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Mental Illness Isn't Going Away

Why do we expect mental illness to behave like a physical one?

By Christina St-JeanPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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I have anxiety, and like many people with any sort of chronic ailment, I have good days and bad ones.

However, something I've discovered over the years is that the tolerance, for lack of a better term, for a mental illness is sometimes just not there in the way that it can be for a physical condition. Sometimes, the desire to simply understand what a person with mental illness might be going through on the daily isn't there either.

The media hasn't helped in that regard. Hear the term "mental illness" and very often images of the deranged individual - think along the lines of Brad Pitt from 12 Monkeys - dance through your head. Strangely, those with mental illness often have that perception at times, too - that while they may "feel" and "act" normal, for the most part, they are really just a few steps away from officially being diagnosed as crazy.

I was handed a prescription for psychotherapy nearly seven years ago as a tool to help me understand what was happening inside my anxious brain and it took me a long time to get around the "psycho" part of psychotherapy.

What I've noticed lately is there continues to be an expectation that recovery happens overnight, or that we can just "will" the illness away. Yes, there is some power of choice in how we act and react to what happens to us on a daily basis. We have the choice to let certain things drive us to distraction. We have the choice in determining just how much - or how little - something will impact our thought process or daily lives.

However, when it comes to mental illness, there is something to be said for how we react physically to what impacts our thought processes, and sometimes, it's hard, if not impossible, to fully control that. We might be in the middle of class, or driving on the highway, or trying to put our kids to bed, and in order to try and keep ourselves looking "normal" and safe, we become the world's best actors and actresses when in reality, our insides are churning so badly that we feel we might just explode from the energy that it's generating.

A lot of people don't get that. We're honestly trying to not let our brains get in the way of our lives but sometimes, it's really not as easy as "cheer up" or "don't worry about it." We are products of our environments, and sometimes, we're fighting against years of hardwired reactions to various stimuli.

Why am I choosing to talk about this?

For one, it's important. It's in so many ways no different than having a broken foot, except we will never know when we will be deemed "healed" or "cured." We can't treat it with the same expectation for rapid healing, however. We all have a story and we all have "stuff" we deal with; mental illness, for whatever reason, is something that people don't want to talk about or hear about, but we need to learn about it.

For another, there should be no shame attached to mental illnesses. The late Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher confronted her struggles with bipolar disorder with a candor and openness that led others to realize that they, too, could talk about mental illness and not be chastised.

"You can lead a normal life, whatever that is," she noted in a USA Todayinterview from 2002. "I have gotten to the point where I can live a normal life, where my daughter can rely on me for predictable behavior, and that’s very important to me.”

So why wouldn't we talk about it?

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About the Creator

Christina St-Jean

I'm a high school English and French teacher who trains in the martial arts and works towards continuous self-improvement.

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