As anyone who has a mental health diagnosis will tell you there's the illness and treatment, and then there's all the stigma around the illness. How other people feel about your illness directly affects your ability to recover.
Depending on what you are diagnosed with there are symptoms to manage and the family and friends or even strangers feelings or prejudices about the illness you are trying to manage. Much to your shock you may meet professional, educated people who judge you, misdiagnose, over-medicate, and are rushed for time. People who are trained to help you will fail you (because they are human, no judgement at all) They may even give you unsolicited advice or judge you quite harshly for your illness or treatment. Friends and lovers may fall away, and suddenly you feel very much alone.
The issue with a mental health diagnosis is the therapist is reliant on your self-awareness to be able to locate the wound site and identify the damage in order to plan for your recovery. . This is why mindfulness is so important. It helps you put a language around your mental feelings. This is not a landscape that many people explore because people may judge you as self-indulgent or wingeing, or not moving on. For some reason talking about your mental feelings is a problem for some people. Mental feeling is explored extensively in mindfulness meditations. Mindfulness will help you identify the problem that you don't really want to see, not to be mean, but because your self-awareness is what is going to help you identify and manage your symptoms and even live free of them.
Often the problem is with this level of insight is that there is no one to tell, except a professional. because of the stigma surrounding mental health and spiritual awareness. It feels like the burden is on those with a mental illness to explain to others what managing a mental illness actually looks like.
First of all, its incredibly time consuming managing the mental and emotional layer of your being, which is why many people avoid it until they have a problem. Symptoms often hit out of nowhere and you might need to get home quickly or to a safe place. You are hesitant to talk about your issues for fear of traumatising someone else, or your bursting at the seems to tell anyone who might listen and offer some good advice (ie oversharing) because you honestly don't know what to do.
Other things about managing a mental health issue, You may no longer like surprises, or improptu plans due to the above reasons which can seriously affect your social life. People may think that your just sad and just talking about yourself. People will tell you 'just don't think about it' (so frustrating) And finally, People will misunderstand your mental health symptoms as character flaws. This one I think hurts the most. People may think your rude, arrogant, abrupt, cold, angry or sad. And what other people think about you has an energy to it that one has to be aware of but not get involved in. Awareness = Detached
Mindfulness is a place where you feel free. In order to get there you have to become very calm and still, focussing on just one thing, the touch of the breath.as it comes in, and the touch of the breath as it goes out. Stay there for as long as you can. Suspended between thoughts and unattached to even the next breath. Fully in the present moment without judgement or attachment of any kind. Practice this and you will develop an internal landscape which you can describe to any treating practitioner. Its like developing a new platform through which to speak about your inner experience. Developing a language around your symptoms and how you manage them is so incredibly helpful in the ongoing recovery from mental health illness.
Mindfulness is so powerful in helping you develop a relationship with the 'inner self', In mindfulness practice that we develop that relationship through the observation of sensation and observing without judgment, very peacefully. You develop observation of sensation in yoga postures which comes very naturally, or observe sensation in meditation which is slightly more difficult. This is why regular practice of yoga is so fundamental in helping people develop towards good mental wellbeing.
Enjoy your practice...
in kindness,
Kyla
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