Hi, everyone! I meant to update a week ago, but I got kinda sick. So this is a week late. Woopsie. You guys probably couldn't care less, but at least I apologized!
Anyway, I always avoid talking about this outright (and I feel like I've already covered it so much), but you wouldn't believe the amount of requests I get for this, so here. I'm giving in and talking about Mental Illness
Now there are about a million reasons why I've been avoiding this so blatantly, but about nine hundred ninety thousand of those reasons you don't care about and nine of would really piss you off, so I'm down to one: I'm really upset about how it's always treated.
And I get that I'm extremely jaded about this topic, but can I just say that it really pisses me off how much people bitch and moan about how this topic is treated but completely refuse to acknowledge how far we've come in even just the last ten years? Because it does.
Let me set the record straight. We have a loooong way to go because mental illness is something that's insanely stigmatized. But I'm really tired of everyone pretending that we haven't made progress. When I was a kid, you didn't talk about mental illness. At all.
Now, therapy is a legitimate practice. I know a lot of people tell me there's still a stigma around it, and I know there is, but it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be. And there's this increase in the number of people diagnosed with mental illnesses, because doctors are being educated. Teachers are being taught the signs. Counselors are learning techniques to help school kids be diagnosed.
Help and information for these mental disorders has never been more available than it is now and I just really wanted to take a moment to stand back and appreciate the groundwork everyone has made to pave the way for education. I'm so happy that I can easily google a disorder and find actual organizations set up to provide accurate, lifesaving information. You can find countless discussion boards where you can connect with people suffering through the exact same things as you. There are communities out there offering support and I think that's amazing.
So for once, instead of adding my voice to those complaining that we need more education on mental illness, I wanna offer my support to these groups. Seriously. Check them out. They do amazing work and I think by pretending they don't exist to make our plight more urgent is unfair. It's like my best friend always says: focusing on the negative does nothing but insult the positive. And I wanna shine some light on the positive.
I think that's the reason I haven't wanted to do this rant, because I'm honestly kind of jealous. All these people on here complain about how their mental illness isn't represented enough or inaccurately and all I can think is at least you have a diagnosis. At least you're educated on what symptoms are. You know what you're feeling is part of a condition and not because you're fucked up. You have access to treatment and information. Whether or not you chose to expose yourself to the help offered, it's there.
I can't stop myself from thinking that if all the information out there now had been there even just fifteen years ago, it wouldn't have taken me eleven years to finally be diagnosed with PTSD. I wouldn't have spent eleven years feeling so alone. If mental health was this approachable when I was a younger it would have saved a lot of heartache and a lot of suicide attempts.
So without further ado, lemme give you some tips for how to address mental illness in a story:
1. It's different for everyone
There are so many diseases and disorders and they all come with their own lists of symptoms and treatments, but you have to understand that for every person that has a mental illness, there are that many different manifestations of it. Depression doesn't always present in the same way. Anxiety doesn't always present in the same way. PTSD, BPD, OCD, Bipolar, Autisim, Schizophrenia, Anorexia, Bulimia, EDNOS. They all present themselves uniquely in every person with them. (And I know I'm gonna get jumped for not mentioning other mental illnesses that I can't think about right, but give me a break. I didn't even want to do this rant).
Very rarely will you have a textbook case. All too often I see people jumping down an author's throat because "I've suffered with depression for two years and I can't get out of bed so it's so unrealistic that your character can get out of bed. She doesn't really have depression." Or "I have anxiety and my panic attacks aren't like that at all. You don't just throw up. You get hot and you can't think right and blah blah blah, you're character isn't have a panic attack." Or my favorite that I've really seen "if she eats she doesn't have an eating disorder."
