Things are changing.
I’ve noticed a significant shift in my own mindset surrounding mental health.
Have you?
I’ve come to a place of seeing it like I might diabetes, or another chronic condition that can be viewed through an empowerment lens rather than the one stigma renders.
I’m dropping the shame and elevating the empathy. I’ll say it again:
IM DROPPING THE SHAME & ELEVATING THE EMPATHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I struggled with various degrees of ADHD (with a big ol’ heaping side of rejection sensitivity dysphoria, aka RSD) & anxiety & eventually, ruminative depression, for as far back as my memory goes. But I didn’t really “come out” until the suicide of my only child. I suffered long in fear, silence & shame. I lost jobs and alienated people because I couldn’t show up and I couldn’t admit why, so I let many believe I was a flake or lacked integrity.
That was easier to accept about myself, than a mental illness!
I lashed myself repeatedly, constantly, with an invisible whip & a loop in my head that told me I was a piece of shit with a defective brain.