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In the hospital, we treat various forms of mental illness. Some may have depression, others have mania or agitation. Perhaps they have something metabolic underlying to explain their altered mental status. Whatever the case, patients present to the hospital, whether through their own volition or not, to receive treatment. Isn’t it our job to make sure they receive the best proper treatment? When people say there are people who’ve gone through tougher situations, I call it bullshit. Everyone has their own demons they deal with. Their situation is unique to them, and it shouldn’t be anyone’s authority to demean or diminish what they have gone through. I wish everyone would treat others well or without bias, but judgement is ultimately inevitable. The world is not without discrimination, nor will it ever disappear. Everyone is coping. No matter what they are or what they do, we all have things we are dealing with. Some have problems with basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter. Others have trouble with money, employment, or addictions. Many have problems with living day to day. As a nurse, it becomes very common to hear these stories from people who have gone through unfortunate circumstances. Add a couple of comorbidities and you have a recipe for bad luck. Blame fate or a higher power, it’s all coping at the end of the day or your life.

You start thinking back to good times to escape the drudgery of the present or anxiety of the future, but some had a terrible past that nostalgia becomes some form of PTSD. I find that very sad. How some people I see not only in the hospital but also in real life don’t have any legs for example. When you start to imagine just how long they spent living like that, it becomes so depressing. You imagine what caused them to start living like that under those conditions. It makes you think what a crazy world we live in to still have people like that silently suffering. Some disabilities people have are not self-inflicted. When you are born with a self-limiting disease, it becomes hard not to become nihilistic and blame the world for all your problems. It becomes a loop of negativity pervading your thoughts, actions, and emotions. We would hope we don’t spend too much time underneath such prolonged stress, but many don’t have the leisure or ability to decide for themselves. This type of circumstance can only be called a tragedy. When faced with a tragedy, it takes immense willpower not to be affected personally by it and make it your entire being, but I don’t know how much one person can accomplish by themselves without the help of others.

Whether we need to trust the healing process or enlist the help of others, putting ourselves into a different mindset or way of perceiving proves valuable. Some have the option of voluntarily admitting themselves into the hospital. During these sessions, patients attend group therapy meetings and discuss important strategies to avoid negative thoughts and outcomes. Just the act of being around others and having a community of people wanting to get better provides an environment needed to heal. At times it helps not to take things too seriously and focus on what matters. Ultimately, we try to practice mindfulness and stay present in the moment. Changing ourselves is sometimes the only variable we can change, and given how multifactorial life is, we owe it to ourselves to being reborn, so to speak. The simplest and hardest thing to change is how we think. All problems arise from how we perceive things. We might not be able to change things that happen to us, but as cliched as it is, we can change how we respond to it. One person can think completely differently about the same thing. When the stakes are high, it can be badly stressful or upliftingly exciting. Whereas I had the ability to stay longer in the hospital, others couldn’t do the same. People who desperately needed to the resources to get well. People who might have never been well in the first place. People like you and me. I just happened to be lucky, and I am grateful.

I don’t think people inherently want to see other people suffer. Maybe if that person were a dictator of the most ruthless country in the world, but even then, we don’t see people chopping random people’s heads off and laughing about it, unless you were truly retarded, but that’s okay for them, not okay in general, understand? Jesus. I believe we should let people do what they do, within reason, if they don’t create scenarios when they decide outcomes for others. Call it self-determinism, call it entitlement, but we should have the option to be selfish with our own lives, yet only with our lives. The moment we decide for others is when we cross over irrational boundaries.

If it helps to think about, people from the prior generations have suffered far worse than the people in the present. There is an increased standard of living with access to healthcare, necessities, and entry level knowledge to just about anything we want to learn about. In the past, it was common for people to die from war, famine, poverty, and it wouldn’t make the news. There are still people living under inhumane circumstances in the present, but at least living in a first world country provides us with the opportunity to be aware that we live privileged lives. It may not need to be our mission to help those in need, but if we treat the people we interact with nicely, we are doing our part to make the world a better place. I believe we would all be in a better place mentally as a result.

We can’t all live sheltered lives and remain at home without interacting with anyone. It would mean missing out on a big portion of life and becoming a maladapted person. I also used to be a hikikomori during a depressive period of my life, but I was surprised to find there was an online community to meet similar people like us. I was even more amazed to find a hikikomori who had spent the past seven years solo developing an indie game. During an interview, I saw that he was asked about what the game meant to him, but he started breaking down and crying. There seemed to be no words to describe the immense secondhand grief I felt on his behalf, and I became angry why God would do these things to certain people.

My thoughts of the beginning of mental illness are if you have a divergent way of thinking, doing, speaking, interacting with the world. When those things go unchecked for too long, they are a sign that someone is mentally abnormal. The definition changes all the time, as what is considered normal can be fluid. Mentally abnormal and unstable are two different things. I believe it is okay to be abnormal or different if we do not negatively impact the lives of other people, but it is not okay to be mentally unstable at any point. We might agree that mental instability can lead to disastrous consequences in society, given the ever-increasing reports of crime when people go without help for too long.

One idea emerges about when to seek help. If you feel the symptoms such as overbearing anxiety or lack of control are taking over your life, seeking professional advice or treatment can work for certain people. Not everyone sees the benefit in treatment, nor will it be effective if we don’t wholeheartedly accept that we need such interventions. Reaping the benefits is another matter entirely. I’ve found that whenever I have intrusive thoughts, I imagine digging a hole. If I end up digging a hole on poor foundation, I will end up trapped and unable to get out of it. Similarly, if we keep thinking negative thoughts and of the worst outcome all the time, we will give ourselves no chance of escaping from pessimism and nihilism until it becomes our entire being. Many people aren’t like this, and sometimes we do need to compare ourselves to others to a certain extent to not become a complete sociopath.

