Living With Mental Illness: What I’ve Learned

I don’t know what is motivating me lately to write about myself, but I find in moments where I sit down and start typing that the words that transform into sentences and paragraphs all contain material based around my life. Maybe it’s a therapeutic way for me get it all out or maybe it’s because I realize now that I am not the only one in the universe dealing with these things and that others can benefit from someone “who’s been there”. Wherever “there” is.

So what I want to write about today are the lessons I have come to learn thus far in my day to day life with mental illness. Now first off what I’ve learned is this:

1. Mental illness is mental illness, no matter what label professionals or society place upon it.

I have depression, anxiety and an addictive personality. I’ve been addicted to hurting myself, alcohol and even tried dabbling in drugs (luckily that one didn’t stick). But anyways, I’ve noticed over the years that apparently certain mental illnesses are “worse” than other ones. How unfair is that?

So say you’re in a room filled with people who have a wide array of diagnoses mental illnesses. Next to you is someone with depression, behind you is someone with panic disorder, in front of you is someone with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, PTSD, OCD, ADHD, Social Anxiety, Personality disorder, eating disorder, substance abuse, psychosis. No matter what the illness, let’s say they are all gathered in a room together and you are one of the lucky ones; you’re “normal” (you lucky bastard).

If I’m correct, it’s easy to assume you’d be most drawn to notice the ones with schizophrenia, bipolar whose having a manic episode, social anxiety whose look is like they’re terrified to be in that room with all of those people. But what about the others? Over the years I’ve come to see that those with mental illness who are either able to hide or mask symptoms or whose symptoms are not as “out there” seem to be looked at as somehow less significant or scary. When in all reality if one is diagnosed with a form of mental illness that fits criterion specified in the DSM, then who’s to say that a person with depression, anxiety or any other “less scary” disorder is any less important than the people with schizophrenia, psychosis or manic-depressive disorder (bipolar I & II)?

2. Those with mental illness are not as weird or scary as you think they are.

Every day you probably come across individuals who are living with mental illness. They’re functioning in society, working, going to school, having families, etc. It may sound like an odd place, but I remember exactly where I was when I came to realize people living with a mental illness are not scary or weird or odd; I was in a psychiatric hospital. Before I was admitted, I was certain I would be living in a building where people were whacked out of their mind. I had images of movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Girl, Interrupted flying throughout my mind; but when I got in and settled I realized that these people were just like me: not crazy, just sick.

Now, I don’t mean anything negative when I use the word “sick”, but if we are having an honest conversation here the term sick is fitting. I know a lot of people who would probably be offended by the term sick, mentally ill or what have you but for me it’s better than being called unstable or crazy. We who have mental illness aren’t crazy, it’s just how society perceives mental illness because I believe they lack an understanding, for they never had to live with anything long term like this.

I can probably come up with a lot more truths I have come to realize but for times sake I will just write about the first two that came to mind. I hope my honesty shed light for some of you, and I hope that through speaking up and speaking out about this type of thing will one day help those who may feel alone or like nobody understands.