Mental Illness — It’s All the Rage

Talking about mental health is really in vogue right now. I know that’s a shitty thing to say, but it’s true. More and more blog posts, Facebook confessions, listicles, quizzes, articles, and memoirs are surfacing into our shared cultural consciousness. And that’s a good thing.
People are sharing their experiences with disorders like depression and anxiety in creative ways that help people with or without mental health issues understand them better. The stigma attached to getting treatment either through therapy or institutions is beginning to wear thin.
I recently watched an old episode of Scrubs (don’t ask) and the Elliot Reed character found herself unloading her emotional burdens on one of her patients, who happened to be a therapist (with his jaw wired shut). She was getting therapy without even realizing it. And when someone called her out on it, she was worried about her reputation of being weak or crazy. By the end of the episode, she learned that therapy was okay and what she needed, but her initial reaction (not wanting people to think she needed therapy) was a reflection of the perceived stigma of issues to do with mental health. And that episode was not that long ago (the early oughts).
We’ve come a long way since then, but like all once highly-stigmatized topics, it takes a while get past bias and judgment. I think talking about mental health openly and frequently is helping that. Although when you’re flooded with a topic, you can sometimes become cynical or desensitized to it. Like when it seems as if everyone you know now has some form of mental illness and each new revelation causes you to sigh and roll your eyes. You might not want to admit it, but I bet you’ve done it — and then felt guilty about it. And then pretended that you never had a twinge of judgment in your perfect little open-minded hearts.
Well, I’ll admit it. I have passed secret doubt and judgment at times.
It’s easy to pretend like I’m in a position to pass judgment. I know what it’s like to have anxiety. I’ve had anxiety my whole life. Every step I take (ever move I make) all I’m thinking in my head is, “am I going to step wrong and dislocate my knee.” Then sometimes the potential dislocation would flash in my mind and I’d have a slight panic attack where I would freeze, dig my fingernails into my palms and shut my eyes trying to envision anything else. My heart rate would go bonkers and then calm down — unless I’m near a slippery surface. There’s no calming down near a slippery surface. I got anxiety for good reason because this happened to me a lot.
I’m also a cancer survivor, so I get a rush of anxiety anytime something feels slightly off in my body, as well as the days leading up to scan results. Not to mention I went on Zoloft a few months after my diagnosis.

I have self-prescribed OCD because I have to tap my teeth together equally on both sides. I obsess over weird things like having to see at least one plane fly by while I do certain physical therapy exercises that face the window. I like things to be even and not askew. I dig under my nails, back and forth on each hand compulsively.
I suffered severe depression the summer before and leading into my freshman year of high school. I moved half-way across the country leaving really close friends behind. I had a couple months before school would start and didn’t know how to make friends in the summertime when I was too young to get a job and too old to hang out at the playground. So I stayed in and read or slept. Eventually, I just slept. All day. I would get up for meals then go back to my hiding place under my covers. I spent so much time inside I became slightly agoraphobic and felt exposed just walking to the mailbox. I didn’t want to be seen. I had grown. completely self-conscious.
But then I remember that, although I’ve had issues with anxiety, I have no idea what it’s like to be a person who suffers from an anxiety disorder. My anxiety is set off by very specific things: my knees and cancer. I’ve had situational depression, but it always ended when my situation got better. I cannot imagine feeling the way I did throughout my entire life — with no way to change it without affecting the chemicals in my brain. I like to say that I have mild OCD, but I don’t break out into a sweat if I don’t see a plane go by that day, and I am not overwhelmed by anxiety if a picture is tilted. In other words, I’m not at the mercy of my mild OCD.

So, after I indulge in my bouts of knee-jerk judgment, I try to remember that I don’t know what it’s actually like to be in another person’s head. And that there may be some people who you suspect either self-diagnose because suddenly having mental illness gets you positive attention or that they mistake situations of anxiety or depression for having an anxiety disorder or depression. But that still doesn’t give you (me) the right to assume you (I) know what another person is dealing with. And our job, as assumed non-mental health professionals, is just to be there for the people in our lives and support them and give them the benefit of the doubt.
You may be thinking, “I have never doubted anyone who claimed they had (insert diagnosis here),” and maybe you haven’t and bully for you. But for those of us who have, I think what matters, like in most cases of casting judgment, is that we remember to just listen and empathize before assuming that we've got them all figured out.
Unless they’re really annoying on social media.*
*kidding, but you were probably thinking it too.
