7 Questions to Ask When You’re In a Mental Health Backslide

And 3 Reminders to Help You Through It

It creeps up slowly, spreading into innocuous crevices until *BAM* you’re suddenly pulled back in its inky grasp, fighting to get out again. This sounds like B-movie monster but it’s actually the experience of backsliding with mental illness. It feels abrupt, overwhelming, and exhausting because it’s come back after a period of hope and improvement.

What do you do now that you recognized you’ve backslid?

Here I’ll share seven questions to ask yourself and three reminders to consider when you feel like you’ve been backsliding in your mental health progress.

Seven questions to ask yourself if you believe you’re backsliding in your mental health:

Is this a reasonable reaction to unreasonable circumstances?

The first reaction may be that you’re mental illness is getting worse when you start seeing yourself struggling. However, we all have uncomfortable emotions for a reason and they impact everyone when the circumstances are tough. Start by considering what’s going on around you.

For example, if you’ve got multiple major stressors going on such as job loss, marriage conflict, and serious illness for you or close others occurring concurrently, it might make sense for you to get distracted more easily or find yourself tearful more often. It depends on the situation.

Consider what you’d tell a friend in the same situation. It might be gentler than what you’d tell yourself. This may help to normalize your experience.

Don’t get me wrong, though. Just because you may be able to recognize your reaction as reasonable doesn’t mean you might not need help and support to deal with the circumstances. It doesn’t have to be taken all on your shoulders. Reaching out to a support network and/or a therapist might help you through it.

 

Has something harmful been added?

If you don’t find your current experience to be in proportion to your current stressors, ask yourself if something or someone has a harmful impact on you. This may be difficult to notice in the moment so try to think back to when you first noticed some warning signs. Hindsight is 20/20 and you’ll likely be able to see them better now than when they started.

Examining in hindsight, once you’ve found when it all seemed to start, look for the new addition. Did someone from your past re-enter your life and unwittingly dredge up bad memories or habits? Has a new addition to your routine hindered you instead of helping you? This takes some knowledge of the self and triggers to recognize if there’s been harm added.

Did something drop off?

Whether or not a new addition may have harmed your mental health, you can always ask if something good has dropped off. Life gets busy and, as I’ve indicated before, it is not uncommon to “put off…daily/weekly/monthly self-care activities one by one until they go missing.” This can go unnoticed if you’re not vigilant.

Some of the activities go unnoticed because we don’t do them deliberately for self-care. Once they’re gone, they have an impact anyway. The ones we do purposefully are easier to recognize being gone. If a positive self-care technique has dropped off, consider getting back to it.

Are you following treatment recommendations?

One of the positive self-care techniques many people managing mental illness have is getting appropriate treatment. Just like most illnesses such as diabetes or endometriosis, lack of proper treatment can lead to it getting worse. Having a provider or providers you trust can help develop manageable recommendations.

I’m not here to tell you what those treatment recommendations are. The best way to get that information is talking to your treating mental health professionals. They can gather information about your circumstances with direct contact to provide recommendations.

Is there a cycle?

If you have a treatment provider that you’ve been working with regularly, they may be able to help you recognize if there’s a cycle to symptom backsliding. However, you can ask yourself this question on your own, too. Is there a predictable cycle of backsliding that occurs regularly?

The cycle I reference is not specific to any particular mental illness that may include cycling moods (such as bipolar disorders). A cycle could be as vague every three months experiencing increased symptoms or every time work enters the “busy season” becoming more irritable and snappy. This often ties in with some of the previous questions, so if you see a cycle, consider the above suggestions.

How’s the weather been?

While weather changes could easily be lumped in with the cycle referenced above or activities being dropped off, I think it’s worth examining on its own. You probably know what weather you like and don’t like but have you considered what it does to make you feel this way? According to an article by Megan Rahm via The Healthy Place, she asserts that weather has numerous potential impacts on mood, behavior and function.

