Defeating addiction, eating disorders, or other mental illnesses, requires much more than just one single decision to recover. Recovery is a continuous process where you must choose it over and over again, every day. Acceptance, and learning to respond rationally to irrational thoughts, is a great start toward recovery, in whatever form.
My brother struggled with addiction for a long-time before he eventually lost in 2015. I spent many years trying to understand the whole situation. He wasn’t much different from anyone else, going to high school and college, experiencing peer-pressure, and attempting to be stronger than his addiction.
Although my brother was only with us until 2015, I have carried many lessons with me. Moving forward for me meant accepting the situation and learning to do better because of it. Indirectly, bad situations occasionally offer some sort of good. Coming to this conclusion was not easy. In fact, it took lots of time, but I was able to realize:
"Traumatic, unpredictable situations and mistakes are inevitable. However, they force us to re-evaluate our decisions, be more open to change, and consider new possibilities that we may have otherwise overlooked." -Kathryn Marie (Simpli-CityNutrition)
With this being said, in order to grieve and accept my brother's death, I had to accept reality. The most destructive type of mindset was when I lied to myself and tried to resist reality. Interestingly, this is only an example. Overcoming my eating disorder consisted of the same mindset and persistence. I had to accept many things, including that I was not healthy, and that I needed professional help.
Because many things are out of our control, having a positive mindset is critical for our wellbeing. In the end, how we respond has the ability to improve or degrade any situation. I promise you that no matter how bad a situation may seem, a bad attitude (whether yours or someone else’s) can always make it worse (& vice versa!)
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