Fighting Mental Illness: What I Want You to Understand

Mental illness can be something hard to understand when you haven't experienced it yourself, especially in a society where mental illness stigma runs rampant due to ignorance, misinformation, and (I believe) fear (in the sense of a mindset of "If I blame them for it, then it can't happen to me"). However, thanks at least in part to the internet, people are becoming more and more willing to share their experiences and promote awareness for mental health issues. Every so often, I decide to join in.
Every person's battle with mental illness is different. We can share common threads (and relate to each other some times more than others), but each person's experience is also unique and personal. As I compare my experiences to other people fighting depression and anxiety, I find that there are many things I can relate to, but some things that are unique to me. Furthermore, there are things that I desperately need to share with the world but that the social anxiety disorder that I fight still paralyzes me from saying aloud to most people. So I write and post and continually fight the paralyzing fear that people might judge me negatively for what I post. So here are the things that I'm often too afraid to tell you but want you to understand about my own battle with depression and anxiety.

• While it's called a "mental illness," my anxiety is also a very physical disease. My latest focus with my psychologist has been working through anticipatory anxiety. This means that I'm working to not allow my anxiety take over my life hours, days, and/or weeks before an upcoming event that scares me. Trying to focus myself in the moment has turned out to be the easy part. The problem with my anxiety is how physical the symptoms are. I try to focus on the moment at hand in which I should be enjoying myself, but I cannot seem to rid myself of the tightness in my chest, the pit in my stomach, and/or the adrenaline pulsing through my blood urging every muscle in my body to run away and never turn back. It happens when I fear the future. It happens when I remember an embarrassing event from decades ago. I am convinced that if I could just get rid of that dang physical response, my fight would get much easier.
• The physical symptoms of anxiety sometimes get so bad that I look for whatever it takes to ease them. For years, this has meant allowing myself to get lost in the world of a movie, TV show, or computer game at least long enough to make the physical anxiety symptoms subside so that I can turn my attention to whatever tasks lay ahead of me. In recent months, this coping mechanism has ceased to work. I have however come to understand the people who are so depressed that all they do is sleep. It turns out that the only time that I don't feel like crap is when I'm sleeping. So recently, in the worst of my depression, I've slept a lot.
• As long as we're talking physical symptoms, both depression and anxiety leave me with NO appetite. I'll go entire days where all I eat is a bowl of cereal or a handful of chips or a few mini chocolate bars. And when I do eat the little that I manage to eat, I feel like I have to force feed myself; thanks to parents who never forced me to finish my dinner after I said I was full, my gag reflex tends to start kicking in if I try to eat when I'm not hungry. Then there are the times that I'm hungry but can't find in myself the will to get up off the couch to grab food. Other times yet, usually when hunger begins to kick in after a few days of surviving on one small meal each day, I still don't eat because I feel so crappy mentally and emotionally already that I feel like I may as well let myself just be hungry too - as if I don't deserve the satisfaction of eating when the rest of my being feels as crappy as it does. I have this joke with myself that my weight loss plan for the last 5 years or so has been to have a mental health crisis at least once a year during which I lose 5+ pounds in a couple of weeks by simply ceasing to eat the amount of food that I should. I'm well-aware that this is entirely unhealthy, but it's my reality. And save the lecture telling me how important it is to eat - you will send me into a deeper spiral of depression. Also save the lecture about eating healthier to combat depression - if after days of surviving on almost no food I suddenly crave junk and can eat it without feeling nauseous, I'm going to eat the junk because it means I'm at least eating something.
• Save the lectures in general. And save any advice about what I can do to "fix" myself. The lectures and guilt trips are only damaging. Don't tell me that I have nothing to be depressed about, that I have much to be thankful for - it will only make me feel guilty for not feeling the same way. Don't tell me that I should get out and exercise - it will only make me feel guilty for not managing to muster the energy to walk to the kitchen. Don't tell me to just think more positively - it will only make me feel guilty that I can't find joy in life. Don't tell me that I should focus on other people more than myself - it will only make me feel guilty for wanting to take care of only myself (which is what I need right now). The more the guilt builds up, the more I feel like a horrible person that doesn't deserve to exist on the planet.
• And while we're headed that direction, please don't ever get on a soapbox and preach about the fact that suicide is selfish. (Disclaimer: I am NOT suicidal - it's just a pet peeve of mine). I can see the argument both ways, but I will add that as someone fighting depression, it's taken me a long time to feel comfortable with the idea that to become a fully functioning person, I need to actually be willing to put my own needs ahead of others'. When you berate a person who has committed suicide as nothing but selfish, I feel guilty for needing to be a bit selfish to fight depression, and I, once again, feel like I don't deserve to be allowed to live on this earth because I need to be selfish. (In other words, if you're trying to deter depressed people from suicide by telling them that it's selfish, you might actually be decreasing their will to live, or maybe that one's just me).
• Taking medication for mental illness is not weak. It is not a crutch. It is not pill-popping. It is treatment for a serious, potentially deadly disease. It is no different than my dad taking insulin to treat his Type 1 diabetes. Needing to take daily medication for anything is too often judged harshly by my all-natural, anti-Western-medicine generation. I was shamed by once-close friends for being a "pill-popper" back when I was just taking meds for allergies and vitamins; that was before the antidepressants. The more pressure I feel from the members of my generation to fight any ailment without taking meds, the less of a person I feel for needing antidepressants to keep the chemical balance in my brain in check. And don't tell me that the meds are just a crutch - I even had a health professional tell me this (needless to say, I found someone else to manage my meds).
