Why do so many people choose to devalue those suffering from a mental illness. Whether it be telling them they don’t have a mental illness or to just get over it. Why do people unable to hear your inner thoughts or feel your inner struggles feel so inclined to develop opinion about your mental health. This behavior contributes so much to the stigmatization of mental illness in today’s society. People are unwilling to talk about their struggles because so many people feel they are privileged to make assumptions about actual sufferers. Mental health is something that relies on subjective data and because of this people suffering are labeled as phonies, liars, drug seekers, and attention seeking.

For me this has been coming in the form of my therapist. A therapist I used to think actually cared about me and my mental health. A therapist that used to listen like she understood what I was going through, not in the form of empathy but more in terms with sympathy. Feeling what I was feeling but not necessarily being about to put herself in my shoes. She was the one that pushed for me to get an actual diagnosis and to get off the medications that were making my symptoms worse. Gone are those days. Days are now filled with her saying, “I am going to make a bold statement.” These bold statements are always directed toward devaluing my mental illness and often end with telling me that I am having a normal reaction to a stressful event. Well, it must have been a very long normal reaction to a long stressful event. My therapist even went as far as to tell me that I don’t have bipolar disorder, despite a family history and periods are requiring little sleep. How can someone supposed to be helping me be someone that tears me down. I have gotten to the point because I valued her so much that I no longer know how to feel because she has told me there is nothing wrong just me being unable to handle life. IF I am so normal, why do I not feel normal and why do I have suicidal thoughts and periods of requiring no sleep and feelings of overwhelming anxiety and depression. If that is the definition of being normal, I don’t want to be normal.

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#MentalHealth #BipolarDepression #BipolarDisorder #Anxiety #devalue #devaluing #Depression #Suicide