Living With Mental Illness

Today is a monumental day for me, because it’s the first time in four months that I can say that I have been without paranoia or psychosis for an entire month. This is HUGE for me and I am very excited.

I wanted to share with you some things that have happened and things people have said to me, in order to help others to understand what it’s like to live with a mental illness.

Throughout my life, I have come across people who think that mental illness can be cured just by thinking positive thoughts or positive thinking. Some have even said “Just get over it. Move on."

While positive thinking may help (and it does for me sometimes), when I am in a psychotic state, I am not thinking well enough to even think positive thoughts. My mind is racing in a million directions and not thinking clearly whatsoever. I am in a complete state of dysfunction. My mind shuts down but is overloaded with random thoughts jumbled together that make absolutely no sense.

Similarly, when I have flashbacks due to my PTSD, I am completely stuck in the past. My mind is absorbed in what I went through. All of my senses are back there. I can’t hear or see anything in the present time. My senses are completely absorbed in the memory of the traumatic event. I do not have the capacity to stop flashbacks. Once they are over, I "come back" to the present time.

I think that sometimes because some people think that mental illness can be easily controlled, that they think it’s my fault that I deal with mental illness on a daily basis. It's my fault I'm depressed or that I have to go to the hospital.

The last time I was in the hospital my own doctor didn’t even believe that I had been taking my medications. He couldn’t believe that my psychotic episode was resistant to the medication, even though I had been on a very low dose. I literally had to convince him to believe that I had been taking my meds. I was incredibly frustrated that I was almost written off as irresponsible when all I wanted to do was get better. I’ve tried 14 medications so obviously it’s taken awhile to figure out the right medications to help me.

Many people treat mental illness differently than a physical illness. This is very frustrating for me and many others who suffer from mental illness.

Would you go up to someone who just had a stroke and tell them “Oh, just think positively and it will go away” or “Just get over. Move on”?

No way, or at least I hope you wouldn’t.

So how is it okay to treat me or anyone else living with a mental illness like it’s our fault? How is it okay to tell me just to move on and get over it?

Mental illness is a physical illness. In fact, it affects the brain which is the most complex organ in the body. Scientists have figured out the details of almost every organ in the body, yet we have not even scratched the surface of how the brain works.

I am frustrated that I had no visitors during my last hospitalization. I was there for eight days and not one person came and visited me. I felt like everybody here given up on me or did not care that I was in the hospital. It felt like the more I was hospitalized, the less people cared.

Often I feel like a burden to others because I’m always dealing with my mental illness, especially being in and out of the hospitals so often. It’s like people don’t understand what to do, but if they just asked me more questions, I would be willing to help others to understand. I love receiving questions, because it shows that others care, that they’re not just writing me off as a lost cause.

Mental illness is something that I will have to deal with for the rest of my life. It is a chronic illness and something that I deal with day by day. It does not just go away, but with medication and treatments like therapy, I can live a productive life. I have goals and dreams just like everyone else. My main goal is to make a difference in this world.

You read the recent news and much of the news portrays people with mental illness as crazy people who just want to kill other people. But what you need to realize is that not all people with mental illness are like that. Many of us strive to make this world a better place, including me. Every day, I hope to make someone’s day better.

I hope and pray that when people see me, they do not define me by my mental illness but how far I have come despite having severe mental illness. It is something that I overcome every day. I want people to ask me questions about what it’s like to be mental illness. I want people to understand more about what it’s like living with mental illness. But more than anything, I want to be loved and cared for, just like everyone else.