Whether it is a physical or mental illness, recovery is a battle — though those battles are two very different journeys. Having a physical illness, you deal with nausea, pain, tiredness and so many other symptoms that make the fight draining.
Fighting off a mental illness is a whole different type of battle that doesn’t always have the qualitative symptoms that show the pain and exhaustion that comes with fighting your own mind.
That is the hardest part about this type of battle. There is no tumor, no fractured bone, no blocked artery that can be identified as being a separate attribute from yourself that needs to be targeted. You have to fight a ghost that takes the form of yourself.
A misperception that I have personally had to try to explain to family and friends is how wrong it feels to fight this ghost. For physical illnesses, once you have identified that causing factor, there usually is no hesitation in wanting to seek treatment. Very few people, unless treatment options do not have an optimistic outcome, sit there and say to themselves, “it would be wrong for me to get better.”
That is exactly what many of people facing a mental illness deal with. It is not a simple process of identifying your illness and then wanting it to go away. Oh no, the games have just begun, and you’re playing against phantom that knows all of your weaknesses and knows exactly what to say to make sure it stays latched onto you.
One of the strongest cards this phantom will play to make sure it stays latched onto you is by convincing you that getting better is wrong, that you don’t need to get better, and that fighting back isn’t showing strength but weakness.
When recovering, most of the time you can’t trust yourself. You can’t listen to your instincts or do what feels right because then you would be playing right into the phantom’s hand.
It takes over your mind and all of your thought process guiding your behaviors. That is what makes this phantom such an asshole because it takes the joy out of getting better, and instead, makes you feel worthless, weak, or just about any other feeling that will make you feel crappy enough to stop fighting it and let it take over your life again.
When you let this ghost dictate your life you were “happy,” “confident,” and “life was so much better.” Fighting back will drag you through one of the lowest and darkest points in your life, and you will internally feel so miserable from what is being whispered into your ear that life in recovery does not seem worth it at all or even something you want.
I am not trying to make a claim for everyone that battles a mental illness. Everyone's fight is personal, and it takes its own form and struggles. For me and serval others I know, though, fighting back against a mental illness will be the biggest bully one will ever face in their life, it is breaking up with an emotionally abusive relationship with yourself.
Just like how a spouse in an abusive relationship is able to convince the other that life is so much better with them in it, a mental illness contorts your thoughts to make life seem so much better with it in it.