While I admit that it's beyond important to have accurate depictions of these illnesses, I also don't think you should be so quick to diagnose if it doesn't match your case exactly. Everyone is different so here are my suggestions:
a. If you have the same illness as one of your characters, make it close to your own experience (if you're comfortable with that). It will not only be 100% accurate (it happens to you, right?), but it will also provide others with valuable information. Any true account is great research. And you never know, you may meet someone that experiences very similar things and thinks they're weird because they aren't exactly textbook either. Make a friend. Help somebody out.
b. If you don't have the same illness, make sure to talk to as many people as you can with the illness. Don't just rely on WebMd or the experience of one person. Read memoirs. Read autobiographies. Read interviews. Read discussion boards. Ask questions! Wattpad has clubs and I guarantee if you politely make a discussion where you ask people with the disorder you want to know more about, there will be people more than willing to help you!
c. If all else fails, go text book. This might look like I'm turning around and telling you to do the exact opposite of what I just told you to do, but I promise I'm not. I don't think anyone should shy away from writing about mental illness if they want to. But sometimes there is just a lack of comfort or maybe even knowledge (I doubt that. There's always knowledge), but let's say for some reason you're uncomfortable asking people to help you. I can understand not wanting to pry. If this is the case, go ahead and go text book. It's a guideline for a reason: it's a good foundation. Your character doesn't have to fit all the symptoms, just a majority. And you know it's good, because it's the stuff doctor's use. And they're pretty smart.
2. It's an everyday thing
All too often I see writers that give their character a mental illness for more "depth" (or relatability, I dunno) and only bring it up to cause drama. The rest of the time it's nonexistent.
The biggest reason why I don't like this is because that's the absolute worst part about having a mental illness: you don't get to have a break. It's a day-by-day thing, but it's always going to be present. I'm not saying it has to run your story, but you can't just throw it away because it makes the plot a little more complicated. If you give it to your character then you have to commit. You can't just let them have a mental illness when it's convenient for you.
Because I'm sorry to break it to you, but honestly, mental illness hits its worst when you don't have time for it to. It's not always gonna go away when you're super happy or super busy. It'll always be there and it will find a way to affect everything.
Sometimes you can't celebrate your really important anniversary because you have PTSD and the thought of sex puts you on edge that night even though you were fine last week.
Sometimes you can't go to the concert you've been counting down the days to since you got the tickets because you have such bad anxiety that you know you'll have a panic attack and miss the show anyway.
Sometimes you want to be extremely happy for your friends for getting married but you can't go to the wedding because you know they'll want you to have cake and that has a shit ton of calories.
Sometimes you can't leave the house because you just don't feel like it, even though you really wanted to go out with those friends you haven't spoken to since high school.
Sometimes you can't meet new people because you don't want them to think you're a freak for having a mental illness. You're not. And I'm here to tell you that it's okay if you're okay one day and then not the next. It's okay. You're not a freak. You're not a problem. You're not a burden. You're a person and you deserve to be treated like one.
And it's okay to have good days. It doesn't make you a fake or a liar. You're allowed to have depression and still find ways to be happy. You're allowed to have good days. In fact, you deserve them. You can have PTSD and face some of your biggest fears without having a meltdown. You can do it and it is one of the most rewarding things ever. You're allowed to have good days, don't let people tell you that makes you or your characters a fake.
So let's think about this when we diagnose our characters. If you're going to give them a mental illness you can't just cut all the strings that are always attached. You have to accept them just like everyone with these disorders has to accept the fact that life must be lived day-by-day.
3. It's not always about self-loathing
This is something I don't see a lot of people talk about, but I definitely see happening a lot in stories. A lot of people tend to assume that most mental illnesses come with a lot of self-loathing. They must, right? Because they're mental. They're in a person's head.
That's not always true. It's not always about hating yourself. Sometimes it's feeling trapped. Sometimes it's feeling confused. Sometimes it's about feeling lost or lonely. It's not about thinking your fat so you can't eat, or feeling bad about yourself so you're "depressed". Sometimes it's about having a lot of feelings that you can't process.
People always ask me a good way to describe what it's like to have all these weird emotions that you can't process and I don't really know, because there are just so many things and it's different for so many people.
