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Happy Wednesday y’all, how are we doing? Today I am bringing you a post which is super personal to my own heart and I hope that some of you find comfort in this post. I decided to write this post due to the amount of stigma which still surrounds mental illness, and I want that to change. I am going to crack straight into this post or I don’t think I ever will.
I will never forget the time I told one my close friends I was suffering with a mental illness, she looked at me like I was well and truly insane and from that day on she began to distance herself from me. I will forever wonder what she actually thought I may do to her because I suffer with an illness. I mean it is not like it is contagious, but the way people act around mentally ill people sometimes you wonder if people think it is. The other thing that worries me about the reaction to people finding out I have a mental illness is the fact they feel like they need to check on me all of the time, like I am fragile and that I will burst into tears at any given moment, when the reality is it isn’t like that at all. Suffering with depression isn’t all about crying all of the time and feeling down there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. People with depression aren’t always hiding underneath that they feel weak, a lot of the time depression suffers can be happy just as much as the next person. There is just an underlying problem which affects them in ways which other people do not understand.
With anxiety, I am not just going to have a panic attack everytime we visit somewhere which has a large amount of people or because I have to place an order at Mcdonalds, everybody has their triggers with anxiety which is a given but often it is not what it seems again; like depression. Anxiety isn’t just oh I feel a bit worried today, oh I am anxious. It’s the crippling pains in your stomach and the constant thoughts of bad things that may happen, it is the fear for days, weeks, or even months before a particular event happens. It takes over your mind and your life in ways which people who have never suffered wont understand. People with anxiety aren’t all reserved and shy, people can be confident and outspoken and still suffer in silence. I think people are too quick to judge where anxiety is concerned; I mean she’s hanging around in a group of people in a busy bar. She CAN’T have anxiety. It doesn’t actually work like that at all.
Granted people who have suffered with illnesses can feel fragile at times, and often insane in their own minds; but that is up to them to feel that way. It is not okay to tell somebody how they should be feeling. “OH you have depression, why aren’t you crying?” That’s totally not okay. I may suffer with an illness that you cannot see but I am stronger than you’ll ever imagine and I am not going to crack.
