Today, I want to talk about assumptions. Assumptions are part of our daily life, and they can happen at any time. We make assumptions off the biggest and smallest of clues, and they can largely depend on our mood at the time. While they can be harmless, they can also lead us down a path that is challenging and confusing if we’re not careful. A very frustrating things about assumptions is how unintentional they can be. Without meaning or trying to, you can assume the worst, and that can change the trajectory of your day. But in the past few weeks, I’ve learned a few lessons about assumptions, and I’d like to share one today.
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Balancing Accomplishments with Wellness
Earlier this week, I investigated why people (myself included) downplay their accomplishments. There was a lot I learned from writing the post, but the most important thing was this: people don’t do things for no reason. There is something behind the way we are, even if we can’t see it or understand it. I don’t always know why I do the things I do, but that’s okay. That doesn’t mean I can’t work toward my goals, toward things I’ve dreamed about. But it’s not easy. What can be challenging is acknowledging where our mental health is at – and how we can continue to strive for more.
One of the things I love most about people is the variety of the hopes and dreams we have. Our goals are as unique as we are; the road to success for one person can look entirely different from someone else. Not only do we have different goals, but we also have different ideas about how we can meet those goals. A natural approach for me could be a completely foreign idea to someone else, and vice versa.
If you’re reading this and thinking that I’m stating the obvious, and you may be right. But when people talk about achievements and accomplishments, we don’t always include context. You and I might have the same end goal, but getting there could look different for each of us. And not only is that okay, but it’s a necessary reminder if we want to maintain mental wellness.
When we fall short of our goals, it’s natural to feel dejected and down on ourselves. An added challenge, I’ve learned over the years, is the non-stop comparing I do when I feel like this. I compare my situation to other situations, I compare myself to other people. Sometimes I don’t even compare my situation to one that’s similar. The only difference is that someone succeeded and I failed. Logic goes out the window, and hurt feelings are the only thing left. But when we fail to recognize these things, we legitimize them. We build a flawed thought process that is damaging to our self-esteem, and that can grow over time.
Sometimes doing things in life can feel like a lose-lose situation. We’re frustrated when we can’t accomplish things, and dissatisfied when we do. Everything is too good for us but at the same time, nothing is ever good enough. We have an instinct to compare ourselves to the world around us. These comparisons can cost us our mental health and wellness.
But knowing this instinct and understanding this conflict matters. So much of my experience with mental health is retroactive. I can recognize things that I’ve done or experienced and notice patterns, but it’s all in the past. Knowing what’s going on in my brain in real-time feels like an impossible task, but it’s one I’m improving on every day.
In order to balance my accomplishments with my mental wellness, I need to be present with myself. I need to recognize what’s going on with my thoughts and feelings, and how that impacts me in the moment. And I’m not able to do that in every moment, but I can do it more than I used to. In a world where this was a foreign concept to me when my depression was as bad as ever, I call that progress. And at this point in my mental health journey, that’s good enough for me.
Adjusting The Way We Talk About Mental Health
If you’re a longtime reader of My Brain’s Not Broken, you know my fascination with words and language. I have posts all about mental health terms and why we use the words we do when we talk about mental health. This blog started as a way for me to tell my story, and there is no story without writing one word after the other.
My story has evolved over the years, and I think a big reason for that is because my language has evolved. I have a different way of talking about mental health than I did in years past, and I know I’m better for it. But making those adjustments – even just recognizing that they need to be made – is a challenge.
For most of my life, I didn’t realize how self-critical my thoughts were. I thought everyone had thoughts about themselves. Positive, negative, somewhere in the middle; that’s just the way things were. What I’d failed to realize is the impact of the world around me. I’d read, listen to or watch people use unfamiliar words without any context. Sometimes I was curious and asked questions but otherwise, I was on my own to figure out what they meant.
Looking back, I don’t like how I talked about mental health for most of my life. Now I realize that writing that at 29 is much different than at 49 or 59, but still. At least two-thirds of my life (possibly longer) were spent not knowing how to talk about certain issues.
Until I started having my own struggles, mental health definitely felt like one of them. I couldn’t connect hearing someone talk about their anxiety with the anxious thoughts I was having. I didn’t understand that the depression a person was describing was identical to thoughts I’d had, or feelings I was familiar with. There was language people were using that didn’t make sense because I’d never heard it before. And rather than ask questions, I made assumptions. I tried to go off what I already knew, instead of learning things that could have helped me learn more about myself.
There are plenty of valid reasons to adjust the way we talk about mental health. Society hasn’t always been able to have healthy discussions about mental health, and it shows in how we talk about it. We use words that stigmatize and phrases that disrespect because that’s what we’re used to.
Language persists when people use the same words and phrases over and over, but that doesn’t make it okay. It’s time we challenge that language for what it is. We deserve to be kinder with ourselves and gentler with our struggles. Change isn’t easy and it doesn’t happen overnight, but it is absolutely worth it. And like many things when it comes to mental health, this change happens one moment, one decision at a time.
Now, over to you! How do you think our world can adjust the way we talk about mental health? What are some of your suggestions? Let me know in the comments!
My Brain's Not Broken 