same is true of mental health issues like
depression. Sometimes a clearly identifiable event or situation can trigger a
depressive episode and sometimes it may feel like there is no specific reason for
a depressive “flare up”, just like the bad back example. For substance use issues
this can also happen with cravings that seem to come up without a clearly
understood trigger. Direct causes at times can be hard to identify.
· Part of
living with long-lasting or chronic mental illness or substance use issues involves
learning to keep moving forward during unexpected challenging episodes. The
issues we face may slow us down, but we can do a lot to keep unexpected
challenging life situations to stop us from making progress. Sometimes we may
bend without letting ourselves break.
· Acceptance
is key. Learning to accept that if you have mental illness or substance use
issue may be easier on some days will be than others. There may be good phases
and not so good ones. Accepting the fact that the change process has ups and downs
can prevent discouragement and disappointment. It may be helpful to accept the
fact that challenging episodes come up in life once in a while and sometimes even
unexpectedly.