• Mental illness does not mean that I am mentally weak. I am only starting to believe in the strength that my college counselor kept telling me I had during the two years that I saw her. On a recent workshop day at school, we watched a TED talk about "grit" - that thing inside you that keeps you going through the tough times. On that same day, during which I reached the peak of my most recent mental health crisis, a colleague who I had finally confided in reminded me to have grit. I wanted to scream. Shall we look at my history of grit? Through high school, my lowest grade was a B+, and through my last 5 trimesters of high school, (when my undiagnosed mental health issues continued to spiral downwards) I had straight A's. I also managed a 3.9 GPA in 5 years of college with a double-education major and only ever missed two days of classes for mental health reasons - I forced myself to go to class and take notes even if it meant crying the entire time I was there. And, up until recently, every time I've considered taking a mental health day from work, I force myself to get up and go in to school because I know students will learn more from me as a partially functioning teacher than they will from a sub. (I did recently determine that likely anxiety-caused gastrointestinal issues and the inability to stop crying were enough to keep me home.) I've had grit for a long time. I'm just pretty certain that I've almost completely used it up.
• In my adult life, I'm relearning how to cope with anxiety and depression. In high school and college, I threw myself into schoolwork and ignored the rest of the world in order to get through things. Schoolwork always took priority because it's what kept me functioning. It was the rest of life that was too overwhelming - learning about the politics of the adult world, trying to fit in with friends, etc. But as an adult, working in a school, it is now school that I want to run away from. I recently determined that I want nothing more than to go out and experience life with no pressures or expectations from the outside world. In recent weeks my best two days were the one spent at a corn maze with one of my closest friends and the one that started with a coffee date with another of my closest friends and was then spent expanding my photography hobby at the arboretum with my parents. And the only thing that has given me moments of reprieve from my anxiety and depression in recent weeks is the decision to take a solo trip to Disney World and starting to plan that (because Disney is expensive and I need to figure out how much money I should be saving). I want to live life and not be tied down by a job in a toxic environment (more on that later). In other news, the need for money seriously sucks.
• To my teacher friends: As you work with students and keep an eye out for any warning signs of mental illness, do not let dropping grades be your primary indicator. For all the classes I cried through in high school, half the time for no reason or stupid reasons, it should have been clear that there was something wrong. But my grades never dropped, so no one took notice, or at least no one ever said or did anything. My mental health problems fell through the cracks and went undiagnosed until halfway through college.
• When in mental health crisis, even easy tasks seem difficult. Hygiene goes out the window because I can't bring myself to care enough to shower or brush my teeth or sometimes even brush my hair. My dog goes on fewer walks because it means leaving the isolation of my apartment and risk running into people. My dirty dishes pile up because emptying the dishwasher feels like an impossible task. My garbage goes un-emptied for weeks resulting in yet another fruit fly infestation and I don't even bother taking care of it anymore because everything is crappy, so I may as well just let it be that way.
• Be aware of the generalizations that you make about groups of people who share traits of people who struggle with mental illness. When I see lists of "people you should cut out of your life" and the like, half the types of people listed share commonalities with people who battle depression; I usually quit reading halfway through as I realize that if people actually paid attention to these types of lists, I would have no friends left. And don't be like the pastor who preached that people who actively choose not to attend church don't understand the hope that can be found in Jesus. Hopelessness is a symptom of depression, one that I often feel guilty about because I have no reason to feel hopeless; I don't need other people's judgement as well. That sermon was preached on Christmas Eve. It was a week before Easter before I went to any church again because I felt like I wasn't welcome in a Christian community.
• On a higher note, as of the last month or so, my faith has ceased to be painful and started to feel hopeful again. I actually feel a desire to go to church. Praying doesn't send me to tears. Listening to KTIS on my afternoon commute lifts my spirits after a long day at work. (Though there was last Sunday's Gospel reading that made me feel like a horrible person who should go to hell because I don't want to do anything with my life and that as long as I'm crippled by depression and anxiety, God won't love me anymore. That God won't love me anymore was a new one...)
• Mental health stigma is real. It's rampant. And it's damaging beyond what you imagine. Having depression and anxiety, despite what these diseases try to convince me, do not make me less deserving of living life like a normal person. They make it harder for me to get through everyday tasks, but that doesn't mean that I don't deserve the chance to live in the world with "normal" people. Laughing about the person who left their job because they "had a mental breakdown" is damaging. Would you do the same thing to someone who left their job to relieve stress after a heart attack? Complaining about the person who has anxiety because "they should be able to handle that 'easy' kind of stuff by now" is damaging. Would you do the same thing to someone who had trouble exercising due to asthma? Reprimanding someone for excusing themselves to stabilize through a panic attack (using positive coping strategies) is damaging. Would you do the same thing to someone who excused themselves to deal with food poisoning? (Note: All three of these things have happened at the school I work at). Mental illness should be treated with the same respect, empathy, and understanding as any other disease. But our society takes these people whose diseased brains already tell them "you are worthless" and affirms that lie, worsening the disease and deterring people from getting the help that they need.

