It’s taken me a while to think of what to write for this blog post. Seeing as to it’s Mental Health Awareness Month, as I’ve learned on Twitter, I wanted to do something special, a sort of intermission before my next post on BPD. After that, I don’t even know what else to write about, so questions, comments, or requests are always welcome.
There is nothing to be ashamed of if you are afflicted with mental illness. As you’ve probably read, I try to be completely open about my own experiences with mine in an attempt to break the stigma surrounding mental health issues. It is a medical issue in the brain, perhaps the most complex part of the human body.
When I am having a psychotic episode, for example, I feel bad for my brain – imagine all of the electrical impulses going through parts of my brain, overworking them more than usual, tiring it out. Wearing me down. The same goes for any mental illness. It is an imbalance in chemicals, a physical part of the brain not doing what it’s supposed to be doing. Sure, changing thoughts can help sometimes, but if that doesn’t, then it’s all in the chemicals and electrical signals in the brain.
Any coping mechanism, providing that it is a healthy one, is not something that people should have to hide. Medications, therapy, support systems, all of that. There are coping mechanisms to avoid too though, like self-harm, and even dissociating can be less than helpful in the long run. Self-harm is self-explanatory in why it should be avoided, whether it’s cutting, hitting, pulling hair out, or anything else inflicting pain on oneself. Dissociating can be harmful as well, though it is, as I would know, a fairly effective coping mechanism.
The worst part about dissociating is that sometimes those walls come down and you’re hit full-on with what you’re constantly trying to avoid. It is a mental disconnection that can make learning how to properly deal with future conflicts extremely difficult. I don’t entirely know how to face my own issues because I tend to dissociate instead of face them. I have trouble making progress in therapy because of it.
Intensive therapy can be necessary to change the thought patterns and processes that lead to dissociating. It is usually developed in younger ages due to trauma or stress, which makes it even more difficult to change as an adult. But it is possible.
The stigma with mental illnesses is outdated, narrowminded, and shortsighted. A lot of people come across at least a period of mental illness at some point in their life, and a lot of people live with it for their entire lives. Mine can be expected to be permanent, as schizoaffective disorder tends to be, even if the mood disorder can vary.
My next post will go back to BPD. But my hope is that, eventually, mental illness diagnoses will have the same effect as other physical illnesses – maybe personal still, but not anything to be ashamed of or scared to tell those close to you about. They should be more understood by the general public, as well as kidney stones are, as a temporary but painful condition, or cancers are, as permanent and serious but still bringing no blame to those suffering from it.
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