hypocrisy

One thing in life that I find undeniably frustrating is when people give advice that they would never take themselves and yet they expect others to follow their completely advice. This has become a particularly popular thing for people to do on twitter which I have noticed far too often for my liking.

When scrolling through my timeline, it's very common for me to see what I call 'depression accounts' (just to give them all one simple name, however not all suffer from depression, but similar mental health illnesses). Many people with these 'depression accounts' self harm or are suicidal, and they will actively tweet about their recent self harm or the fact that they want to try to kill themselves that night. Freedom of speech, I can't stop that.

One thing that I have noticed is that these 'depression accounts' intercommunicate frequently, especially in attempts to stop others from hurting themselves. They will say 'don't cut yourself tonight', when they themselves have every intension of doing so. Some will say 'show --- that things get better' when they truly believe that things will not get better for them.

I learned a while ago that giving advice that I wouldn't take myself is useless. I didn't start my recovery by choice, but one of the factors encouraging me to keep recovering was that I didn't want to be a hypocrite anymore. I wanted to be able to say that recovery works, that I'm feeling better and that the urges had gone, and have people believe me because they can actually see that I'm telling the truth. I wanted to push myself towards recovery, even though deep inside me, I never wanted to get better. But I was sick of feeling like any advice I gave was a lie. So I had to take my own advice for once and start to get better.

When I was very bad, I remember being told by so many people that I gave 'great advice' but that I should take my own advice too. I can recall that feeling like an impossible task that I would actively refuse to do, because I thought it was too hard. Well, over a year on, I can tell you that yes it was hard, and yes it did suck, but it was worth it. My own advice helped me so much more than I could ever have imagined, and that's because I stopped being hypocritical and finally decided that I needed to practice what I preach.

Although this may sound selfish, it's important that it's done. Recovery is a highly personal journey, people can guide you along the way, but it's you who has to take each step. So focussing on yourself is crucial, even if you don't want to. Spending more time following your own good advice to help you to get better would be so much more beneficial to you than helping a thousand other people to recover.

You need to take the first few steps yourself, show that the advice works, and that you're living proof that it's a good idea. So, go on, try your hardest to find alternative coping mechanisms, write down your thoughts like you tell others to, talk to your friend to vent your frustrations, find a hobby that allows you to take your mind off things. Don't just give this good advice to others, take it yourself.