Mental illness sucks. There. I said it. It doesn’t just impact your brain. It makes nearly every part of your life go sideways. Here are four of the most pressing reasons why I hate having a mental illness.
Mental Illness Steals My Motivation
Do you have grand ideas of what you want to accomplish? Do you act on those ideas? Turn them in to goals that you fight to achieve?
I have grand goals that I want to achieve. I’m a driven person who seeks external validation in every part of my life. The problem is, I don’t often act on the goals that I know will make a huge difference in my life.
Give me a work project with a deadline, and I’ll attack it. Push me to do a work-related something new that will set me apart, and I am here for all of it. But, tell me that monitoring my diet and getting regular exercise will help me feel better, and I fall into a puddle of failure.
Most of the time I’ll blame this behavior on being lazy. I’ll respond with excuses and sometimes even anger. That’s a fear-based response because my brain tells me I can’t do it. Anxiety takes over and then it’s all about the overwhelming feeling of failure from before I even start. My brain lies because of my mental illness.
For example, I’ll wake up early on a Saturday morning and have grandiose plans of accomplishing my to-do list of those should-do items that I think about all week. I’ll sit with that feeling for a bit and then become exhausted. The thought of leaving the house to pick up some organizer bins or just go to the FedEx store or even have a lunch treat with my husband, and I’ll collapse under the pressure I put on myself. I’m an all-or-nothing type of person, and the “all” makes me tired. My motivation is gone. Mental illness lies and tells me that I can’t do any of it.
Finding a Medication for a Mental Illness is Frustrating
If you’ve ever had to take a medication for your mental health, you know what I’m talking about.
It can take months for the medicine to build up in your body, to be effective and make you feel better. Or, it can work from Day 2 and then taper off after a month. There is no cure-all that starts from the moment you swallow a pill, or four, and then feel stable for the rest of your life. At least, I haven’t found it. It’s like Alice taking a bite of a biscuit and morphing into a giant, her feet and arms pushing through the doors and windows of the White Rabbit’s house, and then she swallows another carb and shrinks to an eighth of her original size. In between, she nearly drowns herself with her own tsunami-sized tears.
Okay, I don’t remember the timing for all those scenes in Disney’s movie, but you know what I mean.
Finding a medicine – or a cocktail of prescriptions – is a tedious process when you’re trying to improve your mental health. I’ve been on so many different medications that I have lost track. Most recently it was lithium, that Big Daddy of the mental health world that scared me from the start. But, I’d take it for two weeks, feel great, and then the dosage would need tweaked. There’s a limit to what you can take, obviously, so we switched to something else. I’m feeling better right now with the current med cocktail, but there’s a lingering thought that the other shoe will drop and I’ll have to start all over once my body gets accustomed to another medication.
Mental Illness Makes Me Act Like a Victim
The t-shirts and the stickers are right for most people. Their mental health matters and they’re fighting through their struggles. They’re accomplishing things and sharing their stories.
I want to share my story, too. But right now, I’m in a cycle of victimhood as I blame others for the past and I’m not moving forward. I’m stuck at the blame-and-shame stage. I don’t believe that everyone can pick themselves up by their bootstraps and recover alone. You need a team, a tribe, a push forward.
I say “right now,” but if I’m being truly honest, I’ve been this way for decades. And that makes things worse. I hate that I’m not holding myself accountable for every part of this. Yes, bad things happened to me, but I haven’t made peace with those things yet. I hang on to the pain. And that exacerbates my mental illness and fills me with more lies that grow like mold in my brain.
Mental Illness Changes Your Relationships
This is the biggest reason why I hate having a mental illness. My depression and anxiety impact my family every day. I hate that my kids have become attuned to me hiding in the bedroom and sleeping away the afternoons because I’m so exhausted by life. I hate that I have to talk to them frankly about mental health. I hate that I don’t do the Pinterest and Instagram mom things because I’m mentally ill. I question if my love is truly enough when I can’t show up with enthusiasm and action unless I push up against the walls of the deep, dark hole that depression dug around me.
I hate that my husband feels he can’t talk freely without my emotions taking over in response. I hate that he’s dealt with my mental illness as much as he has. I hate that he anticipates a “no” from me before he asks if I want to do something, so much so that he’s stopped asking. I hate that I haven’t felt right with him in months because I can’t relax. I don’t know how much longer he can hang on. He knew what was wrong before we married, but my mental illness has gotten worse, and it’s incredibly unfair to him.
The Tipping Point of Mental Illness
The tipping point is near. The fear remains that I’ve gone past it and can’t go back. The lie remains that I will be this way forever. It’s not something I’m handling well. Maybe I just want to be miserable. And that’s fifth reason I hate having a mental illness.
Bookish Brain 