Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all.
“
| — | Bill Clinton (via fiuactiveminds) |
Ugh….these are unhelpful words
Why doesn’t our culture teach us to say caring things like
“I know it seems like nothing is wonderful and everything hurts; but it won’t last forever and you are so much more than just frazzled nerves and leaky tear ducts. You’ll be a lot happier after I remind you why I love you, it’s okay that you forgot”
*I meant this for my personal blog, but it clearly resonated*
If you don’t understand mental illness, good. Good for you. You shouldn’t have to understand.
If you don’t understand why some people can’t get out of bed in the morning, good. I hope you jump out of your bed every day ready to take the world by storm.
If you don’t understand how someone could drag a blade across their skin, or bruise themselves, pick, probe, burn, then good. I hope you’re never that desperate to feel something.
If you don’t understand what would drive a girl to keep starving herself despite everything she’s lost in the process, good. I hope you stay heavy and present and real.
If you don’t understand what eating everything in your kitchen only to throw it all up solves, good. I hope you always remember that it solves nothing.
If you don’t understand why he won’t just go to rehab or church or find someone who can help him, good. I hope you always remember you have somewhere to turn.
If you don’t understand how she can put getting high above her own children, good. I hope you never fall in love with a substance that only kills you in return.
If you don’t understand how someone can keep swallowing bottles of pills, tying knots in ropes, or standing at the tops of bridges, good. I hope you’re never that desperate for relief.
If you don’t understand how people do it, good.
You’re not supposed to.
It’s all fucking sick.
It’s all fucking mental.
When you say your prayers tonight, thank God for ignorance.
It’s healthy.
If you don’t understand why some people can’t get out of bed in the morning, good. I hope you jump out of your bed every day ready to take the world by storm.
If you don’t understand how someone could drag a blade across their skin, or bruise themselves, pick, probe, burn, then good. I hope you’re never that desperate to feel something.
If you don’t understand what would drive a girl to keep starving herself despite everything she’s lost in the process, good. I hope you stay heavy and present and real.
If you don’t understand what eating everything in your kitchen only to throw it all up solves, good. I hope you always remember that it solves nothing.
If you don’t understand why he won’t just go to rehab or church or find someone who can help him, good. I hope you always remember you have somewhere to turn.
If you don’t understand how she can put getting high above her own children, good. I hope you never fall in love with a substance that only kills you in return.
If you don’t understand how someone can keep swallowing bottles of pills, tying knots in ropes, or standing at the tops of bridges, good. I hope you’re never that desperate for relief.
If you don’t understand how people do it, good.
You’re not supposed to.
It’s all fucking sick.
It’s all fucking mental.
When you say your prayers tonight, thank God for ignorance.
It’s healthy.
“
| — | “If You Don’t Understand” (via babyspooks) |
nothing scares me more than this.
I understand the feeling of becoming whole when we meet our “other half”. Though there are already problematic aspects of that belief, let’s say for a second that we are a half of a whole before we meet someone we love. Why should our loved one be responsible for “putting together” the half that we are? Why can’t we love ourselves enough to become as satisfied and happy a half as we can, before we meet the person who will fulfill us romantically?
I believe that we can be the person in distress and the knight in shining armor at the same time. We do not have to wait for our other half. It can be difficult and painful, (it most likely will be an extremely complicated journey especially for those of us who have both internal and external obstacles,) but our other half is there to support us and wipe the sweat from our brow. They are not there to hold us up so we can forget how to stand.
Beatrice the Biologist Rocks
So I know this isn’t exactly on topic, but it’s related. My own body image issues were always complicated by my mental health issues, or maybe vice versa; but I can say nearing 30 with my anxiety and depression well mitigated has allowed my body image to blossom. It’s amazing how wonderful it is to wake up and not be disappointed about it, and it’s freed my brain to find beauty in the world, but most importantly, in myself.
This has a few important aspects for me. The fact that we don’t discuss injury to our psyche in the same way we do injury or illness to our body; the stigma of mental health treatment and counselling is such that we often don’t widely admit to mental illness, let alone have common language to discuss it with friends, acquaintances, and strangers.
