The Elastic Mind

By Esther Cohen

One of the things that worries people who are recovering from mental health challenges are symptoms coming back. Fretting about it may cause them to feel trapped in the revolving doors of “what if”, wondering, for example, “What if anxiety gets on top of me again?” “What if I lose myself to depression again?” “What if I get that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach again?”.  These are natural fears created by negative thinking that often follows a difficult and possibly traumatic period in one’s life.

Once the mind is stretched to new ideas and skills that encourage positive thinking and we practise those to the extent that we make them our own, they become added tools to our resilience and mental health tool kit. These resources can be accessed again even if we are a little rusty on how to apply them.

Sometimes we might feel we have fallen back into the abyss of past challenging mental health issues and our inner critic might kick in with messages of doom and gloom.

But…

A tool learned and practised is never forgotten. Roll up your sleeves, get back on the treadmill of mental health self-care and begin to make strides toward wellbeing.

A returning metal health challenge can feel pretty scary, but it is also easier to put to use the tools that were learned from previous journeys. It might require a ‘refresher course’ with a mental health specialist, but you will soon have those wellbeing muscles flexing again and doing their job!

A human being’s mind, once stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimension.

(Adapted from Oliver Wendell Holmes)

Keep reminding yourself that you have what it takes!