The Five Stages of Grief for your Mental Health

Before I do anything else, I am putting a hell of a trigger warning here. Obviously, mental health is a sensitive subject anyway and you should ALWAYS be mindful of how you’re feeling before reading about mental health stuff, but in this post in particular I will be talking about self harm and suicidal thoughts/tendancies. Please, if you can’t deal with reading about that, don’t continue. I’ll do a TL/DR here once I’m finished so you can get the gist of it without the triggers:

TL/DR:

As I said in my post on Wednesday (I have to say I’m loving this ‘schedule a post’ thing) I’ve been on quite a journey with my mental health over the past few months, and upon reflection I’ve realized that I pretty much covered the five stages of grief over my life in regards to my mental health, with the last few stages cramming themselves into the time between October 2021 and now. I promised I’d be open and honest about these things, especially when I’m documenting it as part of my transition, so I’m going to lay out the stages I went through for you.

1 — Denial

I have been in denial about parts of my mental health for years. Literally years. I remember thinking over and over about how for other people (or as the thoughts actually went, “people who actually have x,y,z”) it was much worse, so there was no way that it applied to me. And all that time I have readily advised anyone who asked me that everyone’s thresholds are different, and that just because someone else seems to have it worse doesn’t invalidate your suffering. How obtusely hypocritical of me.

2 — Anger

I remember starting to get pissed off at myself over my mental health when I was about 16, but if I’m honest it probably started before then. I would criticize myself for getting stressed or anxious or overwhelmed. Subconsciously, I began self harming by biting myself when I was about 14/15, as a way of controlling my anger. It got not-so-subconcious around 15/16. I would get angry about how overwhelmed I was getting, because I would tell myself that I should be able to cope better. That would lead to a breakdown, and I started cutting as an outlet. I already knew that it wasn’t a great thing to do, and I would always make sure that I didn’t leave a permanent mark so I wouldn’t be questioned about it. Honestly the one good thing that came of it is that I got bloody good at quick DIY first aid. I was at this stage for a long time. I stopped all forms of self harming regularly around my first year of sixth form, but still hit low points or particularly angry points now and then. As it stands, I’m almost a year clean of all self harm, but I’ll admit it’s still tempting at times.

3 — Bargaining

This is a tricky one. I seem to slide between stage 2, 3, and 4 a lot. The bargaining stage for me has been allowing myself to admit that I have some problems, and being open about them, and then being extremely closeted about others, or only allowing certain details to be shared. For example, I’m very open about being depressed and anxious and will happily talk about any aspect of either (although the self harm and suicidalness parts of my depression can be pretty difficult), but while I’ll admit I get intrusive thoughts, I refuse to open up about what they are (and I don’t plan on changing that until I’m in therapy, and even then that will stay between me and my therapist). This trade off is allowing me to live with myself claiming to be open about my mental health and basically still being in denial about other parts of it.

4 — Depression

Well we saw this one coming. I’ve already said that I’m depressed as all hell, so this isn’t a surprise. I’ve been sliding between this and the last two stages over the past 5 or 6 years (ugh is it really nearly 6 years since I was 15???). As mentioned in the ‘anger’ section, I would get angry at myself about my mental health, and that would eventually lead to a breakdown. These breakdowns usually meant serious lows. And I mean serious lows. Through GCSEs and A-levels, it was not uncommon for me to steel myself during the day, and then cry in my room at night. Not that I let many people know.
It also wasn’t particularly uncommon for me to just ‘forget’ to look before I crossed the road. I hit the point where I just didn’t care if I lived or not, and it wasn’t just because I was depressed, it’s because I was depressed about being depressed. It’s a viscious cycle. While it is getting better now, I do find myself wondering if sometimes it would be easier. That would usually be met with “sure, it’d be easier, but then you wouldn’t do x, y, z and that would suck” or “yes it would be fun to haunt people, but why just haunt people when you can annoy them for years while you’re alive and then haunt them?” or something along those lines.

5 — Acceptance

I’m glad to say that I seem to have at least temporarily reached stage 5. I’ve pretty much come to terms with the fact that my mental health is fucking atrocious. I’ve accepted that yes, I have got trauma (only took me nearly half my life to accept that), I am very depressed, I am extraordinarily anxious, and I have a bunch of other crap going on as well. And it doesn’t make me any lesser than someone who doesn’t have all that going on. And with acceptance comes adjustment. I’m learning to look after my mental health better, put up boundaries where I need them, and rely less on making jokes to cope. I’ve gathered up the balls to get my mental health assessed, to start the process of getting a therapist and to effectively communicate my needs to friends, family, tutors and colleagues. So hopefully, it’s (mainly) up from here.

I’m not going to pretend that it’ll be smooth sailing. I expect to go downhill at some point, maybe soon, maybe not. I might go downhill tomorrow, or I might go downhill when I’m 30. The important thing is, I now know that it’s okay to go downhill, to do what you need to do to rest and recover, as long as you find the will to go uphill again. And I’m also way more prepared to go downhill than I ever have been. It used to sneak up on me, and it would be so much worse for it. But now I know (most of) my triggers, I know the signs of me starting to go downhill, and I know how to deal with those early warnings.

Thank you for joining me on this summary of my mental health journey. I hope it goes some way to explaining what the hell has been going on with me over the past few years to those who have been worrying about me (yes Mum and Dad, I’m looking at you, I know you read these). I really hope that my next post will be way more positive and maybe even related to trans stuff.