Struggling with Mental Health and Acceptance

At various points in life, people are faced with challenges and situations with outcomes that simply cannot be changed. This leads to people giving up, being consumed by anxiety or letting their mental health slowly unravel. There are people who develop anxiety and depression because of life events and rather than addressing their problems they choose to bury them. Some may even find that it may be too late for them to receive help because of how much they have tried to ignore their issues. By acknowledging your struggle with mental health, you are one step closer to acceptance and the availability of treatment. 

Radically accepting your unfortunate outcomes and dispositions does not mean that you’ve decided to give up or that you have failed. It simply means that you are able to accept realities you cannot control. This is similar to accepting that you may not be as mentally steadfast as you were before which is entirely acceptable. By acknowledging your emotional and mental states, you are able to give your problems less power and can move forward with your life (MHA National, 2022). This radical acceptance lets individuals create coping skills that effectively reduce feelings of guilt, anxiety and shame. Acceptance can also lead to lower stress levels and lower rates of mental illness and suicides (MHA National, 2022). 

When you’re able to accept therapy, it can aid you in dealing with the grief, sadness and shame that you may feel because of mental illnesses. Individuals can learn to love themselves again and learn how to navigate forward when dealing with peers in their social circles and unfamiliar situations they could possibly find themselves in (Mercalf, 2019). Accepting that your mental health may not be what is was only allows for you to grow into the person you want to be. Acceptance means becoming a changed individual who can thoroughly engage in healing and achieve whatever goals you set out for.