But also the fact that it’s not socially acceptable to offer emotive care for people struggling with mental health issues. When a person has a physical ailment which hospitalizes them, they receive calls and cards and gifts and flowers; when a person has a need for psychiatric hospitalization it’s seen as shameful, spoken about only in whispers, and no one ever sends flowers. Rarely is it spoken about outside the family or immediate friends, and it’s never discussed without a great deal of stigma.
It’s so taboo to discuss, most lay-people don’t even understand the lexicon and definitions, let alone have any understanding as to how it impacts daily life, what it’s like to live with, or (most importantly) how to support loved ones who are suffering.
I’m gonna continue to do my part to destroy the same and stigma surrounding mental illness by being vocal about my own struggles, and raising the voices of others who are struggling, through my blog The Lame Dame. If you have a mental illness, talk about it; if you don’t, please still talk about it. End the Stigma.
Depression is not selfish. Anxiety is not rude. Schizophrenia is not wrong. Mental illness isn’t self-centered, any more than a broken leg or the flu is self-centered. If your mental illness makes you feel guilty, review the definition of “illness” and try to treat yourself with the same respect and concern you would show to a cancer patient or a person with pneumonia.
“
| — | (via goldenphoenixgirl) |
Top 10 List of the Day
The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success by Kevin Dutton reveals a list of professions with the highest percentage of psychopaths and and lowest percentage. Hat tip goes to Boing Boing.
Reblog if you actually give a shit about anyone who’s suicidal or depressed.
I’ll always be here for those who need a friend
I won’t lie - recovery’s a bitch. You will feel awful, and ‘fat’, and like giving up, a lot of the time.
But that’s only to be expected.
Living hurts, but living is living, growing, being real.
Being stuck in disorder? That’s not real. That’s not worth it.
Recovery is always worth it. Life is always worth it.
this is really selfish but
why can’t mental illness be like any other kind of sickness where you go to hospital and your loved ones come and give you flowers and tell you that they love you and hold your hand and make sure you get better
why doesn’t that happen instead of awkward silences and embarrassing tears and messy bedsheets and a bunch of other stuff no one actually talks about
w h y
[Trigger Warning: Rape culture]
mindovermatterzine:“People associate mental disorder with violence. We found that crime and mental disorder are linked, but not in the way people think: Persons with severe mental disorders are terribly…
TW: Description of depression and suicide
So, one day you are walking along, minding your own business, when suddenly you trip and fall into this enormously deep pit sitting right in the middle of the path. No clue how it got there or how you failed to notice it until you had fallen in. You struggle and try to get out of the pit but the wall are too steep and crumbly and the ground under you is wet and muddy and you make no progress at all to get out.
So there you are. Sitting at the bottom of a dark pit, miserable, with no foreseeable way out. And then you hear a voice from above.
“Hey there stranger, you seem to have fallen into a pit, eh?”
“Help! Help I’m stuck and can’t get out! Please help!”
“Listen, what you need to do now is buck up and see the good things in life. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the flowers are blooming, everything is just grand. Smile!”
And off they go, leaving you in the pit to contemplate how muddy the mud is and how little sunlight actually reaches you, and when you can faintly hear birds signing it is only a reminder of how far down and stuck you are. Then another voice.
“My good friend, how nice to see you down there!”
“Help! For the love of god I am stuck! Help!”
“Hey, I was wondering if you wanted to go hang at the mall today. We could catch a movie or something.”
“I’m stuck down here! I need help! Get a rope or something, please!”
“Dude, come on. Don’t be so down all the time. If you don’t want to come you could just tell me instead of making excuses. Way to not care about my feelings.”
And off they go. Shit. Now you are in a hole and you hurt your friend’s feelings and you kinda did want to go to the mall. And the mud is really cold. Your feet are starting to sink in and you start spending a lot of energy just to keep from sinking in so far they you can’t move anymore. It is exhausting. But then a voice that you know so well.
