I recently had the pleasure of speaking with a young man who voiced frustration with what he perceived as a lack of effort by his mental health providers in helping him find his way to wellness. This fellow lives with mental illness and substance use disorder and was not finding the relief he seemed to want. The patient said that his providers were not giving him the answers to his problems. He wanted the providers to make him better.

To some extent, it is partially my job as a mental health professional to help make the people who come to me better. I hope to provide my patients with the tools they need to find their way from mental illness to mental wellness. Unfortunately, I do not have a magic want to make all my patients’ troubles disappear. There is no magic pill to make my patients suddenly better. Recovery takes time and effort and persistence. The fellow I met recently stated that the would leave his provider if progress were not made rapidly enough. What he failed to understand is that while as provider, I can help make you better, it takes effort on behalf of the patient to actually get better.

People living with mental illness, substance use, trauma and eating disorders just want to feel better. No one wants to live in the fog of depression, the fear of anxiety. No one wants to live with the albatross of substance use hanging around his neck. No one truly wants to be plagued with an eating disorder. These illnesses are exhausting and often debilitating. Finding your way out of these illnesses takes work, it takes commitment. We as mental health professionals can give you tools and resources to help find your way out of illness, but you as the patient actually have to put in the work to get there and stay there. We cannot do the work for you, and that is what this young man wanted me to do. I wish it were that easy.

Finding your way out of mental illness and substance use requires change, but changing your therapist or counselor every time the work of recovery becomes difficult will not make the process any easier. What so many people living with mental illness and substance use do not like to hear is that the change you likely are seeking starts and continues with you. You can change your surroundings, you can move, change jobs, change your friends, but if you do not change yourself and change your thinking, nothing really changes. You are the thing that has to change. And changing yourself does not come without effort, often repeated daily even once you find recovery.

Recovery is work. It does not come from wishful thinking. Recovery does not come from just wanting to be well. Recovery comes after taking the steps necessary to change yourself and your own life. Recovery takes daily effort, often with the help of a therapist or counselor and psychiatrist. Recovery takes time. It is not just about wanting to be well, it is about what you are willing to do to get well and stay well. How can you work with your treatment provider to find your way to wellness? What are you willing to change about yourself to find your way out of the darkness and into the light of being healthy?