Celebrating the good and bad

This morning as I sat in my mindful movement class and we discussed the theme for the session I found myself thinking back on the year. In each class, we take 10 minutes to freely write anything that comes to mind and then let it go. The theme for today was celebration and we discussed the yoga positions we enjoyed and disliked. When I started writing so much came out and too soon time was up so I decided to write about it some more for all of you. I hope that many of you can relate, find encouragement and possibly look at things slightly differently after the read.

As you will all know through the posts I have been doing this year, it has not been a great one for me. Starting in February when I had a Bipolar/Borderline episode and the continuing struggles following that. The death of my grandfather while I was still in clinic and then soon after the suicide of a close friend. Suicidal tendencies, darkness, rage, anxiety and continually feeling overwhelmed are some of the intense emotions that fluctuated in and out of my life over the year along with medication changes including unwelcome side effects, lack of sleep and general apathy towards life. But, I also travelled overseas and had my first holiday, watched friends get married, developed a love for camping, found enjoyment for physical activity again and many other things. So here are my celebrations for the year.

The first thing I have cause to celebrate is the amazing people that surround me. The support, understanding, patience and love I have received this year has been phenomenal. Not once through everything that has happened have I felt alone, unloved or misunderstood. My family, although not always understanding, continue to be by my side and support me in every way that they can. My friends have stood by me in every single moment, shown immense patience with my fluctuating mood and given me space or company as I have needed it. The company I work for has held my job for me, given me flexibility and allowances as I need them and always encourage me to put my mental health first. This year has pushed me to be honest with the people around me and has taught me that when I am open and share what is truly going on for me people have more compassion and understanding than when I try to hide everything. So another thing here to celebrate would be my own growth in opening up and sharing.

Which leads nicely into the next item to celebrate, the self-awareness I have accumulated over the year. After 6 years of relative stability, I really thought that I had achieved great self-awareness and understanding of my mental illnesses. The truth is, that it was simply easier for a while, that the understanding I had achieved was just preparing me for the next step in my own development and realisation. I learnt so much this year about myself, my mental illnesses and my relationships with other people. I have realised over the year that those of us that struggle with mental challenges may never get everything 100% sorted but each episode we go through each fluctuation in mood teaches us a little more (if we let it) and sets us up for some further life lessons. This year I have finally acknowledged the introverted side of myself, I have learnt that it is okay to not be okay and that I am allowed to say no to things because I am not in the space to deal with them. I have learnt about a deep inner strength that helps me survive the moments that seem impossible to get through. Lastly, I have realised that I am not alone, there are so many people who love me unconditionally and I have an amazing God that never walks away.

I also got to really experience travelling this year with the most brilliant trip to the United Kingdom. I got to hang out with old friends, make new ones and enhance relationships that I have missed. Travelling to a different country and experiencing a new culture was beyond my wildest dreams. Walking the streets, eating the food (some of which I will never eat again), shopping in the malls and markets – WOW, just WOW. My time in the United Kingdom was an experience I will never forget, an experience that rejuvenated me, an experience that changed me. I fell in love with another culture, I regained an interest in things outside my sphere and I learnt that I deserve to have time to enjoy myself. I cannot wait to go again and it won’t be too long.

This year I started new things, joined new groups and met new people. I am so grateful for these new things in my life this year and I need to acknowledge that I would not have any of these without the bad moments and mental challenges that I went through. I love the idea that we can celebrate the bad along with the good. So often we only look at the negative as being negative and don’t look any further to see the positives that it has brought into our lives. It has been a hard year but I cannot say that it has been a bad year. Too much good has come out of the year, too many new experiences, lessons and relationships for me to ever look back and wish to forget 2019.

I restarted my blog this year and it has been such a privilege to share this journey with every person who has taken the time to read them. I haven’t quite stuck to the schedule I set myself but I am happy with the benefits I have gained from sharing my life with known and unknown people. All I have wanted to achieve is a place to put my voice out there for people to know they are not alone and for others to gain a little insight into the lives of people they love who struggle. 2020 is going to be an interesting year. I have some interesting projects I would like to start, some old projects I will be more active in and I am sure there will be many ups and downs to negotiate along the way. This is where I leave you for this year and look forward to sharing more of my journey with you all next year.