I know I've listed a lot of things that are unhelpful, and you may be looking for things that you can do. So here are some that work for me (though, note, this may not be helpful to everyone struggling with mental illness)

• Reach out when you see me struggle. When I spiral into a mental health crisis, I have a tendency to isolate myself just to see who cares enough to pull me back into the world. I've made too many mistakes in seeking out connection and as a result trusting the wrong people.
• Be willing to listen to me vent. Sometimes I just need to get it all out. Sometimes I need to process. Sometimes I just need to talk about all of the reasons that life feels terrible and too difficult to survive in and have someone there to affirm that it's okay to feel that way without telling me all the ways I should fix it.
• Encourage me to take care of myself. Tell me that it's okay to take a break from working and do something fun. Bring me food to eat.
• Recognize my little achievements with me. Sometimes I'm dying to tell people that I actually cooked real food for myself because I'm so proud, but then I realize that normal adults do that all the time, so I don't. Or today I was thankful to have a friend who also struggles with depression to share my excitement of "I made it from my bed to my couch!" because I knew she'd understand.
• Treat me like a normal human being (not a damaged one) while still being aware that my mental health is a huge part of my identity.

So I guess that my hope is that this will help you understand me better. They're things that I wish I could share with the people that I work with. And maybe they're things that will help you understand someone else you know better, or even can relate to yourself. I just felt like sharing.