Rahm describes that warm weather can negatively impact your sleep, energy, and appetite, potentially inciting more irritability and anxiety. In colder months, she says, decreased daylight can lower mood and cause an increase in isolation due to staying in more. Extreme weather that may cause damage increases overall stress for people living in areas its common, is also mentioned in the article. Her article puts great perspective on the impact of weather on our overall well-being.

What do close others think?

When you question whether or not you’re backsliding, talk with the people closest to you. They may be able to give you feedback that supports your recognition that something feels off or provide perspective that you may be doing well in the face of adversity. People who know you best may also be able to help examine and answer the questions above.

Three reminders to help you manage the backslide:

Be gentle with yourself.

You are human and you have human emotions. With mental illness, it sometimes may feel like your emotions are more extreme or more alarming than those of others. Everyone experiences uncomfortable emotions and you’re allowed to have those even when your mental illness is well-managed.

You can’t be happy all the time.

Happy is an emotion and, like all emotions, it is temporary. Happy is not a state of being. If you’re expecting to always be happy then every time you feel a normal, uncomfortable emotion you’ll feel like you’re backsliding.

You’ve done it before, you can do it again.

If you feel like you’re backsliding, that means you’ve moved forward at some point. This time, it will probably be faster because you don’t have to do all the learning and trial and error over. You still have the tools and know-how to move forward again!

As you may have guessed if you’ve been following my blog, I usually have a personal story to go along with the article. This one is no different. Recently I’ve noticed signs of a backslide in my management of generalized anxiety.

Here are my answers to the questions above:

Is this a reasonable reaction to unreasonable circumstances?

Not really unreasonable. Work seems to be picking up for me again and I know I tend to be more on edge to meet the change. That only explains the extra adrenaline I have at work, not the rest of what’s going on such as the disrupted sleep, early bedtime, and irritability.

Has something harmful been added?

This hasn’t been going on long; maybe a week and a half. I have let negative thoughts back in, particularly in regards to my endeavors in writing. I’m a patient person only when it comes to others but have difficulty being patient with myself. I’ve got to stay on top of reminding myself I can’t force this process.

I think it’s worth mentioning that I’ve added on free online courses available with my local library. These will hopefully improve my writing skills. While this has shown up in this time period, I do not believe it is harmful. Sometimes, new additions coinciding with backsliding is just a coincidence.

Did something drop off?

Yes. I haven’t been playing video games and started that back up a couple of nights ago. It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve play a board game as well. The husband and I had to be out of town last weekend and missed out on our weekly meet up to play with friends. I’ll be getting back to it this weekend.

Also, yoga. I really need to get back to yoga…

Are you following treatment recommendations?

I am definitely following recommendations. My therapist and I feel the same about my treatment: it will be temporary and short given that I already had a lot of the tools being a therapist myself. I see my psychiatrist as often as recommended and we’re collaborating on a reduction in dosage.

Is there a cycle?

There was at one point which I will share more on in an upcoming article. If not managed, what’s happening now could loop me back into it. I’m recognizing it so that I can face it.

How’s the weather been?

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but in many parts of the world we’ve been experiencing heat waves and record highs. Where I am, the wave just recently broke. I’m thinking this pattern could account for some irritability and sleep difficulties.

What do close others think?

Luckily, I haven’t gotten feedback on irritability so I know that what I’m feeling I’m managing. That’s a huge relief. What I have been told by my husband is that I’ve been going to bed early. He’s talked out the concerns about patience with myself in regards to writing. I’ll continue reaching out to the people who know me best for feedback.

Sources Cited

Nicole, Ali. “The First Step.” Weirdly Well, 7 June 2019, weirdlywell.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-first-step.html.

Rahm, Megan. “The Effects of Weather on Mental Health.” HealthyPlace, 4 Apr. 2018, www.healthyplace.com/blogs/recoveringfrommentalillness/2018/04/the-effects-of-weather-on-mental-health.

Share To Facebook

Share To Twitter