Mental Health Feels More Like A Joke

There’s a time to laugh and a time to cry.

Grace Bianco
Black Bear
Published in
4 min readAug 7, 2024

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Photo by Emily Underworld on Unsplash

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Laughter is good. As corny as it sounds, laughter really is the best medicine.

In an age of being overly sensitive, it’s good to learn how to laugh at oneself and make light out of hard things.

But there’s also time for feeling all the feelings that need to be felt.

When jokes may not feel as funny. When laughter feels directed at a person rather than with them. When their mental health feels so isolating that people’s laughter only seems to push them away even more.

There’s a balance, and that balance seems to be getting more and more lost.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

“I am going to kill myself” and “Kill yourself” hardly mean anything these days.

When suicide jokes don’t make people bat an eye, what happens when someone says it with some truth behind it?

When joking about a chaotic anxious mind becomes the most popular meme, what happens when someone starts panicking, and…

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Grace Bianco
Black Bear

I am the author of “Party Pooper: Growing up with Anxiety.” I love oversharing my life. I talk about my faith, marriage, mental health, & everything in between.