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This is my confession: I have a mental illness
When I was 17, I was diagnosed with Chronic Depression (yeah, we’re diving straight in) but I believe that if I’d had the guts to see my doctor earlier, it would’ve been diagnosed when I was 13, or maybe even earlier.
I suffered from Insomnia throughout high school – most weeks surviving on as little as 20-30 hours sleep a week (along with some naps during class) and just recently, my doctor has begun to suspect I’m Bipolar.
Why am I tell you all of this? Because it’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. It’s part of my story, my journey through life. Yeah, maybe it’s a bit more messy than your story, or maybe it’s less messy and you’re thinking that I should stop being so dramatic.
Either way, mental illness is something that needs to be talked about so sit down, close your mouth, and pay attention. Please.
‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’
When I was at my sickest, I was a very angry person. Here I was, a girl who had been baptised, had my First Communion, and I thought God was awesome! Then out of nowhere, He messed with the chemicals in my brain and ditched me, or at least that’s what it felt like.
As a person with a mental illness, it can be very easy to feel like you’ve been abandoned by God or even worse, find yourself hating Him. Not only is this awful because God deserves our love, not our hate, but also because it can be so detrimental to recovery.
Having anger at your mental illness does nothing but fuel it. The day I realized that is the day my recovery began and though I hadn’t found my faith at that time, it was also the day I stopped hating God.
Letting go of the anger and the hate made me light enough to start the uphill journey to being healthy – before that it was like I was trying to drag a massive cement block up the hill with me, not impossible but a whole lot harder! Continue reading
- Danielle Robb works as a Youth Consumer Advisor in Child and Adolescent Mental Health which allows her to use her experience with mental illness to improve other young people’s journeys.
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