30 Day Mental Illness Awareness Challenge – Day 4

Day 4: What are the pros and cons of having a mental illness or your specific illness(es)?

Cons – Well, I have a hard time keeping a job, making friends, enjoying life — my depression and anxiety really inhibit me to do a lot of things.  It isn’t fun at all.  With anxiety, I really hate going out.  I am scared of meeting new people.  Then when I do make a friend, I get really overwhelmed if they keep asking me to hang out, so I quite answering their calls or texts – and well, they give up on me, which I don’t blame them for.  I get overwhelmed with jobs too – so I feel sick and can’t go in, or I have panic attakcs during them, or I just stop going, or I quit.  When I get depressed – nothing makes me happy.  I can sleep for days.  I can not shower for days.  I am not interested in anything.  My mania with my bipolar even stinks — spend lots of money, get agitated and frustrated.  Nothing good from that. Basically — it just sucks.  So nothing good about the mental illness there.

Pros –  Hmm that is a hard one to even think about.  With bipolar, there is mania.  Most people like that.  They say they are productive and all that jazz.  For me, I hate my mania – nothing good comes out of it.  So I cant even list that as a pro.  I think I am more empathetic though.  I see the world differently than most people.  I feel pain.  I know what it is like to hurt.  I guess I don’t want to say I understand things better, and yet I also do want to say that.  When someone is hurting or down, I feel like I really do understand them.  I do feel like I see the world completely differently than someone without mental illness – I feel like I have a better perspective.  I know that sounds bad and mean and wrong and as if I am better than them — but I feel like I just have a better understanding — or a different understanding I guess.

FUNNY FRIDAYS

 

 

Be Proud

Be proud of who you are and everything you have overcome.

Sam Kirkegaard – Sam Supports Mental Illness

These are some videos by Sam Kirkegaard.  He makes random videos on youtube, but he has a few called Sam Supports Mental Illness.  They are silly little videos that bring awareness to mental illness.  This is Day 5, which talks about 5 myths about mental illness.  I can’t share all the videos on here – so you should go to his youtube channel and check them out! His first one talks about his story though, which is about OCD and his intense anxiety, his 2nd one talks about why he is doing it and that he is raising money for Active Minds.  There are 31 days worth of them.  I haven’t watched them all, but I will check them out and see how they are, I am sure there is some good and interesting stuff on there.

 

Not Asking for Help – A Mistake I Won’t Make Again

What is a mistake I will never make again?

I won’t ever not ask for help again.  I went for years not asking for help.  Hiding my depression, hiding my pain.  I didn’t want people to think I was weak.  I didn’t want people to not love me or care about me.  I wanted to be strong and competitive in this world.  I wanted to prove I could be somebody.

Depression, Bipolar, BPD, PTSD, Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective, OCD, Anxiety, Eating Disorders, Trauma, Sexual Abuse, Child Abuse, Rape – whatever the mental illness  or Trauma/Past is though – it doesn’t mean you are weak.  It took me far to long to figure that out.

All I knew was that this world was about getting ahead.  That is all that was preached to me in school – you have to do this, you have to do that.  Learn this, learn that.  Get into the best school, earn the highest grades.  Take the ACT, the SAT. Apply, apply, apply.  I was miserable, but I didn’t want to disappoint anyone.

On top of that, I really didn’t believe I was going to be alive.  I really thought I was going to be dead, either by a natural death or by suicide.  I didn’t think I was actually going to have to live up to those expectations anyway.  So I never asked for help.

Then there was also the little fact that it was brought to people attention that I needed help, and no one seemed to care – so why would I ask for help when no one wanted to help me in the first place when others told them I needed it?

After being miserable for years though, and then seeing what my life has been like with the right medications and proper therapy — I would give so much to go back and get these things earlier in my life.  What a difference I think it would have made, how much easier my life would have been.

Even though people don’t always listen when we ask for help.  I still will always ask for it.  I still will always plead for it.  I won’t give up.  I will keep asking, I will keep begging, I will keep pleading for the help.  If I need help – I will get it – no matter what.  Because not asking for help, will just lead to my destruction.  I know that now.

FUNNY FRIDAYS

 

 

 

Daily Post – Writer’s Block? Nope, Writing Helps me Cope

Word Press Post A Day – When was the last time you experienced writer’s block? What do you think brought it about — and how did you dig your way out of it?

I just started doing these Post A Day things from Word Press – I thought it might help me expand on my topics – bring in new ideas to relate to mental health…which is what my blog is about.  For the most part, I think it has helped a bit.  I think most of them I have been able to relate to mental health/illness in some way, even if it has been a bit of a stretch at times.  Except Unlikely Pairing – that one, nope, I just couldn’t tie in.  I wrote about it anyway, just to write.

I am passionate about mental health though.  I have been affected with mental illness my whole life.  There is so much stigma associated with mental illness though.  You rarely hear about the great people that have mental illness, just the horrible stories related to it.  Everyone just gets a bad picture.

I created this blog to show my struggles, but also my triumphs over my disorders – my bipolar, my borderline personality disorder, and my PTSD.  All of which I struggle with daily.  I also overcome it everyday though.

Each day I get up, I write on here.  I write about what mental illness is, or how to cope with it,  quotes related to it, how it has affected me, how it might be affecting me that day, what I am going to do in the future to overcome a challenge that I faced because of it, suicide, sexual abuse, past traumas, therapy, etc.

I’m sure I had writers block in high school related to some silly essay my AP English teacher wanted me to write.  When it comes down to something that I am interested in though, something I am passionate about – no, I haven’t had it.  I am sure it might come eventually, but so far, it hasn’t hit me.  I hope it doesn’t because this is a topic that needs to be spoken up for and needs to be heard.

This is my coping skill.  It’s keeping me mentally healthy right now.  Or as much as it can anyway.

FUNNY FRIDAYS

 

 

 

FUNNY FRIDAYS

I am going to start a new weekly series called “FUNNY FRIDAYS”

I just want to clarify that in no way am I trying to make light or make fun of mental illness.  But humor is healthy and sometimes we just need to learn to laugh at ourselves and our situations.

 

When life gets you down —