The gift of mental health confidence.
Mental health challenges rob anyone who has been through them of so very many things: friends, jobs, romantic relationships and so much more. Underpinning it all, however, I believe, is the confidence that it steals from us.
It’s a confidence deficit that doesn’t just relate to our ability to stay “well”, but it bleeds out into so many areas of our lives: our belief that we can hold down a job, maintain healthy relationships, live with stability — alongside the constant worry about when depression might tear our life into pieces again. It is only recently that I’ve come to believe that I can do most of those things and found confidence in my own mental health.
(Spoiler alert: part of that confidence comes in knowing that there will be struggles again, your mental health will falter once more — perhaps a little or perhaps severely — things might temporarily fall apart, but that you are ready for it. To acknowledge and embrace your individual struggles, rather than fear them, is the basis of confidence, for me).
I say I was gifted my mental health confidence. I use the word “gifted” because it feels like a completely and utterly beautiful gift. A life lived without mental health confidence is suffocating — the moments when the weight of the expected next crash isn’t bearing down on you are few and far between. Meanwhile, a life lived with mental health confidence is truly liberating. To be honest, it felt like learning to love myself wholly.
I couldn’t have found my mental health confidence without my therapist. When picking yourself up off the floor after your first, second, third, fourth (I could go on) depressive episode, the idea that anyone might be able to magic up their own self-confidence is just not a realistic one. We might have picked ourselves up, but often as empty shells, our innards left all over the floor (how messy).
However, the idea that I was “gifted” this confidence entirely by another (like one would passively receive a gift) isn’t entirely true.
We all need a starting point. I needed someone to present me with the seeds of confidence, then place them in my hand with their own confidence (in me), and trust me to go away and nurture and grow them (ok, with the odd conversation in between where I felt like I’d killed my seedlings i.e. that I couldn’t do this on my own — but who hasn’t killed a plant in their time?). I also needed someone to show me compassion and teach me how to be compassionate with myself. That is what therapy, and that is what my therapist, has done for me.
Like everything when it comes to our mental health, I believe the process must be a proactive one, where the individual is a key collaborator, not just in their immediate recovery, but in their onward journey, as they navigate the twists and turns of a life that hasn’t always been, and won’t always be, smooth sailing (that goes for any of us, including those with “robust” mental health). Believe me when I say that I have worked hard to try and water those seeds of confidence, even when I’ve felt I’ve nothing to give but drought.
What has that looked like? Confidence has absolutely come from managing to pull myself out of my depression holes — that’s a given. I don’t usually manage it quickly, I never recognise and act upon it with as much speed as is ideally required (though I get there eventually), and I’ve never managed to not ignore my therapist during it, despite that undoubtedly being one of the worst things I could do. But each time there is a positive to take from how I dealt with the situation. I try to acknowledge these and file them away in my memory bank for when I want to tell myself I’m shit at depression.
But perhaps just as important for growing my confidence has been self-reflection and introspection. Only those who have been depressed will know that it feels like a great big fuck-off tangled ball of a concept to get your head around. I couldn’t possibly map out the sprawling system of roots that depression spreads through our lives — it touches everything. Meanwhile, it’s an experience of mind-boggling contradictions: it feels both nebulous and concrete, tangible and intangible, understandable and completely nonsensical, and we simultaneously acknowledge it and reject it as part of our identity.
I find the intellectual hangover of being someone who “gets depressed” one of the hardest and most all-consuming things to deal with. I have read every book under the sun, written reams of journal notes, asked my therapist countless questions, yet I’m still not one hundred percent certain of how to think about it or understand its place in my life. Even so, spending the time to self-reflect, rather than to fear it, reject it and push it away, has been the most valuable investment of time and energy. To feel comfortable, to feel confident, in being someone who “gets depressed” we have to find a way to make our own sense of it.
It has taken me a very long time to get there, but mine is this: I get depressed because I am vulnerable to it (that said, my depression isn’t inevitable). Instead of wishing it never happens again, instead of “fearing the year” as I used to at the start of each new one, I choose to use my experiences of depression — past and present — to give me more confidence than ever (albeit in small, incremental measures). I will learn from each run-in with the depression, I will realise that I can get through it, and I will be ready to have another go at fighting it off that little bit better next time. It is horrible, truly horrible — but it will never be the end of me.
On my good days (which are most days now), I don’t wish it had never happened. I wouldn’t change it.
Could I have arrived at this place (let’s call it one of acceptance and bravery) without my therapist? No. I needed those seeds. I needed to be told that just because it happened one, two, three, four, five etc. times, that it doesn’t mean it will happen again; but if it does, we’ll be ready for it. That “we” was key; I didn’t have the confidence to do it on my own, but, through her unfaltering support and belief in me, I would get there (she’s kind of like the stabilisers on my bike when learning to ride; I needed her there until I could go it alone).
I needed to be reminded that I hadn’t failed. I needed to be told that I wasn’t broken and that I could learn to look after my mental health myself. I needed to be reassured that I could be honest with people and build a support network of loving friends. I needed to know that someone believed in me, because I really didn’t believe in myself. And on the days where I still don’t believe in myself and the control I have over my mental health (the majority of them, I’d say), it’s her voice in my head that reminds me that I have every reason to believe I can do this. And I can.
My therapist didn’t “gift” me confidence. The greatest gift she gave me was the tools, the support and the space to develop my own confidence. To wrangle with the questions that depression brings up, as it seeks to destabilise our foundations. To take strength from difficult times and to not fear them. She gave me the permission to explore the world I was thrown into after my first breakdown, with acceptance and curiosity. She gave me a way to peacefully navigate away from turbulent waters (a metaphor for mental health struggles she has recently given me, and one that I love). And she helped me believe that, one day, out of the pain would come comfort and control.
Pain can show up in life in any number of ways. Often it’s in ways we might expect, but sometimes it’s in ways that we could have never predicted — not in a million years. I am living this lesson more than ever right now. My therapist didn’t stop my pain; no one can do that, especially not as long as depression continues to rear its ugly head in my life. But she helped me learn to avoid it when I can, and live with it when I can’t.
That’s where my confidence comes from.
There is no greater gift.
