mental illness Archive

End of an Era

Tomorrow is my seven-year anniversary of sobriety. Well by the time it’s posted it’ll be ‘today’ or ‘yesterday’. But y’know what I mean. It’s weird. Seven years. It’s a long time, and then it’s also not. It also goes very fast when life passes by and one is not mindful or living in the present. I can honestly say that most of my recovery has been one big, long panic. Will I get loaded? Will I find a job? How am I going to pay the rent?

“The Beast” – A comic by me

I would like to welcome the newest member of our writing team, Sydney. In her first post with us, she expresses her experiences with depression with humor. Thanks for sharing with us, Sydney!

After a long hiatus, my depression came back. I made this comic to deal with it.

Naming Names – Putting Agoraphobia Into Words

I still don’t know how to talk about agoraphobia. I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain it to people since I was 16 years old, but I’ve been largely unsuccessful at putting it into words. I’ve mostly just stayed quiet about it and used vague “anxiety” euphemisms to describe why I can’t hang out / go to work / go to class / go grocery shopping / whatever, and have also spent a lot of time struggling to come up with “legitimate” ways to account for what I do with my time while NOT doing these things, especially since spending [lots of] time alone or in my “safe zones” is actually super positive for me. For almost 20 years, I’ve had no concept of how to talk about this enormous part of me that has both limited me in humongous ways and also shaped me into the wonderful weirdo that the people close to me know and love.

Are You Afraid of Me?

Do I scare you? Does the way I talk worry you?

I’m not talking about intimidation. I’m tall, and I’ve always been told I’m stronger than I realize – usually just after hurting someone without realizing it, but that’s not what I mean.

“Good” Victim, “Good” Self-Care

I would like to welcome the newest member of our writing team, Nikki. In her first post with us, she talks about the expectations placed on abuse victims/survivors. Thanks for sharing with us, Nikki!

There was a thing going around Tumblr that I can’t find now because I still don’t totally understand Tumblr, and it was about being a “good abuse victim.” How a “good victim” never gets involved with abusers again. “Good victims” have scars to prove their abuse, they get everything documented, they go right into therapy. They get fixed, they don’t get abused again. “Good victims” publicly call out their abusers… or wait, is it that “good victims” just talk about it with people close to them and work it out themselves and never make a scene? I don’t know, I never did it “right.” I marched around calling myself a Survivor for years which, to me, was like a “better victim,” a stronger one. Cuz when you’re a victim you’re weak and when you’re a survivor you’re strong and you did “good victim” properly and graduated. I said FUCK YOU to victimhood like it was bad. But in retrospect that’s saying there’s a right and wrong way to handle abuse, and that’s bullshit. As a repeat VICTIM of abuse I wanted to look strong even though repeat abuse makes people look weak. But fuck these hierarchies of who handles abuse the best. I am a victim of abuse and I’m surviving.

Mental Health and Firearms

In the wake of the waking nightmare brought to Smalltown America in the form of the murder of 20 young children and 6 educators in Newtown, CT, firearms and the right to possess them once again returned to America’s field of vision. With it, though, came a new focus on mental illness and how that played a role that horrible day. There is no doubt that the shooter in this case and too many others like it in the last two years (and throughout our history) were not mentally well. While very true, it’s also readily apparent that the right wing and the gun lobby are simply using this fact to shift blame and attention away from the guns.

Sobriety & Resentments

No one ever said that this whole sobriety thing would be easy but I have found that it gets a whole lot harder the longer I go. I went to AA, I got a sponsor; I did everything that they told me to do. I even managed to go to a meeting a day. Yet at the same time the longer that I stay dry the more social situations that I find myself in where I am saying to myself, maybe one more would be okay. Take for example last night, I was asked over for a social occasion and it inevitably lead to me picking up, a beer in this case. But that beer lead to Tequila shots which led to, etc. etc. I got scary drunk, more drunk then I have gotten in a long time and while nothing bad happened, and I made it home safely and managed to crawl into bed. But see my alcoholic mentally ill mind tells me that because I did that, because nothing “bad” happened that it must be okay for me to drink again.

Trans is not a Mental Illness

There was the equivalent of a 8.0 Earthquake in the psychiatric community this past May. Although very few people outside the trans community noticed it, there was a casualty. It’s name was Gender Identity Disorder (GID). The funeral was poorly attended, and the only people mourning it are right wing ideologues and rabidly anti-LGBT organizations who feel that LGBT people need to be as stigmatized as possible by the medical and psychological communities.

Coming to terms with childlessness

I never wanted to be a mother when I was young. Seduced by the freedom I could have as a single woman, at varying levels of “being about to take care of myself” financially and psychologically, I pushed onward. When I was 19 and in college I had an abortion. The father was irresponsible and unemployed, and I wanted to graduate. I wanted to live an exciting, satisfying life and knew if I kept the child I would be doomed to poverty and single-mother-dom before I had even gotten started.

The stigmatization of Mental Illness in a Modern Society

It remains difficult for some to fathom the weight of stigmatization that is carried on the backs of the millions diagnosed with mental illness each year. Mental illness is, indeed, an illness. A disorder of the mind that equally affects the body. Mental illness is something that can make living day to day extremely difficult, painful (both emotionally and physically), and nearly impossible.