Mental Health Recovery: A Journey of Ups and Downs

Jul 20

Like many of you out there, I can be a bit hard on myself. I am perfectionist, of course, and I often find that I pressure myself to do everything without flaws. From writing and rewriting words on paper a dozen times to practicing in my head what I am going to say out loud, it feels like there is no room for error.

Still, I am human which means I stumble quite a bit. My handwriting might sometimes resemble chicken scratch and what I recite in my head doesn't always come out that way. It can be something like when I am thinking of saying "How are you?" and "What's up" and suddenly I am saying "What's you how?"

But most of the time, what comes out of my mouth is not even English. It's just loads of gibberish with a side salad of stuttering and embarrassment for a couple of minutes.

Lately, this perfectionist attitude has been really crushing my mental health journey that started roughly a year ago.

Last summer, I started to see a therapist after it got to the point where I did not want to suffer in silence anymore. It took a lot of encouragement, as I am very much a person who likes to do things on her own, but I went a few times to test out the waters. I genuinely wanted to get better and at least see if what I was experiencing was real.

But after a few sessions, I just didn't feel like I was fully benefiting from these sessions which led to me not going anymore.

Thus, my self-proclaimed journey of solo mental healing began.

To be quite honest, it was a relatively simple task at first. I knew what the things were in my life that made me upset, and I knew what made me happy. I began to exercise daily, be okay with being alone and immerse myself in my writing. Even though I still had a few rough patches, things were generally okay. I was feeling the most confident in my skin than I had ever before, and it honestly felt great. I was on a journey upwards that really was like "living my best life."

But with these happy feelings came worries that those bad feelings would return. Especially within these past few months, there have been increasing moments where I just felt like complete shit. It often would last a couple of hours, maybe a few days or a week, and it really felt like I was falling back into depression. Sometimes there would be a reason, then sometimes these bad feelings would come out of thin air. It could happen when I'd wake up, or it could happen in the middle of the day at random.

Whatever the cause, these rifts in my self-care journey worsened my mood because they just didn't make sense. I had been feeling great for so long. Why was I getting like this again? I had so much to look forward to in the future, and I had grown so much within the past year. I wanted to keep moving forward, not go backwards by feeling depressed again.

Fortunately, I began seeing a therapist this summer after someone recognized my behavior and urged me to take care of myself. Not gonna lie, I really did not want to go. I still had the memories of feeling anxious and unfulfilled after my first attempts, and I did not want to have that happen again.

But alas, I still had reasons why therapy sounded like a good idea. I knew I was not focusing on myself in the healthiest of ways. I still had moments of suffering that were pretty scary, moments where I had thought about resorting to my old methods of coping. I had also been thinking about going back to a therapist for a couple of months, before these serious mood changes even occurred and despite my previous experience with therapy.

So, with some words of encouragement, I started therapy once a week. I am still terrified to go sometimes, even now, because there is always that bit of tension behind talking about your emotions, and I worry that I do not explain what's going on my head well enough.

However, through this journey, I have been able to learn a lot about myself and about mental health in general.

1. Focusing on your mental health isn't an upwards slope, but rather a journey of ups and downs.

For so long, I was wrapped in this mentality that I needed to keep being okay, because I had been okay for so long. I didn't want to take steps backwards by having these bad days, because then it felt like my cycle of self-care was broken. Like I could potentially fall back into depression. And now that I had an "audience" that read my posts about feeling better and confident, I didn't want to admit that I wasn't 100% all of the time.

But that's not what life is. It's not constant progression, and it's perfectly okay to have those bad days. I mean, we all have thoughts and feelings. We all are not always okay, and it's perfectly normal to admit that. There is nothing wrong with that. All that matters is how you feel about who you are in this moment of your life, and I can honestly say I know I am better than I was, but I am still not perfect.

But it's that subtle growth that keeps me going.

2. I don't give myself nearly enough credit as I should.

A few weeks ago, I didn't write a post for this blog and that killed me inside, because I had been experiencing a creative rut and just didn't have the inspiration to write. I saw that as a failure, because now I had expectations and I was letting people down.

But in the grand scheme of things, I didn't want to let that one "failure" stop me. I have been writing on this blog for nearly two years. Sure, I have had four-month gaps here and there, but I am not letting that stop me from still going at it and that's something to pat myself on the back for.

With this mental health journey, there have been times where I have thought about self-harming again and I would beat myself up for even thinking about it, but I haven't and that's something to be proud of. And I still have bad days. That's normal, like I said.

But I have come so far on this journey. From someone who didn't want to be here to someone who wants to be here to pursue her dreams, that seems like a pretty big thing I should give myself props for.

We are all on this adventure together, trying to figure out how to navigate what is going on inside of our heads and deal with what we cannot control in our environment. There is no shame in reaching out for help just as there is no shame in reaching out for help again when you think you've conquered your demons.

What's important is doing what you think will get you to that place you want to be and discovering your inner peace which can often only come from experiencing the bad things in life or the things that you may view as "failures."

Personal growth is exactly that — personal. Each person is different when it comes to their mental health journey, and no one is perfect at it. All you can do is take it day by day and give yourself credit for how much you have grown in your lifetime.

Your friend,
Jane