Here’s a long post, read it if you have time. Like 5 minutes, realistically.
Also: If you can figure out what’s written on that notepad, I’ll dedicate a post to you.
So.
What am I doing these days.
Well.
First of all, I’m going to try my hardest not to incorporate my infamous self depreciating humour into this post, even though that is my biggest coping mechanism.
These days I’m reading, writing, researching, and listening to a lot of James Bay.
And I’m thinking.
I’m doing a lot of thinking, but I’m also doing a lot of …just … not thinking.
In other words: I’m keeping myself busy.
I try not to write about mental health, even though I should, because almost every blog I visit has posts about ‘dealing with depression’ or ‘dealing with anxiety’ or just ‘mental health’. And it makes me wonder how many of these people really do suffer from these issues, or if they’re just self diagnosed. As someone who has had doctors referring them to therapists and pestering them to take anti-depressants, it’s a bit … I don’t know. Annoying. It’s the reason I don’t enjoy speaking about my own mental health. I’m fine, but I’ll never deny that anxiety is my biggest enemy.
But there are people who visit this blog, and I have a duty to help where I can. I don’t talk about this to anybody in real life.
No, I don’t plan on topping myself, if you’re wondering. I never have lol. Girl, why kill yourself when you can just do whatever the hell you want.
Statistics show that 350 million people worldwide suffer from depression, but double check that. I have said, many times, that I don’t suffer from depression, but if the doctors say otherwise, then anybody with the same ‘symptoms’ as me could probably benefit from my advice. I don’t know. Maybe ‘depressed’ is just part of my personality, and the medics don’t get that. I’m an emo inside!!!!! Maybe they’re too lazy to keep an eye on me and stop me from overdosing on my benzos (I have self control, thanks). Or maybe they genuinely think I am depressed. It’s who I ammmmmmm, let it go, just let it beeeeeee.
So that’s why I’m thinking of doing some ‘mental health’ posts, but I’m going to steer away from regurgitating the same information that everybody else likes to give. Please stop telling people to ‘think positively’ and ‘exercise’ and ‘go for a jog’. Honestly fuck off. Fuck off. Fuck offfffff. This is the type of advice that makes everybody think they have a mental illness, the type of advice that make people think mental illness is something that can just disappear if you try hard enough.
It can’t. And it won’t.
And by giving that shit advice, it will make people feel even worse when they realise it doesn’t work. That advice might be good for people who are in a shit mood, but don’t put it under the headline or tag it with ‘mental illness’. Mental health, sure. But not mental illness.
Therapy won’t work for me because I don’t have a mental illness to be taken away. Lol. There is nothing that needs to ‘work’. I just have anxiety.
When I say nothing helps me, I don’t mean to say that I suffer all day and every day and that I’m useless. I don’t hiss whenever a stranger speaks to me, I just get nervous and try everything I can to escape their presence. I’m not rude to people, in fact I find myself to be overly polite. Sometimes I’m too scared to take risks, I can get paranoid, I need reassurance. I’m not scared to leave the house, on the contrary, I like to go places alone. I don’t like new places or new people, this is true. I have, in the past, found myself hoping that the bus crashes, and various other things like that, but not in a suicidal way. I can’t explain it.
The point is, people can have the same issues and have differing symptoms. It’s the unfortunate truth. And stereotyping mentally ill people is harmful for the people who really are suffering, as opposed to the people who want to conform to that stereotype. Yes, one of the biggest pieces of bullshit truths of this era is that everybody WANTS to be mentally ill. Everybody wants to be ‘fucked up’ or ‘crazy’ and will do whatever they can to prove it to people. Girl, why would you want to be ill.
Anyway, I might do a little mini series, so watch out for a couple more posts about mental health. Or I might now. Bear in mind I only know about anxiety and, apparently, depression. I don’t know anything about psychotic illnesses; I can give limited advice, but not as far as how to personally cope/deal with it.
In the meantime: STOP trying to normalise mental illness!!!
Stop romanticising it. Stop trying to normalise it. Stop trying to normalise it. Stop trying to normalise it.
– k.
I'll be me [Mental Health – Part 1]
