OKAY so I actually suck at formatting my Tumblr blogs because I do this on my phone (the need of a laptop but it being way out of my economical reach breaks me), but I felt the need to talk about :
INVALIDATING MENTAL ILLNESS DUE TO LACK OF VISIBLE SUFFERING
so I understand that due to social media presence and influence, we get individuals who claim to be mentally ill/ disabled, autistic, borderline etc etc. and I'm not talking about self-diagnosis. I'm talking about genuine manipulation and disregard to stigma it puts on the community.
This is indeed a problem we face more drastically in our younger generations due to attention seeking behaviours and blatant disregard to the damage they are doing.
this pic triggered my thought process , and it made me think
that due to all of this facade and gatekeeping and lying and attention seeking, we have completely strayed from the whole point of putting mental health knowledge out there :
1. to educate and allow the public to be more socially and self- aware.
and 2. to help spread awareness on the impact of mental health to shed a light on what in society and in our immediate communities needs to be changed.
To specifically touch on the gatekeeping: as I've mentioned before there are reasons for this (as touched on at the beginning of this unhinged rant), but overall it is becoming immensely damaging with each step in this direction that is taken.
Us mentally ill and challenged individuals (said in the most compassionate way possible) have absolutely nothing to prove to anyone that isn't the professional we have guiding us through treatment. We as a community owe nobody any explanation about our personal struggle. we are not ' faking it ' because we seem fine on the exterior. If the public was anymore educated on mental illness you would know that not everything is shown to you on the surface.
We're only valid if we're suffering? Hell, we can show you a self-massacre, but we're only being modest because we know it is not tolerated well. . Mental illness describes exactly what it is: it's a mental game and struggle, it's internal, complex and presents differently in each individual. And some of us are just trying to be strong.
this is why I'm so passionate about self-learning and proper VALUABLE EDUCATION. not because I'm of the so called "snowflake generation", but because everyone should be striving to be better if we want to see a change. I hate that almost everyone believes that our world is screwed beyond repair. but if so, even more reason to focus on our people.
anyway, thank you for listening.