“Hey love! How are you today? I bought your favorite food for supper tonight <3”
“Oh thank god! Help please! I fell down here and can’t get out and I am sinking into the mud and I’m so scared that I might sink too far in and never be able to get out!”
“You know, you don’t have to get upset with me.”
“I’m not! I just need help. I love you.”
“Well you certainly have a funny way of showing, moping about down there in that hole. If you really loved me maybe you would climb out so we can go home.”
“I’ve tried! Really I have. The walls are too steep. I can’t do it. I need a ladder or something. Call the fire department!”
“Ugh. You aren’t the only one with problems, you know. Just earlier today I stumble in a small dip in the sidewalk and stepped in a shallow puddle but you don’t see me using it as an excuse to be all self centered. You know what, fine. I’ll just go home and eat by myself. I hope you enjoy your little pity party down there.”
And off they go.
You are desperate and alone even though you can hear and even occasionally see people walking past the opening of the hole. You call out over and over but nobody seems to care or notice. And those that do give you trite little nothings.
“You should have waited till you were older to fall into a hole. Why didn’t you think before you fell in?”
“Kids these days, leaping into holes without any consideration for the rest of us. Grow up already.”
“You know, if I was in a hole, I would have a grand time of it. No rules or concerns to hold me back. I would make mud pies all day long. You are in such a great position.”
“Cheer up! If you smiled more and had some fun you would be out of that hole in no time!”
“Stop crying so much. You’re making the rest of us feel bad.”
At some point somebody hears you and actually listens as you cry for help. They run off and return later with a large crowd of strangers who stand around the rim of your hole shouting down more pointless little nothings and encouraging you. More than a few say things like “think about your family! Being stuck in a hole is so selfish when there are so many people who love you!”
And eventually they all clear out and you are still in the hole and the sun is setting and it genuinely feel likes there is no hope at all.
The end. No, this story doesn’t have a happy ending. It doesn’t have a cheerful humorous joke to sum up the moral. You sit in the hole until you get tired of trying. You stop calling for help. You let yourself sink into the mud up to your knees and waist and chest. Your friends stop coming by. Your partner leaves you because it is too much trouble putting up with you. Your family stops by to admonish you for being down there and embarrassing them so much. And someday you do the only thing that would end your existence in the hole and pile the mud up over your face and suffocate, because as scary and awful as death is, it seems to be a better option than living the rest of your life miserable and cold and in pain stuck at the bottom of a hole unable to enjoy anything or feel anything. And that is the end of my little story.
wow.. this is the most accurate way of describing depression i’ve ever heard
As someone with periodic depression who is married to a person with bipolar disorder, that original post really pisses me off — as though anyone would choose depression.
And yes, the reply is a great description of depression. From the other side, as the person who loves someone in the hole — you throw down ropes and sometimes the person is strong enough to climb out, sometimes they aren’t, so you put a ladder down, sometimes they climb out and sometimes the ladder sinks. Sometimes you get so down and so frustrated that you just sit there next to the hole and cry. Sometimes you go off by yourself and rage and throw things and cuss. And then you go back to the hole and you offer them a hand and you try again, one more time, to pull them out knowing that even if you succeed you’ll both be right back here again in the future.
Wow. The original post makes me very mad. I was diagnosed with type 1 Bipolar Disorder when I was 17 (I am 33 now) and I honestly can’t believe anyone would ever think that’d I’d choose to feel the way that I do sometimes. That’d I’d choose to lie in bed some days and just cry, or that I’d lay there and hate the fact that I woke up because anything has to be better than this miserable blackness I can’t get away from. Or the look on my families faces when they know I’m at my lowest and can’t seem to pull away from it. So no matter how much I love life normally, I enjoy life truly, sometimes I can’t help it, and I can’t stop the depression. And the op may have thought they weren’t trivializing depression, but they obviously don’t have a clue as to what it’s about. But the one comment really did explain depression perfectly; hopefully the OP will read that and get a clue.
