My Brain's Not Broken

Adjusting to changes in your mental wellness isn’t easy. There are so many ways things can change, and since every person has their own unique story and personality traits, there are a million directions these changes can go in. In part one of this post on making mental health adjustments, I focused on how to adjust to new or different symptoms of mental illness, and wrote about the effectiveness of adjusting to one symptom at a time. Today, I want to focus on making mental health adjustments that help us build a healthier lifestyle – not just adjusting to our symptoms, but adjusting to how mental health affects our well-being.

I don’t like to admit it, but my mental health challenges can have a hold on me sometimes. There are situations where I rationally know I shouldn’t feel a certain way (e.g. crying, feeling numb, insert your symptom here), but that doesn’t stop me from feeling every part of that emotion and ‘waiting it out’ until it’s over.

Sometimes I can feel it coming on and can put myself in the best situation possible to manage these symptoms. Other times, I’m just as surprised as everyone else about what’s happening. Either way, every time it happens I have a choice to make: I can either acknowledge it’s happening and try my best to deal with it, or I can try to get through my task so I can put myself in a better situation.

Recognizing this choice is one of the ways I’ve incorporated my mental health into my lifestyle. When I first started my mental health journey, mental health was the last factor to consider when I was making a decision. Now, it factors in to almost every decision I make.

For a long time I struggled with this because I thought it meant that I was weak in some way (this is a common misconception that people who manage depression or anxiety can have), but I learned along the way that wasn’t the reason. The reason mental health is such a big aspect of my decision-making is because I emphasize mental wellness so much that it impacts most of my daily decisions. I know what benefits my wellness and I know what could damage it, and I adjust accordingly.

Adjusting to who you are and what you need is is one of the most important aspects of mental health, and recognizing this is one of the biggest steps I’ve made toward my mental wellness.

How does your mental wellness impact the decisions you make? What are the ways you incorporate mental wellness into your lifestyle? Let me know in the comments!