5 Reasons To Love Yourself When You Have a Mental Illness

Here's what's happening on the HealthyPlace site this week:

• 5 Reasons To Love Yourself When You Have a Mental Illness
• From the HealthyPlace Mental Health Blogs
• Video: 3 Worst Bipolar Symptoms and How They Affect Me
• Most Popular HealthyPlace Articles Shared by Facebook Fans
• Mental Health Quote

5 Reasons To Love Yourself When You Have a Mental Illness

One of the cruelest things about living with a mental illness is that it becomes your bully. It zaps your self-esteem, and it makes you believe what stigma says about people with mental illness (Signs of Self-Stigma). To help you regain perspective about yourself, here are some reasons to love yourself:

1. You have hopes, dreams, and goals. Mental illness can make them difficult to realize, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Life visions don’t have a minimum speed limit, and they can’t be forced off the road.
2. You have your own set of values and sense of what’s important to you. Having a mental illness doesn’t mean you don’t believe in anything.
3. You have unique abilities and talents. Certain things are happening in your brain that can make life difficult, but there’s more to you than those things.  
4. You have character strengths inherent within you. They are a large part of who you are. Your illness is not.
5. Even on your very worst days, you are you. You’re surviving. You have a spark inside you that never stops glowing. Your illness might at times cast a shadow over it, but it can’t extinguish that inner glow. By calling on your dreams, goals, values, abilities, talents, and character strengths, you can gradually make that spark ignite into a flame.

Related Articles Dealing with Mental Illness and Loving Yourself

• The Mental Illness and Self-Confidence Connection
• Easy Ways to Practice Self-Love on Difficult Depression Days
• How to Find Self-Love in Three Steps
• Self-Stigma: When Mental Illness Stigma Comes from Within
• Fighting Self-Stigmatization After a Depression Relapse
• A Guide to Overcoming Self-Stigma
• Low Self-Esteem and Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorders

Your Thoughts

Today's Question: How does self-stigma affect you? We invite you to participate by sharing your thoughts, experiences, and knowledge on the HealthyPlace Facebook page and on the HealthyPlace Google+ page.

From the HealthyPlace Mental Health Blogs

On all our blogs, your comments and observations are welcomed.

• Dating When You Are Open About Bipolar
• How Food Affects My Depression and Anxiety
• How to Short-Circuit Your Anxious Thoughts
• Use the Power of Compassion in Tough Times
• Dealing with the Intrusive Thoughts of OCD and Anxiety
• Protect Your Mental Health When Coping with Depression
• Have Anxiety? Take Time Off of Work
• Bipolar Treatment Changes: Guess and Check
• Journaling for Mental Health Improvement

Feel free to share your thoughts and comments at the bottom of any blog post. And visit the mental health blogs homepage for the latest posts.

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From HealthyPlace YouTube Channel

I'm Hannah. I Have Bipolar 2

3 Worst Bipolar Symptoms and How They Affect Me

The worst bipolar symptoms I face are depression, anxiety, and unwanted thoughts. These three symptoms that have caused me to feel hopeless and worthless. (Watch Hannah and subscribe to the HealthyPlace YouTube channel for more great mental health videos.)

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Most Popular HealthyPlace Articles Shared by Facebook Fans

Here are the top 3 mental health articles HealthyPlace Facebook fans are recommending you read:

1. When a Bipolar Coping Skill Stops Working
2. How I Healed from a Narcissist Boyfriend’s Abuse
3. The Best Exercises for Depression Treatment

If you're not already, I hope you'll join us/like us on Facebook too. There are a lot of wonderful, supportive people there.

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Mental Health Quote

"To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art."

Read more eating disorder quotes.

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