My Experience With Mental Health

First off, I want to say how exhausted I am from having conversations with people who don’t even want to try to understand something that they themselves don’t experience. What’s worse is when people do experience some mental health issues but think that just because they can cope with theirs that means everyone else can. It is literally like living in a world of constant gaslighting where everyone is telling you nothing is wrong when something very much is. Could you imagine telling someone that their paralysis is just a thing they can get over, they just need to stand up? That is exactly what you sound like when you tell someone with any mental health issues to just act like they don’t have them or just “do something, it’s not that hard.” It absolutely is that hard… for us… just like it’s hard to stand up if you are a quadriplegic. You wouldn’t gaslight them, so don’t gaslight us.

Next, something terribly heinous about mental health issues, at least clinical anxiety and depression which is what I can personally speak about, is how it itself is a barrier to getting help. The very motivation that my mental health issues steal from me to do most things, is the same motivation I would need to use to seek help, and it sucks. I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m tired as hell of people calling that fact an “excuse” for not getting help. Carrying on with the previous metaphor, imagine a quadriplegic telling you that they cannot get up the stairs to go to the doctors office because they can’t move. Obviously that is not an excuse when they say it, for the same reason it is not an excuse when people with mental health issues talk about what they can or cannot do. Mental health issues are as real as physical health issues so we need to treat them that way. For those with physical impairments, we make accommodations, like ramps for wheelchairs, and we even have in home services like home health to take care of people who really have no way of taking care of themselves. We need a similar attitude when it comes to mental health. When someone tells you that their mental health makes it hard for them to get help, don’t gaslighting them, instead help them by removing barriers in their way. I don’t really know what all that entails, and we need to study these things more, but I know a HUGE one for me is money. Even having to ask for help is a barrier that is hard for me. I know I would be so much more likely to get help if I knew things were paid for. This is why I am such an advocate for Medicare for all, I know it would benefit all people with mental health issues knowing that literally, all they had to do to get help would be to just walk in the doctors office, that’s it.

I know this may be something that is hard to understand as a Neurotypical person, but please, like you trust a quadriplegic when they tell you that they cannot move, trust me when I tell you that this is my experience. My mental health issues can be such a barrier for just functioning. I think that’s one reason I am so angry at job culture and the notion that if you don’t work then you somehow deserve a life of poverty. That sentiment is so ignorant to the concept of mental health that it simultaneously makes me sick to my stomach and makes my blood boil.

Look, I, and so many other people that society likes to deem lazy, do sincerely want to add something to this world and to be a force for good, but we have real health issues as real as a broken leg and we are struggling to deal with them as much as you are struggling to understand us. I promise you, making healthcare a right and removing anything that could remotely be considered a barrier between people and said healthcare, would be a tremendous step in helping people with diseases such as depression, anxiety, BPD, bipolar disorder, and so many more diseases of the mind that we yet to understand well enough to have a name for. Please, for the love of god, stop judging people who lack motivation, please believe us when we tell you how hard it is for us to just exist on a daily basis, please stop filling us with the fear of being homeless and instead make housing alongside of healthcare a guaranteed human right, and please… try to be as understanding of health issues you can’t see as you are of those you can.

When you tell us our problems aren’t real, or say anything as ignorant as “just move, it’s not that hard”… we tend to believe you, and in doing so we turn inward and hate ourselves, and quite honestly want to and in many cases do end up killing ourselves. It is hard enough for us to accept our illnesses for what they are without society telling us that they don’t exist, not that we’d know what living in a society that acknowledges mental health issues even feels like. I would like to know what that feels like, and I hope whoever is reading this moves a little closer to understanding how much our society is built in a way that does not acknowledge mental health at all. We need help, start by believing us.