May is mental health support and awareness month! One in four people will suffer from some form of mental health illness in any given year. One of the cruelest things about living with a mental illness is it quickly becomes your bully. Loving yourself when you have a mental illness is not always easy. It is already difficult enough to maintain self-love in a society that actively promotes insecurity and self-hate, but when you struggle with a mental illness, it is almost impossible to feel worthy of love. Here are some things to remember to help you regain perspective and love yourself.
❖ You have hopes, dreams, and goals. Mental illness can make those things seem difficult to realize, but that does not mean your hopes, dreams, and goals do not exist. Your life visions are achievable.
❖ You have your own set of values and sense of what is important to you. Having a mental illness does not mean you do not believe in anything.
❖ You have unique abilities and talents. Certain things are happening in your brain that can make life difficult, but there is more to you than those things.
❖ You have character strengths built within you. These strengths are a large part of who you are. Your mental illness is not.
❖ Allow yourself to fee but check the facts. Having a mental illness does not invalidate your feelings. You need to embrace your emotions and let yourself feel what you are feeling. At the same time, look at your own emotions objectively and think about the reality of the situation. You may believe your anxiety when it tells you that everyone hates you, but in reality, that is almost never the case.
❖ Even on your worst days, you are you!! You are surviving. You have a spark inside you that never stops glowing. Your mental illness might at times cast a shadow over your spark but it cannot extinguish your inner glow. By calling on your dreams, goals, values, abilities, talents, and character strengths, you can gradually make that spark ignite into a flame!!
If you are struggling with your mental health please schedule an appointment with one of our therapists for further information!