Why Rose-Colored Glasses Don't Help Mental Illness

I'm quite convinced wearing rose-colored glasses doesn't help a mental illness. In fact, I'm pretty sure that wearing rose-colored glasses doesn't help most people at all. When I watch people with them on it actually drives me bonkers. Here's why rose-colored glasses don't help mental illness and definitely don't work for me.

What Are Rose-Colored Glasses?

I'm pretty sure most people know of rose-colored glasses. They are simply the idea of looking at the world through a "rosy glow" such that everything looks positive regardless as to its actual character. Now, this is different than simply looking at the bright side or looking for the actual positive in life. Rose-colored glasses insist that everything is positive even when it isn't. Looking for the positive is simply trying to look for genuinely positive things. The latter is reasonable while rose-colored glasses are not and they don't help a mental illness, either.

Why Don't Rose-Colored Glasses Help Mental Illness?

I guess you might think that seeing the world as made up candy-canes and lollipops would be a good thing. How could seeing all those positives actually be bad? That's simple: wearing rose-colored glasses that radiate all-encompassing, unrealistic positivity is just another word for denial. 

And denial is decided a bad trait in life in general but in mental illness specifically. It's a bad quality not to be able to see things that really are painful or negative. This means you're not dealing with life it is but, rather, are attempting to write your own fairytale. And life is decidedly not a fairytale and trying to make it one will bite you in the end.

For example, with mental illness. If I'm wearing rose-colored glasses, I'm incapable of admitting that I'm depressed or that I see a depression coming. This means that I'm not to use coping skills to deal with a depression that doesn't exist. And I'm not going to take steps to avert a depression that I don't see coming either. People with rose-colored glasses are just "sure" that won't happen.

But the problem is, with mental illness, it will happen for many. You can look on the bright side until you burn out your retinas, it doesn't stop problems from occurring and it doesn't stop an illness either. Rose-colored glasses can't shrink tumors, can't avert traffic accidents and can't fix mental illness, either.

Rose-Colored Glasses Stand in the Way of Reality

Rose-colored glasses get in the way of you dealing with reality. And reality is a critical thing to deal with for everyone. If, for example, your friend is addicted to methamphetamines and every time you see him, he steals from you, chances are, the next time he's going to steal from you again and he's not going to get better until he enters treatment. If you don't deal with this reality, you're just going to get stolen from and hurt over and over again.

It's the same with having a mental illness and rose-colored glasses. If I can't deal with all the crap of mental illness, then I can't make any of it better. You can't defeat (or even wound) an enemy that you insist isn't there. And believe me, mental illnesses like bipolar disorder are, indeed, the enemy of many.

So don't be scared of reality. Take off your rose-colored glasses. Appreciate the range of colors that life actually has to offer -- even the dark ones.