How do I have a "good" life with mental illness?

I have lots of mental problems and because of it I make lots of mistakes and I was blaming myself for being stupid and it would get worse and worse . And than one day I decided to make a peace with myself . That is who I am and I will live with it . Once I made peace with my incompetence and stupidity things turned out for better . I quit my job and opened pizza store .Didn't know anything about pizza and it took me 3 years to make enough money to pay for my living from it . 2 months ago I even got an employee . It is getting busy at a very very slow pace and I know some guys could have made fortune after one year, but I am getting there .... slower than somebody else but I am getting there .

So making peace with who you are from my experience is a way to recovery . Very slow and sometimes painful process but still better than staying at the same spot for the rest of the life . Taking it one day at the time, not thinking about past and not thinking about future is way to go if you ask me .

when you are ready you can work on emotional healing techniques.

one very powerful technique is writing a letter describing exactly how you feel. you don't send the letter, but you write it as if you were going to send it.

you would write the letter to both the person who violated you and to your past self.

your past self is a different person to who you are now. treat her as a different person and see if you can find it in yourself to start to forgive all people involved. it might not be easy and it might take a lot more time, but that is some ideas of what sort of process can be helpful.

I was emotionally violated and also touched inappropriately by a male friend when I was 16. I'm 33 now and there are times I still feel disgusted at myself.

edit: I apologise, I assumed you are female, I might be wrong there.

Look for a therapist that does EMDR or RTR therapy - they're specially helpful and short term therapies that work well on ptsd.

At 24 you're just beginning your young adult phase of life. Its never too late to make your life better. We're always leaving one phase of life for another. You're not a teenager, now you're at the best phase of your life. The decisions you make can make the rest of your life fabulous.

Google: "therapists; EMDR; (your location)" or use the phone book, and/or various associations for psychiatrists and psychologists, to find the nearest one using EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy). In EMDR, a therapist will ask you to revisit a traumatic event and remember the feelings, negative thoughts, or memories associated with it. While you are doing this, the therapist may (or may not; methods vary) hold up two fingers about eighteen inches from your face and move them from side to side. You may be asked to track the movement of the therapist’s fingers with your eyes. As you concentrate on the traumatic event during therapy, you are trying to bring its memory to life. The mental imagery you are able to conjure up during the therapy session is then processed, aided by your eye movements, facilitating the processing of painful memories, enabling some of the powerful emotional states involved to be discharged to some degree, and helping to achieve resolution and a state involving less painful emotions.

EMDR has 8 stages. Professional EMDR is always much preferable, and Opester, (who gives it a glowing recommendation) a therapist with more than 20 years experience, and a former contributor, here, stated that it was one of only two disorders which can be completely cured. Sometimes, a beta blocker, such as propranolol, or atenolol is administered prior to being asked to recount the traumatic event, reducing the emotional charge associated with it, as it is re-recorded in your memory (which has been shown to be plastic, at least to some extent, with many people).

View my previous answer about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=201... and see answer about EMDR therapy at http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/answer?qid=20...

After EMDR therapy, discuss with your therapist the importance of SINCERE forgiveness, as a way of moving on with your life, otherwise you will still be holding onto those negative emotions, but you may well not be ready for this step for some time.

Read my answer about forgiveness at http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=201... Ordinary "talk therapy" is often unable to access the deeply seated emotions associated with memories of trauma, but EMDR therapy has proved effective.

Let it go.

PTSD's most frustrating problem is that you keep looking for people that 'get it', so you can justify the pain you feel.

Allow yourself to stop 'fighting', we know you're in pain, you know you're in pain, so there's no need for it anymore.

If you can let that 'battle-ready' mindset go, your PTSD will calm down, it might always be a soft-spot, but it will fade away if you stop 'fighting'.

you are not to old trust me and the only thing that will truly help is time things like that dont get better over night i to have ptsd so in some ways i can relate

No you are not too old to return to normal. I have a serious suggestion. Please start exerting physically by taking part in sports or even going for brisk walk of not less than an hour a day. If you can manage to do walk early in the morning you will return to healthy life very quickly. its a sure solution for you.