The Part You Play in Your Mental Illness
You have to be an active participant in your health
You feel hopeless. You think this is your status quo. That you’re relegated to a life of misery.
You aren’t. That’s just what you tell yourself to make yourself feel better.
In truth, you have every chance to make your life better, but you choose not to.
You’re afraid of what it means to not be depressed. Your self-image is buried in who you are as a mentally ill person. Depression is who you are, and you don’t know who you would be without it.
It means challenging everything you know. But if it means there’s something better on the other side, why wouldn’t you want to go through with it?
Causes of mental illness
There is a great debate over what causes mental illness. Nobody knows for sure what causes it, but there are a few things that contribute:
- Genetics
- Loneliness
- Brain injury
- Life experiences
- Stressful situations
- Chemical imbalances
- Traumatic experiences
- Previous mental illness
- History of abuse or neglect
- An ongoing medical condition
- Use of alcohol/recreational drugs
Nobody comes out of the womb depressed or anxious. It’s only after time and lived experience that you start to develop depression. On average, 50% of mental disorders start by age 14 and 75% begin by age 24.
This makes sense if you consider what’s normally going on during these life periods. Around age 14, people are going into puberty causing a slew of hormone changes.
By age 24, you’ve graduated college and are entering the workforce. You’re adulting now.
Both are ages where you experience more stress as you navigate life changes. One is as you’re transitioning from kid to teenager, and the next you’re evolving into an adult.
Identifying as depressed
Your self-identity is how you identify yourself in the world. It’s the answer to the question, “Who are you?”
When you’re struggling with mental illness, it becomes part of your identity. Depression becomes part of you. You figure that’s one of the labels to attach to yourself. But when you attach this label, you trap yourself.
You identify as ‘depressed,’ so depression becomes an inherent part of your self-identity.
Since mental states can change, you risk discomfort any time you’re not depressed.
If you experience moments of gratitude or joy, you’ll second guess them. It doesn’t make sense that you can feel both joy and depression. Since you identify as depressed, that’s your status quo.
You think to yourself ‘Well, I’m depressed,’ and are unable to appreciate the fact that emotions are fleeting.
Treatment for mental disorders
For a long time, there was no treatment for mental disorders. You were labeled crazy and committed to a mental institution. It wasn’t until the 1950s that psychiatric drugs first appeared as treatment.
The psychiatry and pharmaceutical industry developed the chemical imbalance marketing strategy. Big pharma benefitted by calling all things psychological “chemical imbalances.” Luckily, they provided the solution — pills marketed as “chemical balancers.”
Researchers do not know how people develop chemical imbalances in the first place. And if depression were solely caused by a chemical imbalance, then treatments that target neurotransmitters should work faster.
Don’t give in to the dark side
Having depression isn’t fun by any means. When you have a mental illness, it’s like having a dark side of yourself. It’s like half of you is driven by the illness you have and the other half is the real you.
You’re constantly in a battle between these two selves. The problem is the dark side of your mental health doesn’t want to be treated. It lives in the shadows and feeds off it.
Your mental illness is a hedonistic bastard. It takes joy in taking you down. But it’s still part of you. Mental illness does not exist in a vacuum outside of yourself.
You say you hate being depressed, but in some perverse way, you get joy out of it.
It’s that dark side. The depression feeds on your joy. It feeds on the darkness. And the more you give into your illness, the more power you give it.
In a way, you depend on your illness. You’ve attached a sense of your self-identity to this idea of mental illness. And the suggestion that it might not be real is a threat.
It’s a threat to you, and it’s a threat to your mental illness.
The harsh truth is that you don’t want treatment. Your mental illness takes pleasure in your pity. And your pity is steeped in your self-worth.
Admitting that you could do something to change your circumstances threatens everything you know about yourself and your life.
You can do something
The idea that mental illness is caused by a chemical imbalance or genetics suggests that it’s not your fault you have a mental illness.
You can’t control whether you or not you have a chemical imbalance.
This is a cop-out. It makes it sound like you’re doomed to have mental illness and you have no responsibility for it.
Mental disorders become an excuse as to why you can’t do something.
There seems to be this idea that because you’re depressed, bipolar, anxious, etc., you aren’t responsible for your illness. The implication that you have a responsibility for your illness is offensive.
You do have responsibility. You can’t lie down and play dead. You can’t pretend that your mental illness completely inhibits you because it doesn’t.
“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.” — Charles Bukowski
Be an active participant
You are not helpless in your mental illness. You depend on your mental illness. It gives you a sense of self, and it’s easier to play dead than to work.
It’s easier to call it quits and shut the world out than to do the hard work of letting it in.
Life isn’t easy. But that’s what makes it beautiful. The pain you feel is what allows you to feel pleasure.
It’s time you admit your part in your mental illness and do something about it. You don’t have to feel depressed all the time. You’re not helpless.
And until you can admit your part, you will be submitted to a life of torture.
When I was in recovery in the hospital, there was one recurring theme the doctors kept bringing up.
You have to be an active participant in your recovery.
You can’t just give up and pray it all gets better. If you want to get better, you have to take responsibility into your hands. If you want your life to be different, you have to choose to be different.
I’ve been depressed for over 15+ years. But throughout that entire time, I hated every second of it. I hated it so much that I was determined to climb out of the hole I was thrown in. There were a lot of ups and downs, but eventually, I got there.
What this means for you
You play a part in your mental health. Just because you have a mental disorder does not make you incompetent to make decisions. You chose to read this article.
That means you can make positive decisions for yourself. It’s hard, but life is hard. Everything in life is hard, but you get to choose what your hard is.
Depression is hard. So is the decision to get out of bed and take a shower. You can’t nitpick the things you are and aren’t capable of. If you can make it to the bathroom to pee, you can manage a shower.
I’m not expecting you to change your whole life in one go. You can do small things that push you in the right direction.
- Deep breathe for 1 minute
- Walk in place for 3 minutes
- Add one fruit or vegetable to your diet
- Research self-reflective prompts and journal 1 page
These are small decisions, but they add up over time. Compound interest is no joke.
Final thoughts
Recovery is a bitch. It takes a long time and it’s hard work. But everyone has the potential to get there. All it takes is making the decision.
You’re not destined to a life of mental illness. It doesn’t have to be that way. But that requires your recognition that you have a part to play.
I’ve made bad decisions over the years. I didn’t want to face myself. I didn’t want to acknowledge things were as bad as they were. But once I was forced to, I stepped on the path to recovery.
You can get better.
You can make the hard decisions.
You don’t have to be depressed forever.
Choose to change. You can do it.
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