A big misconception with mental illness is that we are completely crazy and have no control over ourselves. That's so upsetting to me because as a young adult with my illness it's hard to try and convince people that those stereotypes are far from true. It's even worse when you are extremely poorly to convince even yourselves that these things are false!
I've been suffering badly with that last part for just over a week now and it's down to two things that are contributing to this. Part one is the paranoia. When I am extremely poorly with my mental health issues then the paranoia begins. It scares the hell out of me when this begins because I have no form of moral reasoning. I might be able to realise that my thoughts are irrational (or so I would like to believe) but at the time I can work myself into a panicking mess.
It can be really difficult to discuss with people because they just find it stupid and funny but to me it is eating me from the inside out. I've had a couple of things that have made me extremely paranoid and destroyed my well being and day to day life for the past week. The main one is that I was completely convinced that my parents were watching me with webcams whilst they were at work. I know how stupid that sounds now but on Monday I was sat curled up in my bed, "hiding" and sobbing out of pure fear. It's horrible and debilitating and I hate feeling like I can't even trust my own family.
Another thing that likes to appear again when I am extremely low is irrational thoughts/voices. For YEARS my doctors have refused to accept that as voices until fairly recently and it was extremely difficult to make sense of it all. Because the doctors refused to acknowledge that it was voices I spent months after months of feeling like I was completely loosing the plot and it was scary. I thought I was completely crazy and making it all up. But I've realised fairly recently that I'm not making it all up, it is in fact a symptom of my illness.
The voices are terrifying and I find it difficult to talk to about but also lost and abandoned when it is happening. These voices in the past have told me to kill myself, nearly helped me take my own life and are a frequent source of emotional abuse in my head. I hate that even writing that and reading it back makes me scared to talk about it because of the backlash I could get and the stigma that surrounds it. These voices tell me that I'm making it all up, that I'm lying to the ones I love and that no one will ever love me and this can be so hard to cope with. It begins to make me doubt everything and even though I know I'm not making it up it can be hard to logically think it through in times like that.
I still debate whether I should share this as I'm scared about what people might think about me and I find it difficult to talk about it out loud as it is. But I am determined to help break the stigma of mental health issues and so I feel like I should talk about things that might seem too "taboo" to talk to. Hopefully I will get to see a world where mental health stigma no longer exists.
Rebecca
xxx
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