How I Accepted My Mental Illness Through Language and Why Preference Matters
They told me I should say I was a person with bipolar, not a bipolar person. And then I began policing the language of other advocates…
TW: Suicidal ideation
You can’t say that
Mental health and the journey to diagnosis, especially for a chronic or “severe” mental illness, is a rollercoaster. One in which emotions, identity, pain, relief, grief, and trauma collide.
It is also a rollercoaster to find the language to name something that is both intensely personal and yet defined by medical, academic, and societal definitions.
In the past decade and a half that I have been writing about my mental illness, words, terms, and phrases have come and gone from popularity. I had a corporate client ask me to edit an article written to exchange all mentions of “depression” for “burnout” and “anxiety” for “stress.” In another article, an editor asked me not to refer to mental health struggles as a disability. I have also watched as the words of mental health have moved between illness, to challenges, to struggles, and back again.
And in the middle of all of these adjustments to language has been my internal sense of identity as a woman living with bipolar, anxiety, and anorexia.