Is it justified to think other people are necessary in life? We can’t all live like a hermit and cast away all people from our lives. It takes quite a long time to learn how to become permanently self-sufficient. I would guess it is nearly impossible to be entirely alone for the rest of your life. Humans are very social creatures, and as evolution points out, our basic intrinsic behaviors are rooted in monkey logic. We would probably be well served following our genes to an extent, as there are biological reasons why we breathe, eat, sleep, shit, procreate etc. When we can find an example of someone who has successfully secluded themselves by choice and hasn’t become partially insane, we might need to study them as one of a different species, because many people will find that is excruciatingly difficult.

Are there any ways to fix mental illness yourself? People can pick up any hobby they want to distract themselves. Doing something fun and enjoyable can be a great way to relieve stress and forget immediate burdens. Others may want to confront such problems by putting themselves in situations to approach and deal with the mental illness. Someone who is trained in such behavioral therapy can be useful to guide you and make sure the obstacle is neither too difficult nor avoided entirely. Most people tend to ignore the issue until it becomes a bigger problem, given the busy lives we live nowadays. I would think these are only some of the ways people go about trying to cope, and many strategies exist on how to fix it. No solution is a permanent panacea, given the nature of our brains. I feel that people should still be allowed to do whatever they want, within reason, but if they feel incredibly burdened or others can see them tormented, isn’t it in their best interest to find ways to accept help?

In terms of getting better if we are fortunate enough to regain a part of our mental health, we can start living again. Too many have lived lives dragged down by invisible baggage that become a part of who we are. Some of this baggage we soon become aware, are stuck with us for the rest of our lives. Some may be large or small and not able to be hidden away when we travel outside of the comfort of our own homes. It becomes like a passport of all the previous places in which we have experienced negative emotions that caused us to be mentally aberrant. We might internalize all those negative times and think it is just a normal part of life or that we need to become expectant of feeling like that all the time. I don’t think people deserve to feel sad, lonely, uncomfortable and anything similar all the time. We are worthy of any progress toward mental wellness, no matter how insignificant.

When faced with mental adversity, we might want to give up. That’s wrong. We need to always constantly try our best, work hard, persevere. That was my motto that I came up with in second grade, but it has been such a timeless motivator to push myself when times get tough. There is no such thing as a cure, at least in this era. The best we can hope for is not to feel partially handicapped by these thoughts and emotions. Humans are capable of so much, and I believe overcoming mental adversity can be as helpful for us as it can be for others. The negative self-talk of someone who has suffered through anything can be hard to deal with. If our own self is unable to believe ourselves, who will? As cliched as it sounds, we can be our own cheerleader in our life of struggle, adversity, and challenges. Only someone like God can manage if these can be just challenging enough not to cause undue harm to us. Other people can be motivated just by witnessing us succeeding in hard times. We become stronger and more resilient, no matter who we are or where we come from. Motivation is nondiscriminatory. We need a kick in the ass. Do you think someone without a choice in a life-or-death situation will complain or not try to survive in the heat of the moment? We must not give up and we can succeed.

There will always be things that we cannot control. We can say all we want about focusing on what we can change, but sometimes, if you are ever placed in a situation with no possibility for compromise, we get flung around like an empty barrel on a sinking ship, with every opportunity to go overboard. We seek stability or try to find some semblance of normalcy, but when you lose something that was a valuable piece of your life, such as mental wellbeing, it becomes extremely difficult to regain it. That loss is mostly unexpected, sudden, and uncompromising. There is probably nobody else to blame besides a higher power, such as God, if one believes in it. It does not help anyone or lead to any gain. It is selfishly irrational to attribute one’s mental instability to a corrupt higher power, and yet it feels so satisfying to know we are not alone in thinking that.

If one believes going on a cruise every year for the rest of your life or eating at Michelin star restaurants were the cure for mental illness, there wouldn’t be so many cases proving the opposite. Living a life of opulence is not nor should it ever be the end goal. I thought about what happiness means to me and what I would like to do for the rest of my life. Although having enough money to wipe my butt with would be nice, I don’t want to forsake the people in my life who are precious to me. Nor do I want to betray the trust of my psychiatrist, family med doctor, and social worker who have been working hard on my behalf. It would be a disservice to my treatment team if I end up back at the hospital. We might not be able to find everlasting contentment, but we can always start by treating ourselves right for a prolonged time without indulging in sins, because we decided that.

I met someone with a similar diagnosis to me. He started talking about how he was homeless for six weeks living in a fire escape. How his mother had abused him. How she had child protective services called on her, but had decided to take him to a partial hospitalization program to force him to cry in front of grown adults whose job it was to help him. I felt secondhand embarrassment hearing him trying to get a girl’s number. I wondered if there was anyone else in the world treating him nicely besides gas station guy giving him cookies. He ended up being the one I felt most relatable to. We spent a lot of time talking, walking, eating, playing catch, playing piano, playing cards. He mentioned how he wanted to get his GED equivalent because he had never graduated high school. He was an aspiring rapper who sold music, art and writing at Sunoco. He was unable to get a job and sensitive to other people’s judgement. A part of me died inside when I saw he threw out a good painting he made. He said he wanted to become a chef, but I knew he probably couldn’t finish a bachelor’s degree anytime soon. In my mind, I imagined him bussing here, bussing there, bussing everywhere, valiantly and confidently, at least in my mind. But after my experience, if God exists, I think he also has a mental illness.