Heading in the Wrong Direction

Heading in the Wrong Direction

This post is not meant to diagnose, treat, or save you from mental illness, if you or someone you love is in danger, please get help. You can text HOME to 741741 to be connected with a crisis counselor. I personally have

How do you know if you are in fact heading in a healthy direction? How can you decide if the coping skills you are using are good for your recovery? There are a few questions you can ask to evaluate your vices.

1. Does your coping skill hurt yourself or others around you? If so how severely?
2. Is it or can it be considered a risky behavior?
3. Is this coping skill sustainable long term? Or will it eventually become an unhealthy vice?
4. How much time am I spending on this coping skill?
5. Is this coping skill taking me away from leading a safe, healthy life? Or is it helping keep me alive.

This is where unhealthy coping skills can get tricky, because we all have them. Some of us smoke, drink, do recreational drugs, partake in sexual promiscuity, participate in high action stunts or sports, long jarring and attention seeking posts on social media, or just plain begin displaying attention seeking behavior. All of these are reasons to give yourself and your coping skills and evaluation. Behaviors are different for everyone, what might be risky to some, may not be to others. For example, if base jumping is something you like to do and it is part of your personality to be a dare devil, then it may be a hobby or coping skill for you.

Some people may be able to self reflect and look deep into their own coping skills to discover what and why they use those skills to maintain a healthy baseline. Some people aren’t quite ready to discover why they should change anything about their lives to become more mentally healthy. Mental health is very similar to physical health; in this case and in many, mental health and physical health go hand in hand. Being able to reflect and say “this is unhealthy, something needs to change”, is difficult no matter how you slice it.

The real time and call for change that should go off in your psyche, is if one or more people are genuinely telling you that something needs to change, that they are worried for you safety and that they will do anything they can to support you in the change. Or when you, yourself, finally hit your rock bottom and are willing to look for a different avenue for life, rather than continuing down the wrong path. For most people it comes down to a conflict with morals, some people are perfectly fine compromising their physical health in order to cope with whatever illness they may be struggling with. Self medication rates are extremely high and to some are seen as normal.

So how can you decide if you are ready to make that change? No one else can do it for you. You may have everyone in your life telling you that something is wrong. But it takes a lot of time to reflect on your brain and tell yourself: “it’s okay that I am not okay, it’s okay that my brain is lying to me. And it’s okay to get help from others in order to change this mindset in which I find myself.” Many true addicts, for example, are not able to kick a habit even if they do decide to change; because the decision for change has to be made over and over, and over and over, again. Until saying no to the thing that is your unhealthy becomes a new natural reaction. The will to change is like a body of water, sometimes the tides swirl in your favor, sometimes the surf is calm and forgiving, and sometimes it feels like you are a tug boat in a hurricane.

What we need to do is be willing to, first and foremost, identify that what we are doing is unhealthy. That is step one.

-A Manic Monday