Adulting and Depression

Image Courtesy of Allie Brosch

Mind dump of current feelings.

Fear
Sadness
Grief
Pain
Rejection
Judgment
Hurt
Anger
Depression
Anxiety
Lonely

All of these, plus I can't stand the thought of leaving the house to go get my prescriptions. Why does everyone think that people with anxiety and agoraphobia are capable of going outside and driving somewhere? It takes me hours to psych myself up to leave my house every single day.

Even though there is a lot of new information and knowledge about mental illness, it is not accepted as a valid reason for not being able to do the simplest of things or for being too sick to work or miss an appointment. How many people come up with false medical reasons to give when it's really our chronic companion, mental illness, that is making us seem like we don't want to or can't; And even our mental illness professionals will charge a fee for same day cancellation. How can a mental health professional not understand that sometimes, we just can't and yes, it IS all in our head?

 Assumptions by Mentally Healthy People:

• You must be lazy if you can't go out or don't hold a job (because you must not want to).

• You must be weak if you can't just pull yourself up by your bootstraps (because depression is something we do to get out of things).

• You must be antisocial if you don't want to go to that party (because social anxiety isn't a real thing - you just don't want to go).

• You must be unreliable because you agreed to that thing two days ago, but now you can't go (because it couldn't possibly be that social commitments are really, really hard and we can't always keep those promises because social anxiety).

• Why are you still crying when you lost that important person so many years ago (because grieving should only last for a certain amount of time)?

The question that haunts me the most is why mental illness is considered a weakness and and excuse to get out of things we probably don't want to do? If we could just go outside, exercise, eat better, do it anyway, all of our problems would just disappear and we could act like actual people.

This advice makes me so happy. Now I know what exactly I'm doing wrong and you've told me how to fix it. Congratulations. You just cured mental illness.

The struggle is real