Telling A Person Who Is Suffering From A Mental Health Problem To Pull Themselves Together Is A Bad Idea.

You Can Make Someone Who Has A Mental Health Problem Feel Bad About Themselves Using These Words

Let me tell you how I felt when I was going through a serious problem with my mental health.

• I felt like I was being crushed to the bottom of the ocean with no way out.
• I couldn’t understand myself
• I felt really low some days and really high other days, and I was unable to explain why.
• I felt I had to hide beneath a smile that wasn’t truly mine, just to please everyone else.
• I felt I had to hide my tears, because when I showed them everybody decided that something was seriously wrong with me.

While having a mental health problem is a problem that should be taken seriously. It doesn’t mean there is anything ‘seriously wrong’ with a person for showing their feelings. Tears are not anything to be ashamed of.

We cry for many reasons, and not just because we have a mental health problem:

• Grieving the loss of a loved one through death
• A bad breakup
• When we are in extreme pain
• When we are very ill
• When we are angry with someone or over something
• Certain songs that evoke emotions can make us cry.

However, one thing that I noticed is people without mental health problems don’t always get told “Pull yourself together,” when they cry.

Crying is also seen as good for us and therefore does not always mean that we are unhealthy.

Crying can help us to overcome pain, and it can prevent many other problems including:

• enable us to deal with pain
• Lift our mood
• Clear bacteria
• Relieve stress
• Clear out toxins from our system

You can read more about crying here

One thing I have experienced when dealing with mental health problems, and this is also something other people have complained about, are the words:

“Pull yourself together.”

This is like telling a newborn baby they can walk before they even know what it is.

If it was easy to just pull ourselves out of a mental health problem overnight, then nobody would be dealing with mental health problems in the first place.

Think about it this way.

Can you remember the last time you were extremely sick to the point where you couldn’t get out of bed?

It can take weeks to get over some physical ailments.

With mental health, you have to be able to:

• First of all, see the problem which can take some people years,
• Learn to deal with it, then train your mind to be able to deal with it,
• Sometimes it isn’t a case of learning to deal with it; some mental health problems require medication and therapies which can take a while to take effect, while others require more intensive help and may do so for life.

A person dealing with mental health problems cannot just pull themselves together, it takes more than that.

Let me ask you a question, and think about the answer.

“Will it rain tomorrow for sure?”

Some of you might say yes because the weatherman said so.

However, here is a fact

We can’t accurately predict the weather. There have been days when it has thundered or rained when the weatherman has said the sun will shine all day.

Here is another one:

“Should you be smiling?”

Well, everybody smiles, but sometimes they don’t know why!

Asking this question is like saying you should be sad all the time. You could be a very happy person who can’t imagine being sad!

Telling you not to be happy is the reverse of me telling you to

“Pull yourself together.”

Can you see, I’m telling you that it is wrong to smile?

How fair is that?

So if I’m telling you that it is wrong to smile, then telling someone to pull themselves together for having a mental health problem is,

Dismissing their right to feel how they feel. You are telling them that it is wrong to have feelings. In other words, you are invalidating their feelings.

When you tell someone with a mental health problem to pull themselves together, this is how it feels:

• They will feel like they are not allowed to feel the way they do
• They will think that something is wrong with them and that they are not normal
• They will believe that having feelings makes them soft
• They will see no point in talking about their feelings because they are being made to feel bad
• They will believe they have to hide under a mask of happiness, just to please everyone else
• They will feel ashamed and embarrassed for feeling the way they do.
• They will think they have no right to feel the way they do

There is nothing shameful about someone experiencing mental health problems being able to not cope.

We all feel that we can’t cope sometimes, even if we are usually strong.

I go by a key when talking to someone with mental health problems as below:

• Talk
• Listen
• Validate
• Have compassion
• Acknowledge their right to feel the way they do
• Do not judge
• Do not discriminate

People with mental health problems often struggle. They can:

• Struggle to get up in the mornings
• Struggle with their feelings and emotions
• Struggle with concentration
• Struggle with vulnerability
• Struggle with negative feelings about who they are.

Sometimes people with mental health problems just need a willing person to listen to them without judgment. They don’t need to be told to pull themselves together. They already feel bad enough.

It is time to be kind.

It’s tough to be tough all the time, and sometimes taking a softer approach can be more beneficial to a person with a mental health problem than trying to get them to act tough.