But for some reason—and I honestly don't know why—when people ask me something about having a mental illness I always think about the night before I moved back in with my dad when I was eighteen. I'd moved in with my best friend literally a few days after we graduated from high school and that fall my dad had surgery to have cancer removed, so I decided to move back in with him and I remember that night was a particularly bad one because I was so upset and so stressed out and just had all kinds of feelings that I couldn't handle.
And I remember it was about two in the morning and I was in bed and my best friend was beside me and he was sound asleep and I felt like I was drowning. It had started kind of slowly at first. When I'd gone to bed I'd felt really heavy and when I laid down it felt like I was just sinking into the mattress. And once I'd gotten so far down it literally felt like my lungs were filling with water and there was something on my chest.
And I remember panicking. I kept thinking about all these horrible things, like what was going to happen to my dad, and if my best friend was going to move off without me, and if my brother was going to move in with his girlfriend and leave me there all alone. And I'd already started getting sick—this was about a month and a half before I had to be hospitalized—so I had all this anxiety over people finding out about what I was doing to myself. There was just so many things I couldn't stop thinking about and they were all crashing down on me that night.
It was like being on a sinking ship. All my thoughts were so overbearing and I could feel the water rising up and slowly covering every inch of me until I thought I couldn't breathe. I had to keep thinking about it. In. Out. In. Out. And I just kept laying there, staring at the ceiling like it was some kind of shoreline that I desperately wanted to get to. But I just kept going down and I couldn't stop myself.
I didn't realize it until my tongue started sticking to my teeth because it was so dry, but I kept mouthing "help me" over and over and over. Once I realized I was doing it I kept trying to scream, but I couldn't make any sound. And I remember finally being able to move my head and look over at my best friend and usually that comforted me, but that night I remember getting so mad.
It was that kind of anger that makes your heart drop into your stomach and your ribs pound on their own where your heart is supposed to be. And your throat swells up and your eyes start to burn like someone just hit you in the nose. And your whole body hurts and you can't see straight because you're trying to hold it together when you're so close to just having a meltdown.
Yet he was sleeping so peacefully. He was lying there, just inches away, and he couldn't hear me.
I felt like I was screaming at the top of my lungs, trying to tell him to abandon ship. I kept thinking "Mayday! This is an emergency! We have to leave!" But he never moved. He just kept sleeping and the more time that passed the angrier I kept getting. It was sink or swim and I was just drowning. And he didn't hear me. Just like everyone else. I'd been asking for help since I was five and no one had ever heard me. No one. And in that moment all the weight just kept dragging me down. I just kept thinking that I wanted someone to help me leave but no one ever would.
I don't even remember how, but eventually I managed to wake my best friend up and he asked me if I was okay and all I could do was just say no. And he thought I'd had a nightmare and just told me to go back to sleep, but for the rest of the night, we both laid there pretending to be sleeping.
But even though I'd felt so horrible through the whole thing, it actually made sense to me in the morning. That was kind of how I'd felt my entire life and finally I was able to make it tangible. I was on a sinking ship and no one was coming to the rescue.
So it's not always about self-loathing. It's about having feelings you don't understand or can't process. It can be about not understanding why you feel so much and yet no one notices.
For my writing tip, my best advice would be to not be afraid to be confused. The entire thing is confusing. Life is confusing. The world is confusing. Don't think you have to have all the answers. Sometimes it helps more to just bring up the questions.
And don't make it all about self-loathing. There. That's all.
And that's my mental illness rant. You asked for it and here it is. Ask and ye shall receive. I'll be over here petting my cat and pretending I'm not making weird noises just to annoy him.
I don't want to tell a funny story, because even though this was heavy, I don't feel like joking. Instead, how about you just tell me a joke. Or you can tell me your story. I don't care. Do whatever you want. You know my evening plans. Pissing off m sassy cat.
I'll probably update this with a list of organizations that support different mental illnesses so you guys can check them out too. If you have any, leave me a link in the comments! I love exploring.