First of all, mental illness sucks.
I know this, and you know this.
I know this, and you know this.
But this isn’t about awareness. I would like to talk about how people around us, especially our closest friends and family, respond when we bring up our mental well-being and what their reaction should mean to us and our respective journeys to beating this thing.
We’ve all heard the narrative, some of us have even lived through them. Parents, siblings and friends not believing that the panic attack is actually severe social anxiety, that the inability to eat is actually anorexia, that the hallucinations are actually schizophrenia… The list is endless.
Some people don’t want to believe that these problems could actually be real because they are in fact, ignorant. But I believe that other people don’t want to believe it because this reality scares them. Imagine your parents having to accept that their (sweet) child, whom they’ve provided for beyond what they could have imagined is depressed and suicidal. It’s easier for them to brush it off as “You’re just sad, it’ll go away”, because to them ‘sadness’ is easier to get rid of. Our friends don’t want to accept that this constant drinking and/or drug use is chronic substance abuse, it’s easier to call it a “phase”, because a phase goes away without any real effort. Their reality remains easy and uncomplicated.
Take their response with a pinch of salt because it looks like your situation won’t change unless you alone do something about it. The people whom you thought should be there for you and help you are simply incapable of doing it. But the anxiety is still there, the trauma is still there, all of it is just still there. Your reality is very hard and very complicated.
This is when you have to decide to be your own hero, I know it sounds corny and you’ve heard it a million times but you have to save yourself. In this age of information, we are so “privileged” to have the internet and social media at our disposal. I’ve learnt so much from all these platforms and this includes the channels I can take in battling mental health problems. I know our country is limited to say the least but a lot of the remedies aren’t really complicated. Take meditation, for instance. I don’t want to dive into that, it’s something everyone needs to discover on their own and frankly I haven’t found my “cure” yet.
You do not need to be proving to anyone that what you’re going through is real, if no one wants to believe you then that’s just the card you’ve been dealt. Personally, explaining my anxiety to people who don’t get it just gives me more anxiety.
Mental health awareness is very important, this is undeniable. But a lot of times, it fails. People become aware of it, but don’t accept it. But this cannot, and should not, stop you from healing.
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