Mental Health Distress. You Are Your Own Teacher And Healer.

I'm amazed most days by the changes in the last year, the acceptance and even comfort with DID, and the plans that are being put into place.

One year ago today I posted something that included this:

"I've been less desperately suicidal today. Only said out loud that I want to die half a dozen times. That counts as a very good day."

A year on, that would count as far worse than the very bad days.

Moral: When your mental health distress reaches a level at which you can't see hope, can't see answers, can't see that things can ever be better, struggle to make a list of one positive, and conclude that death would be better, you need to seek more objective evidence.

Because hope is still there. Answers are there. Things can be better. And there are always positives. Just like the sun still shines at night and, on a cloudy day, life still shines.

Keep going though it's sometimes ridiculously hard to get through a week, a day, an hour. You are a powerful being with light inside you, deserving of compassion, and though it may be staggeringly difficult you can triumph and bask in sunlight again. It's even better, because metaphorical sunscreen isn't going to be needed!

I nearly died several times last year. So close. But I didn't. In retrospect, staying alive was a much better choice. There is always a choice. Always. Sometimes it feels like there isn't but there is. Always.

Keep going.

I promise there will be a day on which you rejoice and even dance because you've endured and worked and dug in with gritted teeth through overwhelming distress.

A year ago my brain was still adjusting to being off all psychiatric drugs. A year ago I'd been diagnosed with DID and was still struggling to cope with everything that meant. I'd just been told the waiting list for therapy was rather longer than I'd initially been told. And I fell apart.

I knew I'd die. Unless I worked. Every single day. Worked to live. Worked to get myself out every day, at least somewhere. I knew I'd die unless I took responsibility for myself. Worked to find some structure. Worked to radically accept DID and everything else.

Overcoming mental health distress and the effects of trauma are, in the end, our own responsibility. Not the responsibility of outside agencies, psychiatry, psychology, friends, and family though each may support in some way. Even psychiatry - which you know I have strong critical views about.

In the end we have to heal ourselves and nobody, no matter how kind or patient or wise, can do it for us. We should never offer that responsibility to another. Not a religion. Not a god. Not a doctor. Not an expert. Not a guru. Too often we're conditioned to think we have no hope until the religious or secular priest-king steps in.

Just this week I've read many posts in a mental health group in which all hope is ascribed to the God of the medical model, as if healing is impossible without the direct intervention of the expert. In the same group I've read many posts despairing that there is no hope because the expert has made things worse. "I am lost without the expert." "With the expert I am lost." And so despair increases, as it did for me and for many others.

Take back the responsibility and the power. You have them in your brilliant humanity, full of contradiction and pain, reason and relief.

In the final analysis, we are guru enough. Though we may learn much from others we have to teach ourselves. We are healer enough. Last year I took back that power for myself balancing self determination with the wisdom that no person stands alone. It's true I've listened and learned from many others but I am the agent of my mind and unless I become the active force their wisdom can't help at all. And unless I find my own wisdom I cannot be truly free.

I still came so close to suicide. Mental health distress isn't easy. How much of an understatement is that?!

It's not been the easiest year but it's been worth it. I stand. I live. I am glad. I am grateful. More, I learn to begin to live the enigma:

I am that I am.