What Is The Healing Mindset?

And how can we stay in it?

hey bitches, idk hope you’re good. life is kinda rough sometimes, you know? but that’s why we take 900mg lithium every night before bed. keeps the disposition proper and ladylike. anyways lets talk about the “healing” mindset. ok ily bye.

Ask your own question.

Dear Lithium,

First I'd like to thank you for sharing your more philosophical thoughts and diary entries. Reading them got me thinking and has been an inspiration to start the long process of getting better. I've realized that I need some pretty intensive mental health help and I'm checking into a residential therapy program next week. I was wondering if you have any experience with that or any advice for staying in a mindset of healing and how I can be prepared for my stay?

Dear Getting Better,

I don’t know you, but I can still be proud of you. It takes a lot of internal strength to go up against what you’re describing. The first step is usually the hardest, so congrats on that.

I’ve never stayed in a mental health facility (despite being a good candidate several times). From my times in other hospitals I can say that developing fun and strong relationships with the nurses will help you drastically. Other than that I can’t offer much logistical advice.

What I can speak to better is your question about staying in the healing mindset. I am in the healing mindset now as I write this, in the process of recovering from a flare up of a neurological disease I have. I want to draw some illustrations for you here, they’re about physical illness but I promise they apply. Imagine two Lithiums:

The first is stuck in bed cause she can’t move very much. She’s subsisting on a diet of recycled memes, chocolate Soylent, and the mercy of a friend. Every hour on the hour she mumbles to herself “it’s so over” when once again she can’t stand very good. She will be sure to check again next hour, forgetting that every time she tries she’s pushing herself too hard and just hurting herself further.

The second Lithium is also stuck in bed, because sometimes she gets unwell. This time it was pretty bad, and that sucks, but she’s grateful this isn’t death. This Lithium decided to not say anything negative about her body or her healing process, and to not verbalize any of her pessimistic thoughts. She is healing fully by the grace of the people who love her and take care of her, and it feels good to be surrounded with that. Lithium #2 doesn’t try to stand when she knows she can’t, it would just delay the day when she can see the ocean again. She’s very grateful Soylent exists.

These aren’t metaphors, these are two of the many states I have been occupying recently. I say all this because I think it’s important to realize that it is a choice that I am making, whether to be Lithium 1 or Lithium 2. The problem with the choice, though, is that we forget we’re making it. Scarcity mindset is programmed into so many of us. Pessimism, capitalism, (generational) trauma, fear, whatever. Out of fear we revert to Lithium 1, forgetting altogether we have the option for something else.

When we show up to heal, we show up with everything we got, and yeah, that seems to include all this unfortunate baggage that scares us all the time. There are schools of thought, supposedly backed by “science” that thinking optimistically improves the outcome of healing processes. I could spend an hour digging into the nuances and critiques of that, but in the end I would emerge from the depths of discourse only to declare “Yeah we should give positivity a shot.”

So what becomes difficult, for me and probably for many others, is that even after making the decision to stay positive and stay healing, we have to catch ourselves when our fear process takes over, and we have to recommit to our goals. So much easier said than done.

I can’t teach you how to employ mindfulness towards that end, but that’s essentially what you need to do. A few years ago I took a sharpie and I wrote “THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING” across my mirror, so that every time I checked my appearance I was forced to contend with my priorities.

That phrase can have a lot packed into it, and it’s ready to receive meaning that isn’t intended. It’s not a commentary on amoralistically elevating ourselves at the expense of others. It’s about reshifting our priorities to enable us to take care of ourselves in only the ways that we can. Shift your priorities. Elevate yourself to the level of respect that you give to folks who are so deserving of it, because you are deserving of your own respect also. For me, that will be a lifelong struggle, but every single day it’s a struggle I get better at navigating.

So I wish you the best of healing. Since you’re already on the journey I believe you’re on the right track and that you’re going to get to where you need to be. Healing requires patience, calm, and hopefully a lot of humor. Healing is not about becoming someone better. “It’s okay to just be mid.” Healing is about becoming at home with ourselves.

All my love,
Lithium

P.S. YOU ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT THING