Things Could be Worse

This morning in the grocery store I found myself telling someone, "it could be worse, it could be Ebola".  I wanted to slap myself for saying, as always, what popped into my head.  And yet at the same time, a truer sentence was never said.  It could have been worse and worse would be Ebola, as a front page news example.  I said this to the cashier at the checkout.  Thankfully she is aware of my sick humour (or not so funny comments you might say) and she just shook her head in disbelief.  I am sure she wanted sympathy for her announcement of a cough but I wasn't in the mood to provide sympathy.  It was a, "here's Nicolle's reality" kind of day.  The fact is, her cough could have been worse, couldn't it?

I just recently spent 60 days in a Mental Health Facility.  I have struggled my entire life off and on with mental illness.  Because of this struggle I have been on many medications one of which recently led me down the vicious path of suicidal thinking.  It was a very dark place, with very dark thoughts.  I was more than ready to spend some time in hospital having my medications rebalanced and doing some intensive therapy and self-care.  It was time, this was obvious.  Why am I seemingly so far off the Ebola topic?  Because I found myself constantly looking around the hospital thinking, "Shit, things could be worse, look on the bright side".  The bright side being, things could be worse.  It was everywhere around me.  People suffering from more severe mental illness than I.  I was pretty lucky.  Even though I was in such a dark place this year, things could have been worse.  I just had to see that.  With this being Mental Health Week in Canada I wanted to post some reality.  A way for the those suffering to see some light because it's not as easy, "think positive thoughts", as it sounds.

 

 

Remember, things could be worse. It's called the bright side for a reason, it's brighter over there.  Reality is, things are sometimes bad.  I think we need to feel the bad to be able to see the good.  I am saying that things in this moment may not be so bad if you take a good hard look at how it could be worse and say to yourself, "I guess it's not so bad after all".  Trust me, I am not Miss Positive Pants so it should come as no surprise that I found myself asking the doctors while I was in hospital; "How can I be positive when I live inside a chemically imbalanced brain that induces depression?"  The response was unanimous.  Positive thinking does not negate the bad things in life.  They will happen, and you need to learn how to deal with them as best you can.  Life will not always be positive just because you think positive.  There needs to be some preparedness for stress, for anxiety, for pain, for heartbreak, and for all the things that can sometimes happen in life.  You need to learn how to live with the bad, sit in those moments, feel them, and then do your best to move on.  Looking at how things could be worse can be that stepping stone to moving on. 

 

 

Let's be honest, if you try saying to a room full of people suffering from depression or depressive states due to other mental illness, "be positive, always"..... it's a pretty good way to get yourself a beating.  But if you say to them, "things could be worse", they can usually see how.  Almost everyone can see how their bucket of crap could be deeper, bigger, a "head under", bucket.  They just don't always, in that moment, see how they can climb on out of it.  Telling them to "just do it" is not always the best first step. 

I always recommend humour so try reminding those you love that are struggling that things could always be worse....with a giant pimple on the tip of your nose. 

Really, that is worse.