4 things people with mental illness do without thinking

today I want to talk to you about four things people with many different types of mental illness do usually unconsciously or unintentionally that actually end up hurting us and for the most part these four patterns I'm going to discuss with you today are not diagnosis specific meaning these are not patterns that are unique to people with depression or bipolar disorder or PTSD or whatever diagnosis these are things that are pretty Universal among nearly all individuals who have struggled with some type of long-term chronic mental illness the first is obsessively trying to recreate our happiest memories

those of us who have lived with chronic mood disorders chronic anxiety disorders lots of trauma we tend to have on average fewer happy memories than most people we just haven't had as many good periods of time in our lives and so when we look back on our lives and we have these certain pockets of time brief as they may be that felt good these little moments these these days or weeks maybe months if we're lucky that we look back and say you know what my life has been rough but this this period right here this

was a good time we tend to want to re-experience those moments over and over and over again because when you haven't had very many good times they feel almost magical or mythical they just feel that much more special to you than they might to most people and sometimes we think that the things the variables in our lives that made those periods of time good were the the external stuff the things that we were doing at the time and so you might find yourself obsessively replaying a favorite video game rereading a favorite book rewatching a favorite

movie or TV show revisiting certain places trying to get back in touch with certain people because in your mind you associate these variables with this period of time in your life where things were actually pretty good for once this is a tricky one for me to talk about because on one hand I think it's a tremendously understandable thing to want to essentially feel that way again of course you do if that was a special moment for you if that was a rare moment for you of course you want to have it again and I get

that but you didn't necessarily feel that way because you were doing some certain thing at that time probably it was a mix of a period of time during which your symptoms for whatever reason were lower whether that was because of treatment or because of random chance and for one little period of time you actually got to experience life like the way hesitate to say that it should be but the way it is for a lot of people consistently not all the time but maybe the majority of the time it's it's not because you were playing

your favorite game or reading your favorite book I know it seems that way but it wasn't and the reason this one ends up hurting you is because when you get so fixated on trying to re-experience something that if we're being honest you can never fully re-experience like even if you brought all those exact things together again it's never going to feel exactly the way it did then even if you could do that which often times is impossible it doesn't feel the same it doesn't because it wasn't just those things and when we get so fixated

on trying to recreate them we often lose the opportunity this is the ironic and frustrating part to actually have more periods of time like that in the future because what makes those periods of time special isn't the things it's your state of mind it's the fact that you're in the moment and generally enjoying what you do and feeling good and you can't be in the moment if you're trying to recreate the past though are mutually exclusive processes they are opposed to one another the thing that made that period of your life special is probably that

it was somewhat light-hearted and carefree and just not quite as connected to all the stressors and drama and Trauma that most of your life has been full of you can have more periods of time like that again but they're going to look different all the variables the people the places the activities they're going to be the same you don't get more of those by trying to recreate your past you get more of them by trying to get back into the state of mind that you were in at that time it's not about what's happening outside

of you it's about what's happening inside of you give you one quick example of this and if you've read my book you've already heard this one but one of my happiest childhood memories it's also one of my earliest childhood memories I remember sitting on the steps of a laundr man in a gravel parking lot for what felt like hours although I was like five so it was 20 minutes or something and I just remember the door and one of those Springs on it I just remember my mom going back and forth carrying laundry just me

and my mom and I was just sitting on the steps in this gravel parking lot just Examining The Rocks that's literally it that's the entire memory there's nothing like objectively special about those circumstances right that's a really normal mundane thing but for whatever reason I just I wasn't thinking about anything else I wasn't stressed probably because it was somewhere I wasn't stressed about school or friends or whatever else I was just in the moment and that's what made that memory special and your memories like that the content is probably completely different but you have memories

like that too it's not because of what you were doing it's because of the State of Mind you were in so if you want more of those try to recreate the mental state not the physical state that surrounded you the second thing that many people with mental ill illness do that ends up hurting us is we assume that our feelings are always wrong we second guess every emotional reaction we have to every situation we experience this one's tricky I guess this was the case for the first one as well there's a kernel of Truth here

if you have a chronic mental illness it means that your emotional reactions to certain events are probably a little bit different and probably in most cases a little bit heightened compared to what most people experience if you have an anxiety disorder you get stressed out or worried or scared more easily than most people if you have PTSD you have certain triggers you have things that feel dangerous or potentially life-threatening to you that don't feel that way to other people and that in most cases don't end up actually being that Etc I'm not going to mist

off all the things but you have Amplified emotional reactions and when you learn that you have Amplified emotional reactions it's normal to start second guessing your feelings there's a degree of that that's healthy but I see people tend to really overgeneralize this and assume you know not only again if I have an anxiety disorder not only do I maybe start to assume anytime I'm anxious I'm overreacting I might even start to assume just all my feelings are wrong if I'm mad at you you didn't do anything wrong I'm just blowing things out of proportion if

