I know from personal experience that peace is the fertile soil in which happiness grows. To grow happiness, we need to create more peace within ourselves. In this episode, I am sharing with you these five tips that I wish I would have known on my first day of therapy to work on my own peace.
1. Get sober.
I believe that there are few things more important for mental wellness and stability than getting your substance abuse under control. I am not an addict or an alcoholic, but I am someone that abused a lot of substances in my day, drink a few times a year, and smoke pot for my depression. However, that doesn't mean that you should do these things, particularly if they disrupt and derail your life. They provide temporary peace in exchange for long-term harm and instability.
2. Radical Acceptance
The Stoic practice of Amor Fati led me to some significant gains in my mental wellness. Amor Fati means "love of fate", and used in practice it is "love your fate." We trade our peace for chaos when we cannot embrace the ugliness of what life delivers to us. Yes, terrible things happen to innocent people every day for absolutely no reason. No, you did not deserve whatever trauma or suffering befell you, but it's your to carry either way. The sooner you can accept it, the better off you'll be.
3. Embrace imperfection.
There's a popular saying that goes, "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good." Progress is done in small doses. Many people get hung up on their mental wellness or sobriety journey by focusing on the fact that it may not be perfect. A person may relapse and then beat themselves up for it, even though a relapse is a totally normal part of recovery. What matters most is what you do AFTER the relapse. You're not perfect. You're not going to be perfect. An imperfect good is better than an uncompleted perfect.
4. Address what you don't talk about.
Everyone carries pain and suffering. However, not everyone is able or willing to speak it outloud into the world. The problem is that trauma doesn't just disappear it. It affects you every day so long as you don't confront it and resolve it in ways you may not realize. That childhood trauma that you never talk about? That is, too. That's such an important time of development and the stress of an abusive or neglectful childhood can leave lasting wounds. These are the things that you need to talk to a therapist about most, because they are causing you more harm than you may realize.
5. Grieve the past.
Many people don't realize that grieving is an active process rather than just a feeling. Grief itself is a collection of emotions and experiences rather than just one emotion. It's a far more complicated thing than many people realize. You cannot heal grief and traumatic losses with pithy platitudes like "God has a plan!" and "Time heals all wounds!" Time absolutely does not heal all wounds. In fact, in some cases, it just makes the wounds more painful and harder to heal. If you are carrying a severe grief from the past, you need to address it with a grief counselor.
Don't forget to subscribe! https://www.bluntlybipolar.com/listen
- [01:16] - Start Episode
- [03:06] - 1. Get Sober
- [06:20] - 2. Radical Acceptance
- [12:11] - 3. Embrace Imperfection
- [15:56] - 4. Address What You Don't Talk About
- [24:35] - 5. Grieve the Past
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I am not a mental health professional. I do not have any qualifications or certifications of any kind. I hope that by sharing my experiences, more mentally ill people will be empowered to step into the offices of clinicians to do the hard work that leads to mental wellness, peace, and happiness. Take everything I say with a grain of salt, as all I am is a mental patient with a microphone.
