What would you do if you began experiencing a fever and severe body pain? You would visit your doctor, wouldn’t you? What if you began experiencing an incessant sadness or depressed mood that doesn’t seem to go away and which eventually prevents you from functioning normally?
Mental illness is often perceived to be different from physical illness. Because of this, most people fail to acknowledge a mental health issue for what it is: a malignant problem that can hinder them from living meaningful and fulfilling lives. Simply put, if the mental disorder is not addressed, the effects can be just as debilitating as a physical one.
It affects your thoughts, your beliefs about yourself, your behavior and even makes it difficult to have good relationships. Tasks that you would have normally performed without any difficulty, now feel tedious and unbearable. It depletes your energy and even affects your mood and appetite. You experience enervating and persistent sadness, excessive fear or anxiety that keeps you up at night and deprives you of your sleep.
These are only some of the symptoms experienced by someone with a mental illness. Mental disorders include depression, bipolar affective disorder, schizophrenia and other psychoses, dementia, intellectual developmental disabilities, with depression being the most common, affecting over 300 million people and one of the main causes of disability worldwide.
Struggling with a mental disorder is not something to be ashamed of or ignored, because the consequences can be serious. I am sure you’ve heard the phrases ‘just snap out of it’ or ‘get over it’ when it comes to addressing a mental health issue. This gives the impression that it is something that can easily be dealt with or overcome. Contrary to these misguided notions, you can’t just ‘snap out of it’ because it can be pretty scary when your mind seems to be your enemy. Some people also neglect to seek help because they are fearful of being labeled as weak.
Getting help isn’t a matter of being strong or weak. It’s a matter of being brave enough to admit that help is needed and taking that first step to understanding and overcoming their worries and anxieties. Everyone experiences episodes of sadness, stress and grief at some point in their lives. If you feel like this, find someone you trust and can talk to. It helps when you can vocalize your thoughts and put them into perspective. However, feeling overcome with unabated sadness, anger or paralyzing anxiety on a frequent basis could indicate the presence of a serious underlying issue.
Seek professional help when these feelings become so overwhelming that your ability to function normally is impaired. In seeking professional help, want to let you know that counseling is not a walk in the park. In fact, it is hard work. It can be a long process, even painful at times, but it is rewarding. You get to learn more about yourself, your strengths and capabilities. You get to explore the unknown facets of your psyche and most importantly, learn remarkable skills that will teach you to cope and thrive. With this in mind, I want you to think of counseling as a marvelous adventure in self-discovery. Just like any adventure that begins with a brave hero embarking on a quest to solve a mystery or discover some buried treasure, so too is the journey into the counseling process.