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.

Mental illness: to those who struggle

Having any form of mental illness can be isolating. Whether it’s: depression, anxiety, substance abuse, schizophrenia, bipolar, borderline personality, obsessive compulsive, post traumatic stress; any of these things can take so much away from your life. I’ve heard it said before about a certain mental illness that it is a “disease of disconnect” (those of you who know exactly who I’m referring to are probably laughing reading this right now).

I’m not going to bombard you with statistics about these things, because having a mental illness doesn’t make you a mental illness and you (and I) are so much more than a statistic of generalizations. What I do want to say in this post however is, having a mental illness (whether diagnosed or not) does not make you a flawed individual, a failure, a weak individual or incurable.

There’s a lot of things people who tend to have a microphone and are talking about mental illness never seem to fully grasp, and not to sound like an ass hole but I think it’s because they aren’t fully grasping it, nor can they. I’m not trying to say that professionals out there who speak to an audience on mental health are incapable of this, but I feel like in order to really grasp it and to make an impression, it means more to the audience (who the majority are probably watching you speak because they either are living life with an illness or know someone very close to them who are) if you can speak from experience and truths about what life is like rather than spewing statistics and facts.

Do statistics and facts help? Of course they do! I wouldn’t be a psychology major if I didn’t agree that research and statistics surrounding mental health weren’t of extreme importance. What I am trying to get out in my round about way (which has probably been more of a rant thus far) is that when it comes down to it, those listening to people discuss mental illness are really just looking for hope.

Over the years there have been many things I wanted to say to a community of listeners who were seeking hope and facts (because I believe you can’t have hope without knowing some of the sobering facts), and I wanted to take the time out of my day to begin talking about some of those things.The following list is sobering, yet hopefully to those reading this, will also be encouraging and relatable.

1. Mental illness isn’t a death sentence

2. There’s always treatment available if you take it

3. You’re not the only person you know that has a mental illness

4. It’s ok to talk about and should be talked about

5. You’re going to have bad days/struggle

6. No matter what you believe, there’s people around you who love you and want to support you

7. You are not “__enter your diagnosis__”

8. Having a mental illness doesn’t have to shape your entire life (it will always be with you but it doesn’t have to BE your life)

9. People will more than likely not understand what you’re feeling, but it doesn’t make you different

10. The process of managing it is long and difficult but very possible

I hope I didn’t sound too motivational speakerish with that list. I never write anything on here that I don’t stand behind 100% so believe me when I say I truly believe every word I wrote.

Stay Strong my readers!!