I don't even know how to be myself; I don't even know who I am sometimes...
I have learned this: I am good at pretending to be "normal" while my inner self cries out in fear and terror and anxiety and self-loathing, curling up against the rockiness of my scarred brain, shivering with open wounds from various hard scoldings that take the psychic form of beatings. I admit, I am a child in so many ways. I still do not know how to handle a hard cold world.
I am in support groups, and various therapies, and I am seeing various doctors, and I am taking various medicines that are working... and yet people still scream and scold me about mental illness symptoms that I really am still struggling to keep under control. I keep saying "This won't go away overnight. I'm not going to get better in just a few months. This might take years."
I am finally happy to know that people accept this. But I am now afraid to answer emails and phone calls from those who would only want to scold me. And if I do answer, my brain shuts down its emotional bits, turning numb and detached and analytic. That is not a way to live.
I am a warrior. I am a dragon. This is my fight. I will battle the parts of me that insist on carrying out symptoms of mental illness, but the only people who can help me are me myself, my doctors, my specialists, and my therapists. The only people who I want to support me are my closest treasured loved ones who actually understand what it all means to be swept away and nearly drowned by mental disorders that keep trying to destroy us...
Postscript: I suppose this would fall under that category of "stop medicalizing yourself, you hypochondriac cripple, grow a backbone and get better already." Sometimes I repeat that to myself; oddly enough, it is like a calming mantra.
I am in support groups, and various therapies, and I am seeing various doctors, and I am taking various medicines that are working... and yet people still scream and scold me about mental illness symptoms that I really am still struggling to keep under control. I keep saying "This won't go away overnight. I'm not going to get better in just a few months. This might take years."
I am finally happy to know that people accept this. But I am now afraid to answer emails and phone calls from those who would only want to scold me. And if I do answer, my brain shuts down its emotional bits, turning numb and detached and analytic. That is not a way to live.
I am a warrior. I am a dragon. This is my fight. I will battle the parts of me that insist on carrying out symptoms of mental illness, but the only people who can help me are me myself, my doctors, my specialists, and my therapists. The only people who I want to support me are my closest treasured loved ones who actually understand what it all means to be swept away and nearly drowned by mental disorders that keep trying to destroy us...
Postscript: I suppose this would fall under that category of "stop medicalizing yourself, you hypochondriac cripple, grow a backbone and get better already." Sometimes I repeat that to myself; oddly enough, it is like a calming mantra.