Learning How To Get Up Again

Living with a mental illness is probably one of the most humbling and trying experience one can go through.  Everyone around you has no problem reacting to someone with a physical ailment, but when they know you are dealing with mind issues the reactions you get are at best checkered.  Its so hard then to find real on honest people in your life that just get it.

I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I have had to make a "comeback" after being diagnosed.  Whether it was just getting back to a medication regiment, crawling back to work, getting back in the classroom, or just having the guts to be visible in your own neighborhood, or hang out with friends again.  Especially early in a diagnosis these hurdles these comebacks are so filled with anxiety and terror, and its very hard for us to communicate that responsibly to those close around us.

There is so much resistance you have to pull through just to tread water emotionally in those early months and years.  Sometimes the process of rebuilding is something painful we try everyday. But thankfully it does get easier. But it is hard, when life is back to square one, when you are away from friends, school, or the job you used to be able to handle.  You just want things to be routine, but having a mental illness shatters that reality for the time being.

Its not that you have to lower your expectations to find a new routine, its just that you have to adjust to medications that make you too tired, too hungry or too irritable all the time.  Your sleep schedule many times is thrown out of kilter, as it takes time to figure out what your medications are doing, and finding the right dosage.  And for some of us we have to make these adjustment on the fly because the job demands it or we are still working through school.  And let me tell you, on the fly adjustments are scary, because the world doesn't stop for you.

For me it took me almost two years to get the right living adjustments, (sleeping, eating exercise), the workload, and the medications all down before I could handle the life I had previous to diagnosis and treatment.  Its a process that looking back I am thankful I will never have to do again.  Living at that time everything was so simple, so basic, so survival mode.  For me my world stopped as I had to make my life and my treatment get along with each other.

Crucial to my success was the fact I had a definable long term goal.  For me getting back to the university was motivation enough to stick with the grueling treatment and therapy.  You have to have a goal that is significant enough for you to go through what is a very hit and miss process treatment and adjusting to treatment.  Your friends goals, or your parents goals are fine, but until you have goals of your own for your life, other people's motivations are not enough to see you through the process.

I want to encourage you, you will get through what you are dealing with now.  If you don't have a goal or a vision for what two months looks like, just start with tomorrow.  No matter what you may have lost, no matter how many times you have to start over, you can.  And the life you want on the other side of your current struggle is attainable.  The job, the schooling, the friends, the relationships are all within your reach.  I wish you the greatest of success in your journey.

Thank You Readers!