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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.
When you can’t find the words
I was initially diagnosed with depression in high school. At the time, we couldn’t quite figure out if it was teen angst, an over-scheduled life, or a series of chronic sinus infections. I began seeing a counselor who quickly sent me to a doctor who prescribed anti-depressants. After my initial attempt to comply, I quickly flushed them down the toilet.
Like most sixteen-year-olds, I did not want to feel different from my peers. However, the new medical diagnosis made me feel crazy, and the pills that came with it brought physical and emotional numbness. This episode was my first hazy look at how mental health connected to my identity, even if I was not mature enough to recognize it as such. I did not want…
