Life comes in phases. It’s a up down cycle of happiness and sadness. A constant revolving door between good events and bad events. It’s easy to dismiss that fact, to overlook it and think that each bad phase is going to last forever, but they never do. So, why is it so easy to dismiss the cycle?

Our emotions are overwhelming. They completely take over our thoughts. Our memories of both good and bad times get fuzzy and we think the only thing we know for sure is the crisp emotions we currently feel.

Because of this it’s easy to miss the fact that it isn’t just happiness and sadness that cycle, but all aspects of our mental health. Anxieties that we have conquered in the past can come up again in different ways. Habits that we haven’t seen in a long while can come back when we least expect them.

We often find ourselves trapped in cycles without even noticing it, and perhaps that’s because we really can’t control these cycles, and they’ll always come back despite us. But not being able to control our cycles doesn’t mean that we can’t beat them.

It’s important to be aware, in fact I think it’s the most important thing when it comes to fighting for good mental health. You need to be aware of the emotions your feeling now and those you have felt before. You need to be able to harness perspective. I honestly believe that perspective is one of the main fighters for happiness. It grounds us and it opens our eyes, and we need our eyes open to make positive changes.

Catching those new manifestation of doubt, sadness, or fear before they grow allows you to concur it while it’s still small. Knowing where it came from in your past allows you to know how to defeat it.

Just because you’ve learned these lessons before doesn’t mean that your mind won’t face the same problems again, and it doesn’t mean that you’ll be in a rational enough state to present your well earned solution. So finding that repetition, seeing those cues you’ve noticed before, can save you a lot of hassle. The mere thought that you’ve been here before and that you got out can clear even the cloudiest of minds. And if it doesn’t clear your mind right away it often leads you onto something that will.

So my advice would be to figure out the signs that come before each of your stints with bad mental health. Figure out what triggers caught you in the beginning so that you’ll be aware of them when they pass you by a second time. Then go back in and figure how you got out of those stints in the first place, and come up with a plan of attack.