No, I’m considered ill because I can’t get out of bed and sometimes I think about killing myself.
Like, seriously. Mental illness isn’t a conspiracy. It isn’t “thinking differently”.
Mental illnesses happen when your brain does a thing it’s not supposed to do and it negatively impacts your life.
If it doesn’t have a negative impact, we generally don’t think of it as a mental illness.
Sorry if I’m getting snappy, but you don’t know how often this gets asked. You are not the first armchair psychologist to say this.
It’s constant.
“Aren’t mentally ill people just people who see the world more honestly?”
“Can people with mental illnesses see a more realistic picture of the world?”
“Is mental illness just a way of seeing the world differently?”
It’s like, no. Mental illness is illness.
It’s being sick. It’s not feeling well.
There’s no cognitive dissonance. It’s my brain not functioning correctly.
This sort of questioning is so stigmatizing to people with mental illnesses because it implies that if we just thought differently, we’d be cured.
Well, I’ll be. Who knew it? I just have to stop thinking that the world is hopeless! And that the future is bleak!
Wow, so easy. So simple.
Nah. If that was the case, I’d be way better off.
I’ve tried thinking my way out of it. I can tell you, it doesn’t work.
Trust people with mental illnesses when we say:
It’s not “thinking differently.”
It’s being sick.
And it should be taken just as seriously as any other sickness.
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