Acceptance

For me the most difficult aspect of having my disability was accepting it. I thought having my illness and being successful, having the future I want, was mutually exclusive. Growing up I had never considered developing a long term illness that would impact my day to day life. I was always a high achiever at school, was told I had a lot of potential, this illness felt like it ruined all of that.

I think what made it particularly difficult was that I developed it my illness at university. Countless times people had chimed in that university would be the “best time of my life”. Yet I have spent countless hours lying in bed alone when I could have been out having the “best time”, spent countless hours at doctors appointments and therapy rather than out partying. I can’t drink but even if I could I struggle to face the social situations that involve drinking.

It felt like the NHS could not accept my illness was long term so how was I supposed to accept it? When I did become ill it seemed as though the NHS took an approach that I would just have to wait it out and it would be over in a matter of months. They suggested life style changes, gave me anti depressants which they recommended I took for 6 months and referred me to IAPT, a service that offers a introduction to short term therapy for over a million people in the UK. When IAPT didn’t work it felt like I’d exhausted all the support available to me and I really had to fight to access additional services. Many people face this situation, over 50% of users don’t enter recovery at the end of IAPT. Support beyond IAPT is so limited that my doctors did not think it was worth referring me to additional services because it has been so rare in the past that people have been accepted on to these services.

There has started to be a big shift in the media surrounding mental illnesses as more people in the public spotlight speak about their experiences, which is great. However I almost saw their illnesses as completely different to my own, as awful as any mental illness is, I assumed their mental ill health had a much lesser impact on their day to day life than mine. I simply couldn’t understand how someone could be successful and have a long term mental illness. Growing up it felt like having a severe mental illness confined you to a dark room for the rest of your life.

A massive turning point for me was watching Alastair Campbell’s BBC documentary on his depression. It intimately follows Campbell's struggle with long term depression. A moment that particularly struck me was how he establishes how much his illness affects him on a day to day basis. On a day when he is particularly ill he is unable to open the blinds in his house. Sometimes I struggle to do things such as draw curtains, get out of bed or make food. But the documentary made it clear to me that does not mean I can not achieve any my dreams and be successful in the same way that Alastair Campbell is incredibly successful.

The biggest barrier to acceptance for me was that I was confused as to what acceptance meant. I was scared acceptance meant I would just give in to my illness and let it dictate my life. But I was completely wrong. Acceptance allowed me to work with my illness rather than against it and in turn that cemented in my mind that my illness does not hold me back.