19 OF THE BIGGEST DON’T’S IN A MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS

When I first created I’m NOT Disordered in 2013, I did so with the idea that it would be a brilliant way to document my mental health recovery journey and to off-load my thoughts, feelings, and everything that was going on in the psychiatric hospital I was an inpatient of. So it wasn’t until the audience numbers began to grow that I started to realise my blog could be a great platform of opportunity to share advice I might have gained along my journey. Advice on lessons which I had learnt the hard way and I hoped that in sharing them, readers could escape going through those same difficult and challenging experiences. I thought that having the ability to provide advice that might actually help others as a result of the hardships I had gone through, would make all of those horrible moments somewhat worthwhile. So, I present to you now, one of the largest advice posts in the nine-year history of I’m NOT Disordered…  

  1. No matter how strong a resemblance or similarity, never consider any two people involved in a mental health crisis to be the same

 

  1. Saying you’ve “heard it all before” doesn’t make things any less strange or scary for someone who definitely hasn’t experienced all of this before

 

  1. Judging someone for the coping skills that something out of their control has led them to having to use, won’t teach them to use better, more safe skills

  1. Treating someone in a way you wouldn’t want yourself or your own family to be treat does nothing but make you a hypocrite 

 

  1. Considering someone to be in some way less than you won’t change the fact we all have mental health and therefore have the potential to struggle with that 

 

  1. Using the ‘duty of care’ term to someone who has heard it said before, becomes kind of meaningless when you say it as a company line and not with meaning 

 

  1. Never claim to have all the answers, no matter what your ranking in your career or life, it doesn’t fool anyone and leaves people who realise you don’t, feeling failed and disappointed

 

  1. Failing to recognise the short term benefits of someone’s coping skills, won’t deter them or do anything to influence them to be able to appreciate the long term consequences 

 

  1. Don’t judge a person for the things that help their mental health, it’s belittling and judgemental when you should be encouraging

 

  1. Making promises you can’t keep will always come to light in the end, and it can be hugely detrimental, disappointing, and shaping of any future, similar instances

 

  1. Do not disregard ‘out-of-the-box’ thoughts and ideas to help someone, being creative and different, can make a huge difference when your kindness is recognised 

 

  1. Being afraid that telling others what is helpful is like telling them how to do their job, means the situation might never improve 

 

  1. Using words like ‘normal’ and ‘usually’ are pointless, their ever-changing definitions for different people leave them completely irrelevant in mental health 

 

  1. Whether you ‘think’ advice will help or ‘know’ it will, it should be treat the same; just as worthy of your time and just as deserving of trying

 

  1. Considering that ‘trauma’ has a solid definition and that the meaning of it is the same no matter who uses it, is just naïve 

 

  1. Don’t confuse using your mental illness to explain what you’ve done something or why you feel or are thinking a certain way, with using your illness as an excuse for your behaviours

 

  1. Losing balance in considering the positive potential people have with a future and recovery, over their history and levels of risk doesn’t do anything to help or support 

 

  1. Saying “I understand” is an automatic response that needs to stop because it’s not always comforting and reassuring, it can be completely patronising and and its validity doubted

 

  1.  Believing you are in some way higher in the pecking order because your mental health is better that someone else’s, is just completely demeaning
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