Last month I touched on acceptance and how it affects our attitude. The ultimate truth in all our lives is that no matter what our beliefs, no matter what we tell ourselves, sooner or later, if unchecked, un accepted and unmonitored, our mental health issues could cause problems. Problems that can be minimized or at least anticipated to a certain degree if it is accepted there is a reason for how we are feeling.

It’s a fleeting moment most of the time: understanding that what you are doing is not directly within your control, but with adjustment could be. It sounds funny, but control, like every other imposed pattern, relative and highly subjective to the level of acceptance you carry with you.

I know a lot of people that I attend the local mental health unit with who still deny their diagnosis. Two of them are hospitalized, on average, once a year, their families cannot deal with them, and are a mess. They know it too, but still won’t accept that they are X. Treatment for them is a circle, and a rather vicious one at that. Medication, counseling, they think they are better, and sometimes they are, though relapse is something that some of us face. And then….well, then they either are fine and continue with their life and don’t get any worse, or something triggers the cycle again. Sometimes it is never gone and people fool themselves into thinking things are ok. Back at the beginning of the cycle, sometimes people feel it’s hopeless, sometimes they believe they’ll be fine. And then, in many cases, the circle starts again, with the added element of knowing that you’ve been here before. Acceptance could change that circle to a spiral, or remove it completely.

Acceptance, especially of a mental health issue, is perceived as defeat. Perception can be relative though, and the relativity of every situation is based, in part on tolerance.

Tolerance and acceptance are bed mates: long thought to be a mythological status, some people can take infinite pain and suffering. Others cry when they type too hard, or when they bark their shin. There’s usually a connection between the two, your tolerance increases the more you accept. You can tolerate your own weaknesses, and those of others, without making excuses for yourself, or them.

You can tolerate people asking questions, without getting up tight or giving advice that you do not feel comfortable with, because you are comfortable inside your own skin.
Acceptance is about realizing that you are YOU, with or without the labels. A person isn’t their job, isn’t their status, isn’t their home, isn’t their hair or eye colour. Their name is another label; it means nothing to your personal ID, not when it comes down to it, or we wouldn’t be able to adopt different names and remain the same person. Labels are for definition, and society is geared to understanding ‘where you fit’. Acceptance is about truly knowing the answer to that one and supplying it with confidence, along with anything that people need to know. And it is that crunch that needs to be addressed in anyone with mental health concerns.

Our personality, underneath, above, around our concerns, is probably constant, though sometimes we don’t realism it. There is no way to tell if we would be different “without” because behavior in most people, on the surface is in a constant state of flux. Like the waves of the sea, we change. We change in different circumstances, in different context. It’s like having a room decorated for different visitors; we adjust our behavior in the presence of others. Beneath all that though, is the person in the centre of it all. At the eye of what probably sometimes feels like a storm is a beautiful person in need of acceptance. Understanding that is the beginning to dealing with any mental health concern.

This acceptance is actually two-fold. The first is acknowledgment that there are influences to our behaviour that need to be tracked and either controlled or allowed for without making excuse and the other is to accept that though this is us, it’s not US. We are not the sum of our actions, and though they are sometimes all others remember about us, that in understanding that sometimes things are outside of our control, we can actually work to minimize ‘damage’.