Crazy.\nUnstable. Irrational. Helpless. Our society often uses these along with many\nother adjectives to describe an individual who struggles with mental illness.\nNot only do I find these words personally triggering, but also believe they are\nweapons used to perpetuate the negative stigma surrounding mental health. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Throughout my life, I have battled\nwith what I recognized as severe depression and anxiety. However, I did not\nreceive an official diagnoses or treatment until about three-and-a-half years\nago when I started college. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
From an early age, I became part of\nthe mental health discussion. Both my mother and father\u2019s sides of the family\nare plagued by mental health related conditions. Whether it be Obsessive\nCompulsive Disorder, Anorexia or various anxiety centered disorders, I grew up\nknowing a family member suffering from it. I grew up hearing graphic stories\nabout what these illnesses had caused them to say do or say. One would think\nthat this degree of visibility of mental health would have encouraged a\npositive discussion on the topic in our family, but it did not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, I grew up in fear that I\nwould suffer like the rest of my family. That fear was not so far reaching\nthanks to the reality of genetics. Even as a child, I believed that these were\ndark family secrets that should remain in the dark and not be shown to the rest\nof the world. I began to associate mental health struggles with shame, because\nthat is how it was discussed by my family. Each of them knew they needed help,\nbut they were too embarrassed to seek. If they sought it, they would be\nadmitting a weakness, and vulnerability is not necessarily an asset my family\nmaintains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite struggling my entire life\nwith the same mental illnesses that surrounded me, I did not feel comfortable\nseeking help until I was much older. Moving away, being separated from my\nfamily and beginning college allowed me to realize that maybe it was okay to\nask for some help. It wasn\u2019t until I was away from my support system and out of\nmy comfort zone that I realized that I can\u2019t do this on my own. I needed help.\nI began having a positive conversation about mental health with myself.\nEventually, I felt compelled to bring these issues to my parents in an effort\nto change the historical perceptions of mental illness in our family. It was\ntime to talk about these issues in a constructive way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recently, I realized I was not alone\nin fearing mental illness as a child. One of my siblings has also been\nstruggling with varying mental disorders, and never felt they could be open\nabout it. They felt that the rest of the family would view them as having\nweaknesses, or that they were not able to be independent any longer. They too\nwere impacted by the negative view point that my family had always had on\nmental health. This took me by surprise. I thought I was the only one effected\nby the shroud of secrecy that had loomed over us our entire lives. \n\n These negative words,\neven when spoken by loved ones, have a major impact. They make the sufferer\nfeel invalid and incorrect. They greatly dissuade people who need help from\nseeking help. Perhaps the easiest thing we can do to avoid further damaging the\nmental health discussion is to simply change our diction.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Crazy. Unstable. Irrational. Helpless. Our society often uses these along with many other adjectives to describe an individual who struggles with mental illness. Not only… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[167],"class_list":["post-2445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"authors":[{"term_id":167,"user_id":15,"is_guest":0,"slug":"sprinkles-kelby","display_name":"Kelby Sprinkles","avatar_url":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/wp-content\/litespeed\/avatar\/589b2a7f865123bf180131ac912a679b.jpg?ver=1778637593","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2446,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445\/revisions\/2446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2445"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=2445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}