How To Be Patient With Your Mental Health

Mental health issues can be challenging but they can also be rewarding. It may sound weird but the process of healing and actually achieving recovery can leave those who struggle with mental health issues feeling more achieved and empowered than before.

The issue with mental health challenges, though, is that they can test patience. While it’s very possible to make great progress, it can be quite annoying to go through the tedious process of dealing with and recovering from mental health issues.

If you deal with mental health issues, it’s important to remain patient in the face of them. Maintaining your composure and having the ability to tolerate while making efforts to heal can be tremendously useful.

Ways to stay patient with yourself through mental health troubles

Here are some ways to be patient with yourself if you are experiencing mental health troubles.

1. View yourself as a survivor, not a victim

No matter where you stand in your recovery journey and whether you are going through a flare-up or not, it is important not to fall into a victim mindset. If you view yourself as a victim, it’s time to change the narrative surrounding your journey.

You are not a victim, you are a survivor. Mental health challenges are diseases and when someone survives a disease they should be celebrated. Even if they barely scrape by and are struggling, there is a reason to celebrate because this is surviving.

Viewing yourself as a survivor rather than a victim can motivate you to keep getting better. After all, if you survived 100 days (for example), with mental health issues, how about pushing through and being a survivor for a 101 days? This can be any length of time; days, weeks, months, years – it doesn’t matter. Be a survivor as long as you need to, just don’t be a victim.

2. Measure progress, not just end results

Healing emotionally is very often a gradual process. Yet there may be some fixation out there on the end result more than the path to the result. Progress is equally (if not more) important. It’s crucial to remember that and keep it in the back of your mind if ever you get frustrated that you still haven’t fully healed.

If you get better, then worse, then better again, then worse again, guess what? Your next course of action should be trying to get better and planning for what you’ll do if you get worse. Make an effort to make the next day better. If you allow yourself to heal just slightly every day you are making great progress which is better than nothing.

3. Have a recovery strategy and change it if needed

First off, it is important to have a recovery strategy for how you will heal. You may want to do some research online or work with a therapist. Regardless, your strategy should be something that works for you but it also shouldn’t be firmly set unless it always works for you without fail. Your strategy should adapt to your needs and circumstances.

Maybe you’ve been getting better but you just want something to really push you forward. Make an addition to your recovery strategy to help with that. Knowing you have a strategy that changes when needed can be reassuring, help motivate you to keep going and help with patience.

4. Remember having flare-ups is okay

The thing with mental health woes is they can be bad on some days, worse on others and okay on others still. There is a such thing as mental health flare-ups wherein symptoms get worse. Even doing the most simple things can be hard on flare-up days. But it’s important to understand that these are normal and they are no reason to lose your patience with the healing process in the event you encounter them.

You don’t have to sit passively and do nothing while you go through one. You can still make efforts to heal and ease the intensity of a flare-up or implement techniques to prevent them. However, you can mix taking action with letting them run their course. Remember that going through highs and lows or ups and downs is okay. There’s no need to expect yourself to just continue on an upward path the whole journey.

5. Live as fully as you can despite how you feel

It’s no secret that mental health issues can be a huge obstruction to fully enjoying life but you can try your best to live despite them. Make your life as fulfilling and enjoyable as possible even if it seems nearly impossible to do so. Heal while you live life, don’t live your life just to heal. You should absolutely implement healing techniques, but live your life while you do. Try to achieve something that resembles normalcy while you work through tough times, even if it feels and is difficult.