So stop worrying about what other people think and say to you if you know what you are doing is right and truly believe in what you are doing and do your best.

I whole-heartedly agree with that quote, which came from Selurus’ blog post, Believe In Yourself.  However, I think for some of us having a belief in ourselves, that we can accomplish even the most difficult of tasks we set for ourselves, is a very difficult thing to obtain.  I believe it falls right in line with having self worth.  If we have no self worth, how can we believe in ourselves?  When we have no self worth, it also makes us more vulnerable to the negativity of others.

I believe, especially when we are in recovery for a mental health issue, that before we can truly believe in ourselves, we must set about obtaining self worth.  Loving and valuing ourselves is important.  As important as those things are, very often we do not value and love ourselves as much as we ought, if at all.  I have found a few things helpful in gaining my own self worth:

• I replaced my internal negative dialogue with a positive one
• I put boundaries up with the people in my life, asking demanding that they do not act and speak in a negative way to me or around me.
• I found something that was my own, my writing, that I could be proud of.
• I made sure I had a positive and encouraging support network, on and offline.
• I no longer allowed silly drama to invade my life.

There are more, but I believe those are the main things that helped me gain self worth.  Once I gained some self worth, believing in myself came naturally.  Since I had a good foundation for believing in myself (self worth), I became less vulnerable to other people’s negative thoughts and comments about me and whatever I was trying to accomplish.

Value yourself, you are a wonderful and beautiful person. Hold fast and strong to the belief that you can accomplish the things you wan to.

I use to pray she had a disease that was more acceptable. I wished she had a disease that we could all wear pink ribbons for and race for a cure, a disease that a community supported. Mental illness has never had that. A child with bipolar will grow into an adult with bipolar. No races or celebrity visits to the hospital. Instead of people running in hopes of making you better they run away from you fearful that your social stigma might stick to them like a bad smell. Crazy doesn’t rub off.

That powerful quote came from a post written by Valerie Furas, titled I Have a Secret.  Her post about the social stigma she and her family endured as a result of her older sister’s Bi-Polar diagnosis really touched me and also inspired me to write about my own thoughts of the social stigma that people with mental health issues face.

I often wonder, in this day and age with so much information at our fingertips, why there is still so much stigma attached to people with mental health issues.  My personal opinion is that a lot of it is based on fear.  I am sure that some of the fear is based on misinformation and misunderstanding.  However, I believe some of it is possibly due to the fact that people may see themselves in someone who has been diagnosed with a mental illness, and it scares them.

So many people lead secret lives, where they hide what they consider frailties.  They live in fear that their own mental health issues will be discovered, or that they could get worse.  When they encounter someone who has been diagnosed with a mental illness, they are afraid that what is reflected back to them will be noticed by others and their secret will be out.  The easiest way for them to hide this, is to treat that other person with disdain and an appearance of not understanding.

I do not know about everyone else, but since I have been in therapy and have changed many things about my thinking, and speaking, sometimes it is easy to identify someone who might have an undiagnosed mental health issue.  It shows in their bodies, their speech, tone of voice and various other things.  So to me it is conceivable that we could be making people who are leading secret lives feel intimidated and frightened.

The best and possibly only solution that I can think of, is that those of us who have a mental health issue, or who have a family member with one, and are comfortable speaking about it, continue to do so.  We can be examples to others that there is nothing to fear by letting the world know.  In fact we can show them by how we interact with each other, that there are many people who are willing and able to offer them support and friendship.

The challenge I have made for myself and would like to encourage others to take up, is no matter what disdain or social stigma we may face, to always treat those misguided people with dignity and respect.  They very well could be leading a secret life and acting out of fear.

She  believed she could come back from the brink of life, so she did.

She believed she could go from being unbalanced to having her feet firmly planted, so she did.

She believed she could go from an internal and eternal sadness to a place of peace and hope, so she did.

She believed that she could nimbly step around detours, so she did.

She knew she could grow and change and live and learn, so she did.

She believes she will have a life filled with beauty, love, satisfaction and happiness, so she will.

Based on a post I did last week, Time, I decided that I would try and improve my time management skill, and post about my progress.

I have not had to be on a schedule since I posted that, except for keeping up with my counseling appointments.  In an effort to not miss anymore of my counseling appointments due to my forgetfulness, I posted this weeks appointment time in several locations.  Even with doing all that, I still got it in my head that my appointment was today, and it really is tomorrow.  My notes are all correct, it is just the information in my brain that is wrong. Oh well, at least I caught the error before I showed up at my counselor’s office today, the wrong day.

Despite that, I do think I am doing better.  I put reminders up to make sure I remember to post this, and also a reminder for the Thankful Five post I did yesterday.  Small steps.  As long as I am moving forward that is all that matters.

I read something on Tomato Baby that caught my interest.  It was challenge to condense your life story into exactly six words.  This is not the first time I have read this, the first time was at least two months ago.  Quite frankly, when I read it the first time, I thought condensing my memoir into six words was an impossibility.   I like to use too many words when I write, and all I could think of was how in the world would I be able to describe my life with only six words.

I decided to revisit the challenge and attempt to come up with my six word life story.  This is my six word memoir.

was broken, now healed, totally free

If you had to condense your life story into exactly six words, what would they be?