Lived Experience Forum

[kylee]

I was quick to accept my diagnosis because up until I was diagnosed I began to see myself as 'an idiot who couldn't cope with life for no apparent reason'. Suddenly I had a reason 'Oh my mind is broken'.
Then everything I felt was, 'I'm suicidal because of my depression' 'I'm irrational because of my delusions'. The problem with this was that it invalidated all my feelings. There weren't justified, they were the product of an unhealthy mind.
I went through years of suffering then I began to grow. I started facing painful truths about my past and learning how to form boundaries in relationships and how to find self esteem but importantly the source of why I had lacked in these areas.
My mental health improved dramatically and I began to think 'There is no mental illness only trauma' and 'I am healed'. Eventually I acknowledged that when I was stressed or if I wasn't taking a regime of medication I was at risk of plummeting downward again and there was an underlying condition that needed treating.
The way I have come to view things now is that I was broken because the world is broken and now I bear a mental scar.
I think for doctors to say we have faulty minds doesn't consider the whole picture. It isn't like saying 'you have a broken leg' because our mind isn't just our body, it is part of our identity.
The feelings and thoughts we have are part of us and it leaves one thinking that those feelings and thoughts don't have a valuable and justifiable reason.
I see things this way now, the world is broken, full of injustice and pain and some people feel the weight of that more than others and their mind cracks under the pressure.
But now that has happened we can find ways to strengthen and support that crack.
I think that I will always have a scar that needs sensitive treatment not to open, but I think it is much more helpful to know that my feelings have a justifiable reason in the weight of the worlds brokenness not just my own mind.

[CherryBomb]

Hi @kylee,

Very wise words, wish I could have articulated it as well as you.

I agree that quite often symptoms are a reasonable reaction to life circumstances. Perhaps the symptoms developed as a way to cope with a traumatic event, or perhaps the symptoms point towards a deeper pain -pain that stems from living in the world - that needs to addressed. A diagnosis is often a name, a category, to understand a cluster of symptoms to make sense of it, and to treat it, but as we know, there's much more to a diagnosis.

There's a lot of reserch that's emerging around how a lot of mental illness is related to trauma. In fact, there is now a movment that refer to mental illness as 'mental distress', a renaming to reflect that suffering is not solely due to an individual character trait, but that distress is induced by our social surroundings. It's not anti-psychiatry or anything, but it just places an emphasis on contextualising symptoms rather than just seeing them as a stand alone experience. 

@MoonGal and @Former-Member have written about previous traumatic experiences, and have a MI. I wonder if she might have something to add here. @Appleblossom has also spoken about Mad Pride elsewhere on the Forums. Mad Pride is a movement that addresses the contexts of mental distress. I wonder if you may have heard of them @kylee?

Thanks for a thought provoking post.

CB

[Appleblossom]

Great post @kylee

Yes @CherryBomb I think contextualising symptoms is a lot of what I have been rambling on about.

I guess it is me and the world that is a bit broken.

[RoseRuby]

"Every day may not be good day, but there's something good in every day" And your words are justifiable and we all have issues in our own minds - we need to take of ourselves and support others. Take care @RoseRuby

[Former-Member]

Thank you @kylee you just gave words to how I feel about things. I think you are so right... Those fragile scars we have are a heavy burden at times though we can get on and learn to live with them.
Lj

[RoseRuby]

Hello special lady it was RoseRuby, who sent you that message... Take care, friend xo

[kylee]

@Former-Member, I hope no one thinks I am trivialising their pain in what I am about to say but I really believe sometimes our scars and cracks make us more beautiful. Like breaking through the surface of what we have been taught and all the superficiality of the world to uncover raw emotions of superior quality and depth. Emotions that hurt like hell but address the true achings of the heart and Capacity to love. To me depth is one of the most beautiful qualities along with empathy. And to form true depth you need to crack the surface and to form true empathy you need to be able to feel the depths of sorrow someone else goes through.

[Appleblossom]

Your sensitivity and awareness in prefacing that last post is extraordinary.

I am so glad you are joining us.