Hanging by a thread

When you are diagnosed with a serious or long term illness, whether that’s physical or mental, no one warns you that you end up grieving. I think all of us hold an image in our heads of our future. What it will look like, what WE will be like, 1 year, 5 years, or even 10 years down the line. And when we receive our diagnoses, its like that future version of ourselves dies.

We have to mourn them.

You’ll go through the four stages of Denial, Anger, Bargaining, and Depression in some order. You might even repeat the stages time and again until you can finally reach the Fifth stage of Acceptance.

Acceptance that you have a condition. Acceptance that your future may not look like you once thought it would. Acceptance that this is who you are Now.

But in terms of Mental Health, until you reach that stage of Acceptance, actual treatment doesn’t work. Before then even trying to manager the symptoms is tough. During my denial stages I came off my medication, I screamed at the whole world during Anger. I looked for the magic pill or that one thing that if I could complete it, find that missing piece, then I would be cured. God knows I became Depressed that I was depressed.

For me it took 10 years to reach the stage of Acceptance, I jumped back and forth between the over 4 stages so many times I lost count. But I finally realised that this is my reality. I have Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I have Depression, I am Autistic and I have a host of physical Ailments that inevitably end up accompanying long term mental health issues.

So many people fail in their treatments because they are not yet ready for them. Instead of putting all of our effort into helping those who have finally reached acceptance, why are we not supporting people from the beginning in the way they need. We have many Grief therapies and strategies that could no doubt be adapted to help people who are being diagnosed with life changing conditions, we could help people progress through the stages with less violence than I experienced going it alone. And yet we stick to our quotes of “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink” and “you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved”

We all want saving and help and support, it just needs to be the right kind at the right time.