Reaching Out For Your Mental Health: How To Start Accepting Help

Accepting help can be quite the hard thing to do. If you’re someone who likes to rely on themself, and take life at their own pace and direction, you’re likely not to be someone who turns to others all that often. 

And while that’s OK most of the time, there will be moments when you can’t work through life on your own. Self sufficiency is great, and it’s good to be in charge of yourself! But you should never feel like you have to take things on alone. 

People are here to help you, even when you think they’re not. Reaching out for their support is a great way to throw yourself a lifeline. It’s part of taking care of both your brain and your body, and making sure your mental wellness never quite becomes too overwhelming for just the one person to handle - and that’s you! 

So let’s go through the best ways to start accepting help down below. It’s a skill much like any other, and it’s not something that always comes easily. But when you need help, it’s better to know how to ask for it than to think you need to struggle in silence. 

Talk to the Person You Trust the Most

When you’re feeling down and feel like you might actually need to open up, this will always be the best starting point. Go to the person you know you can trust, and who you trust the most, and ask if they’ve got some time to talk about something personal. 

It’s always good to check for this before plunging right into the situation, as the person you’ve turned to might be dealing with something themself right now. Don’t let the possibility of that put you off - just ask first and if the answer is no, come back and try again later. 

When starting a conversation like this, don’t be afraid to just come right out with what the problem is. You don’t have to ‘start at the beginning’ or try to make your feelings make sense with a load of context. Just say what you’re currently dealing with, like the thoughts that are swirling round your head, and go from there.  

Work together with the person you’re opening up to. Let them ask questions, do your best to answer them, and think about what you would like from a conversation like this as well. If you just want them to listen, let them know that, but if you’d like a bit of advice, tell them that’s what you’re looking for.  

Keep a Record of Your Feelings 

If you’re the kind of person who feels a lot of things at once, and finds it hard to work out what’s going on in your head, chest, hands, and anywhere else you feel things, make sure you keep a record. 

Keeping a record of your feelings as they ebb and flow will help you track your emotional patterns, as well as the triggers that most commonly bring them up, and that’ll help you learn a lot more about yourself. 

It’ll also make it much easier for a professional mental health therapist to work on your emotions with you. Reaching out for help does sometimes take a lot more prep work than you expect it to, and it’s not just about being ready to talk to someone about what you’re going through. If you’d like to access support as readily as possible, note down what you’re feeling and why, and let someone in on this pattern too. 

This also helps to counteract any memory issues you may have regarding your feelings. A lot of people can want to cry the whole 24 hours away one day, but after a good night’s sleep, forget how they felt at all. This doesn’t mean you’re unneeding of help, but it can make reaching out for it more complicated. Ease your journey ahead by keeping a record. 

Contact a Helpline

If you’re not ready to talk to someone in person, why not start with a helpline? There’s many out there, and you can call (and even email) any one of them that you feel is suitable for you. There will be a sense of anonymity that can make opening up easier. 

This can also just be a  bit of practice for you; if talking about your feelings makes you feel more vulnerable than you think is worth it, this is a good kind of litmus test. 

You can talk to someone for as long as you like on a helpline like this, and you don’t even need to have something specific you’d like to go through or work on. Venting is more than allowed, and you could even bring up the fact that you find it hard to talk about what you’re going through. 

Most of the people who work helplines like these aren’t professional mental health advocates, of course, but they can sympathize and empathize with you when you need it. That’s a good thing to remember when you use them, as it can help you to adjust your expectations and take things one step at a time. 

Go Through Your Employer

If work has made you feel overburdened and like you can’t take any more, it’s best to go through your employer to access mental health support. You can talk to your manager or your boss if you’d like to, but you don’t have to keep them in the loop about this. 

The job-related mental health professional you end up seeing may be obliged to make your employer aware, but that’s as far as the disclosure will go. 

And even if what you’re going through isn’t directly caused by your work, you can still make use of professional resources. If the benefits package you receive has mental health support included, feel free to sign up for counselling sessions - especially if these will also be covered by your health insurance. 

Be Prepared to Try Multiple Approaches

Sometimes one form of support isn’t quite right for you. That can be quite the harsh reality to face, especially when it’s taken you so much time and energy to reach out in the first place. When this ‘goes wrong’, it can set you back to square one, and you might be dissuaded from ever reaching out again. 

But there’s more than one kind of help out there, and you’re allowed to access as many different kinds as you need. That could mean that going to CBT therapy isn’t quite right for you, so you try DBT instead. Or it could mean you need a short stay in a drug rehab, as working on your mental health needs to take priority right now. 

A lot of people can benefit from various kinds of support, and understanding that is part of accepting help. Rarely does someone have a chat with a friend and think they’re ‘all fixed’. They need ongoing, structured, and genuinely beneficial support from people who know what they’re doing. 

Talking to a loved one is often the first step, and ensures you have someone to come home to who knows and cares about what you’re going through. But don’t let the support you’re accessing end there. 

Take Care of Your Body at the Same Time

Your body benefits the brain and vice versa. What affects you upstairs affects you downstairs, and the ties between the two parts of yourself may even be closer than we ever knew. 

Indeed, that’s why putting some extra special care into your body is good at a time like this. When you feel physically healthy, you’re far more likely to feel more robust in your mind too. Even if this just means you’re getting more sleep at night, that extra energy can prevent anxiety and depression related fatigue from taking you down even further. 

Of course, you can also step up your physical fitness regime at this point too. Why not consider working with a PT, who will be able to tailor a fitness program to your specific needs right now? It’s a good way to reach out without putting pressure on yourself to be vulnerable. 

You can also join a class and ensure both your physical and social needs are being met. That always improves mental health. 

It’s OK to Need Help

Really it is. And it’s OK to ask for help - it doesn’t make you a burden to do so. Even when you’ve been navigating things alone for the longest time, reaching out for a bit of support will do you the world of good.  

Keep that in mind during the most difficult moments. While you may think you have to sort things out and tamp down your own emotions, that can make the negative times in life so much more difficult. 

Instead, open up, get the support you need, and rely on the people around you. You’ll feel a lot better for having done so, even if it takes some getting used to! 

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• The Role Of Mental Health In Addiction Recovery