Why You Need to Love Yourself to Fight Bipolar

Love yourself more by celebrating your wins.

One of the hardest things to master when fighting mental illness is the ability to love yourself. Depression and anxiety seem to bring with them a sense of self-loathing. The darkness stifles most positive thoughts.

The thing is, self-love is also one of the most important things you must do to maintain mental stability. But how do you get there?

One way to learn to love yourself is to celebrate your wins. Take the time to recognize both your large and small accomplishments.

For example, reaching my first 500 email subscribers was a huge win for me. It was the culmination of three years of work. Most of that time, I was clueless about what I should be doing. The 500 milestone was a great day because I finally felt like I was getting it.

“The love and attention you always thought you wanted from someone else, is the love and attention you first need to give to yourself.” — Bryant McGill

However, you don’t achieve major milestones every day. There are days when all you can do is get dressed and feed yourself. Maybe with special mightiness, you can take a shower and wash the dishes. Success for the day might be just taking your meds or going to bed on time, but it’s still a triumph.

The tiny wins are just as important as the monumental ones. If all you do today is keep yourself alive despite all the negative voices in your head, that’s a win. Celebrate it.

Success breeds success, and the small wins turn into bigger ones. Learn to celebrate your wins, and you’ll find the way to give yourself the love you deserve.

Dive Deeper

Use these prompts to help you dive deeper into this subject. If they inspire you to write a Medium story, please come back and leave a link to your post as a comment.

Journal Prompt: What are three wins you had in the past week? Which one means the most to you? Why?

Creative Writing Prompt: It’s the championship game and everything hangs on your main character. Write a story about the game. Do they win?

Until next time, keep fighting.

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