I dont think you can 'decide' to accept it... indeed who would want to make that decision?!
Me - I want to accept it. I know that if I don't, it would be a threat to my mental health. I was suicidal 2-3 years ago. I'm dedicated to the max to stay mentally well. Accepting that this is what my life is like is the right path for me. I'm not totally there yet... I'm still in denial about my limits... but I feel that coming to terms with them will be right for me. So far, the process of getting there is making me feel more calm, too. I also reckon that accepting my life and limits now will take my stress levels down to a minimum, which will help with the severity of the symptoms.
Oh i agree completely with what you say here lior. I'm sorry i wasnt clear when i said 'who would want to accept it', it's ambiguous....
what i meant was more like 'who would want to
have to accept it....'
I mean
I feel acceptance is a healthy response, & having had that experience unexpectedly it's now what i work towards in other areas of my life. But i still would rather not be in a position of having to accept being ill, no one wants to be in the position of having to accept something so awful.
We'd all rather there were something healthy we could do to fight it & win - that's why we wish their were effective treatment. Who would choose accepting/coming to terms with our limits if there were a simple & effective way of getting rid of them? Thats what i meant.
You cant just decide to feel anything & trying to is so unhealthy imho.
I'm not sure if I agree with you on not trying to feel something. If I didn't open myself up to joy when I was depressed, I might not be here any more. I don't deny the emotions that I have, and I don't repress them when they come up. I don't force myself to act as if I'm happy. But I do actively work towards feeling good, and I make the mental space to reflect. I process difficult feelings and I draw my attention to good things too. I like having a method/attitude/approach to work my way into more healthy, happy emotional states.
I'm entirely with you. For me 'opening yourself up to' other feelings & drawing your attention to happier things isnt what i meant by 'trying to' feel them. It's giving yourself the opportunity to feel them when possible. When i said you cant 'decide' to feel anything & 'trying to is unhealthy', I meant
forcing yourself to feel, or at least
trying to force it, which of course
does involve either smothering/supresssing/repressing one's true feelings or dissociating from them in some way.... thats what i meant. ....
So for example years ago when i thought that being "positive" was the 'be all & end all'....
if & when i felt something uncomfortable (- intense anger, grief etc), I would simply 'decide' not to feel like that, which i now know involved repressing my feelings/dissociating, & i would basically bully myself into being 'happy'. And if you dissociate from the part of yourself that's grieving it is possible to do that, but it comes at such a high cost.
It was very unhealthy & did me a great deal of harm. & so it really irritates me when people (not people here, just in general i mean), when they promote that kind of thing with comments such as 'happiness is a choice'/'decide to be happy' - as if one could (healthy) just flick a switch in our brains & bring on the emotion we choose.
We
can, as you so eloquently described, open ourselves up to it, we can
look for it, work on our external environment (where it's under our control) & work hard on processing our feelings so that we give ourselves any & every oppotunity possible to be happy. We can do all that you mentioned (which sounds incredibly healthy to me, i take my hat off to you!), but trying to force ourselves to feel happy when heartbroken, or accepting of something when we are enraged about it, (or indeed disallowing any of our feelings), is toxic (imho). It's that behaviour/attitude i was referring to when i said it was unhealthy to 'try'.
I guess what i really meant was while we can decide to do our best to work towards feeling certain things, & thats great. But trying to just '
decide' to feel anything by over-riding what we
do actually feel is unhealthy.
sorry for rambling, the 'succinct' button is missing from my brain
Also lior, i'm sorry to hear of your experiences with depression. I really admire & respect both your approach & all the commitment & effort you're putting in to your mental health.