Start Your Mental Health Journey

If you seek tangible solutions to improving your mental health, you're willing to make the necessary effort and cradle an inner flame of hope then you're in the right place. Escape From the Black Hole is a digital book that provides a start to finish process, or you might prefer worksheets to guide you through specific stages. The start of your personal journey begins with identifying which stage you're currently at from the prompts below:

  1. Your life seems to be an irreconcilable mess with disruption to any of the following: accommodation, personal safety, insufficient food and/or sleep (go to stage one)
  2. Each day is negative and involves any of the following: unhelpful habits, a lack of constructive hobbies, poor diet, a lack of physical exercise, unhealthy relationships (go to stage two)
  3. Physical needs are covered and basic routines are in order but something is clearly wrong with your mental health; either you have a reasonable guess of what might be the underlying cause or you don’t know at all (go to stage three)
  4. You know exactly what’s troubling you and are ready for therapy, alongside the potential for medication, but don’t know how to proceed (go to stage four)
  5. Therapy and/or medication has mostly resolved your fundamental issues so now you’re ready to thrive; creating a strong sense of purpose will help you to go far (go to stage five)

Stage 1: Physical Needs

Perhaps you’ve considered therapy or tried it to no avail because more pressing matters keep grabbing your attention. Perhaps you’re unable to find stable living space, maybe you’re experiencing abuse, or more mundane yet equally critical is the lack of good quality sleep or severe issues with your diet. This stage is square one and concerns your basic physical needs because all the therapy in the world will be meaningless if you’re constantly exhausted or feeling threatened. Such an important topic is missed in mental health discussion or assumed to be in place, when in reality this is the bedrock of your life on which everything must be built.

Stage 2: Healthy Habits

You have somewhere to live in safety, sleep approximately seven or eight hours each day, plus have access to reasonable food and drink. While your foundations are stable, the same can’t be said for the habits that you’ve developed in which your actions form several unhealthy habits. These can range from obviously destructive activities such as drinking an excessive amount of alcohol to the less obvious time-wasting on social media. You owe it to yourself to identify these unhealthy habits and develop healthier replacements.

Stage 3: Identify the Problems

Established routines ensure your daily life is stable so you’re in a great position to investigate what could be causing poor mental health. For some people this might be something obvious such as an annoying boss at work that creates endless stress, whereas for other people it might be something hidden deep within that requires further introspection.

Stage 4: Therapy

Therapy is a process to help you identify and resolve problematic learned behaviours, in essence unlearning unhelpful behaviours and replacing them with more helpful alternatives. While therapy is often promoted as a beneficial activity, there’s important elements to consider such as choosing a suitable therapist and an appropriate therapy model; ignoring these two factors will reduce therapy to a waste of your time and money, so it’s in your best interest to do it correctly. Medication is a possible addition at this stage, depending on your situation and mental health condition; it requires careful navigation and this topic is greatly misunderstood by most people, including doctors.

Stage 5: Developing Purpose

Possessing a genuine sense of purpose is a critical aspect of daily life that’s forgotten by most people, including mental health staff that ought to know the significant positive impact that purpose adds to someone’s life. A lack of purpose can contribute to poor mental health and is often a major underlying cause of certain conditions such as depression. On the other hand, someone with a strong sense of purpose in life is often more resilient to any setbacks or hardships as that purpose can act as a source of motivation and determination.

Worksheet Pack

A pack of worksheets that can help to guide you through these various stages is available to purchase on the products page.

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