Some of the best moments of the year

What is acceptance?

After living with a diagnosed mental illness for over 15 years you would think that I had learnt to accept my fate by now. The thing is, I don’t know if we ever fully accept something that affects our lives on a daily basis. Sure, we have moments of acceptance that last for periods of time but then something happens and we are often back to being angry, or disappointed or sad again when we think about the fact that we have to live with it for the rest of our lives.

Right now I am in a phase of having to learn to accept that I am mentally ill again. Having to accept that I can never be certain what tomorrow will hold for me and having to accept that I am not in control and never will be. At first, this was hard in itself to accept until I starting thinking more about what acceptance really is and how it works, especially within the realm of mental illness. I thought I would lay my thought process out here in a blog and see what others thought.

When we talk about acceptance in the terms of psychology we are referring to a person’s assent to the reality of a situation or recognition of a process or condition. But the question in my mind is, do we ever accept things that affect our daily living fully? I don’t know if we can, I don’t know if it’s possible to just accept that this is our lives forever. I don’t know if I want to. When we accept something like this fully it’s almost as though we are giving up. But, if we never accept it, then we live our lives controlled by this illness, this hurt and this pain. So what do we do, how do we accept something yet not give up hope?

I was diagnosed with Depression when I was 20, this was later turned into a diagnosis of Bipolar Mood Disorder and a side serving of Borderline Personality Disorder. After that came the professional acknowledgement of General Anxiety Disorder, Addiction and Compulsive Obsessive Personality Disorder as well. Of course, there are other things all mixed up in there like self-harm, ADD, trauma, negative schemas and more but in the end, it all comes down to 1 thing really. I suffer from mental illness, badly enough that it is actually regarded as a mental disability. Luckily, with an amazing support team around me, family and friends I manage to live a relatively normal functioning adult life.

I do this because I have found a relative amount of acceptance without giving up hope. I will never come to fully accept that I have to live with mental illness for the rest of my life. Every time I have an episode or my medication stops working, whenever I land up in a psych ward again or am just having a bad day I get angry. I feel like I was given the short end of the stick and that life is unfair. I have to go through the whole process of acceptance again and I think this is alright. I think that it’s okay to have moments when I am angry or want to give up and stop trying as long as they are only moments and I don’t get stuck in a full-blown pity party.

So here are my thoughts. We learn to accept things to a point, a place where we accept that we have a mental illness but not that our life has to be controlled by it. In truth, for those of us who suffer from mental illness, it feels like our lives are controlled by the illness. We take medication every day, we have set appointments with psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists and counsellors. We regularly land up in psych wards and hospitals and much of it is completely out of our hands but regardless of all of these things we cannot control, we can control and take action to manage our illness in our own way. I choose to listen to my psychiatrist and stick to the prescriptions she gives me. I work hard in my therapy sessions and try to apply changes where and when I can. I have control over these things. I have control over waking up in the morning and feeling like crap but getting out of bed anyway and focussing on doing the next right thing at that moment.

The acceptance of my illness comes and goes. I find peace for a while and then land up in a war with myself again but after that acceptance reappears and I keep trying. I never give up even when I want to. When I see no point of continuing to battle an illness I cannot control. An illness that changes my mood and alters the way my brain works from day to day and in those moments I want to stop trying, I want to give up. But I don’t, I know it’s hard and there are days I don’ want to get out of bed or even talk to anyone. In these times I follow lists which tell me what the next right thing to do is because I cannot remember by myself.

So here’s my opinion: I will never fully accept that I have a mental illness, I will never fully accept that I have no control over my moods and thoughts. I will never fully accept because that is when I will give up. I will accept I have an illness I am not always in control of, I will accept that it is not always my fault when things go wrong and I will accept that I will always need help. I will not give up, I will fight to the bitter ends but I will also acknowledge that I am chronically ill and not always at my best. This is how I understand acceptance and how I keep fighting through every bad day and mood.