I'm nervous about doing this thing it's not a scary thing I'm just being a drama queen I'm just I'm just being anxious if I identify red flags in this relationship that's my trauma making me think it's that this person's actually fine we talk ourselves out of everything and here's the truth I need you to understand about this no matter what diagnosis you have and no matter what has happened in your past not every emotion that you experience is pathological not every feeling that you have comes from your mental illness some of them do and some

of them don't you also have emotional reactions to situations that are appropriate that are objectively reasonable and that are important to feel and experience and respond to because when you start second-guessing every feeling you have or even just assuming that every feeling you have is wrong it tends to really screw up your life and probably most specifically your relationships we tend to get really passive we tend to get really withdrawn we let people walk all over us we won't stand up for ourselves we won't assert ourselves because we assume that the feelings we have in

response to things that people are doing to us or around us are wrong are inappropriate shouldn't happen are overreactions and we talk ourselves out of it we deal with the emotions internally rather than externally we don't tell people when they've wronged us we don't tell people when they've hurt our feelings because we think it's our fault and this can get us into so much trouble I do not have a a magic algorithm for differentiating between pathological and non-pathological emotions it's a very difficult thing to do but I want to make sure you know again just

going to restate my initial point no matter what your diagnoses are no matter what's happened in your past not every feeling you have is the result of your mental mental illness some of them are just reasonable responses to things that are happening work on maybe seeking advice seeking feedback but don't just assume you're always wrong because you're not no matter what anyone else tells you and no matter what you've been through not all your feelings come from your mental illness the third thing that people with mental illness do that ends up hurting us is attaching

ourselves to other people in some pretty unhealthy ways this can be people we know in real life this can be celebrities or famous people this can even be fictional people but what tends to end up happening is if we feel dissatisfied or powerless or frustrated with our own Liv it's really easy to almost give up on our own lives and kind of forget about trying to make it better trying to make progress trying to you know fulfill our dreams and instead get really emotionally invested like to a pretty unhealthy degree in somebody else who has

done or is doing the things that we have given up on for ourselves and and I'm going to say this every single time apparently but there is a degree of normaly in this I think most people do this to some degree but when it gets to the point where you're essentially using this person as a surrogate for your own life like that you stop doing things because watching or or hearing about this person doing things like does it for you and fulfills you enough that you don't have to live your own life anymore that is

a very very dangerous precedent even if that person doesn't end up hurting you or disappointing you or letting you down which they often do even if that never happens it gives you a way out basically it allows you to detach from the feelings you have about the course of your own life and although that can be very pleasant and can be a nice distraction from the sometimes misery or torment that we feel on the inside it's ultimately just going to make that problem worse because it takes your own resources away from the life that you

are stuck with the life that you cannot ever fully Escape no matter who and what you attach yourself to so even if it's not a case where you find out your favorite streamer is kind of a creeper sorry to be topical on that one but even if that doesn't happen it's it's not you it's not your life and it's never going to fulfill you or satisfy you the way that's living your own life is going to I have a much larger piece of content planned on this topic specifically this one's really pervasive I know but

for the time being I just want to simultaneously acknowledge it and validate it it's a real thing a lot of us do it very few of us talk about it but it's also not good for you and it's something that I think in the long run your life is going to look better if you minimize it the fourth thing that people with mental illness do often subconsciously or automatically but ends up really hurting us is when we're appraising our decisions that we have made in life we act like we don't know our own backstory we

essentially view ourselves and our choices and our lives the same way everyone else does which is with a degree or through a lens of relative ignorance so give you a few examples of this and some of these are like things I hear a lot in therapy for example I hear people say things like you know I hate my mom but like that's terrible though who hates their mom like like that's that's ridiculous I'm I'm a horrible person if I hate my mom and it's like well but your mom was abusive to you like if I

don't know that about you it if I don't know you at all if I have no context for who you are and what you've been through and the first thing you tell me about yourself is you hate your mom yeah sounds a little I might be like okay what what's the story there but if I know that your mom was the biggest abuser and Bully that you've ever faced in your entire life yeah it kind of makes sense that you feel that way though doesn't it or maybe you say I'm such a loser I haven't

I haven't been on a date in in three years and I'm in my 30s like like like who that's insane like who is that well yeah because you have severe social anxiety in a goreaphobia and every time you even think about going on a date you have a panic attack so yeah no it kind of makes sense when I know your backstory again if that was if you shared that information with me about yourself like in a vacuum and gave me no context for it might think it's a little unusual but when I know what

you have been through when I know what your dating life has looked like up until now when I know that you've gotten no support no guidance from the people who should have given it to you yeah that kind of makes sense then though doesn't it we do this we act like we have no idea what brought us here and and that our lives have been just the same as you know quote everybody else's or the normal people or whatever you want to call it and that we have no reason to be the way they are

uh and and essentially we Gaslight ourselves that that's really what this is we Gaslight ourselves we act like we have no reason to be the way that we are we act like we have no sense of the story of of the Fairly unique and challenging situations we have faced of the things about our lives that were different for us than for most people you know we look at these people we say I should be able to be like them but your life was not like theirs and and let me be clear this is not an

excuse I'm not saying don't work on those things like if you haven't been on a date in three years and you have severe agoraphobia and and social anxiety and panic attacks we should probably work on that like that that's something that's probably going to hold you back from living your best life to go back to my previous Point that's not the goal and this is not saying well because of that it's fine just live that and that's just the way it's going to be it's not that but but both of those are extremes right being

staying completely stuck or acting like I should just be able to be fine those are like the two extremes and we probably want to aim for the 50th percentile the midpoint here which is I understand the reasons I am the way I am I don't like some of these things about myself and I'm going to work on changing them but I'm also not going to act like I have no idea how this happened because I was there for all of it and I actually do know why it happened because I was there so don't act

like you don't know your backstory don't judge yourself through a lens of ignorance don't don't act like you have no idea who you are and what you've been through because you do you know better than anyone you have the ability to understand some of the things about yourself that probably no one is ever going to completely get because they weren't there for the things that led up to it so don't take that away from yourself don't take away the context the understanding the validation that in some cases nobody else can give you because they don't

know what you've been through so that's it those are the four things and again I I you know I realized I didn't really present solutions to these things per se that wasn't necessarily the aim of this video each of these is probably going to require followup down the road and I plan to do more content on all of them for the time being I just wanted to bring awareness to these things and also hopefully help you realize that although these are pretty normal common and understandable patterns they're ultimately things that are probably not going to

serve you in moving forward and living the life that you want as always take care and I hope to see you soon good luck