Imagine that you had a magical invisible burning little critter was lodged onto your brain that caused you to question and discredited every thought or conviction you had. Now imagine that this was lodged into you by an alien one day while you were unconscious. And now try explaining that to someone without being ridiculed or disregarded. Pretty tough right? Well believe it or not, talking about mental illnesses can be exactly like that only it’s not something someone did to you it’s just how your brain is wired. In that case then people think it’s a choice or attention thing when it’s not. The point being that unfortunately most of our society isn’t informed about these things and don’t know how to help. Plus, It can be really tiring having to explain and explain and explain more, but essentially if we want some support, we usually need to communicate our situation, our needs, and how to help/support us.
It can be exhausting having to explain,explain,& explain yourself, but unfortunately that’s what our society needs us to do since it lacks the social infrastructure, vocabulary, familiarity, and willingness to provide multi-faceted care and support. It forces us to communicate our situation, our needs, and how to help/support us, which can be a double edged sword. While on the one hand, we’re in the forefront of our own treatment, but on the other hand, our illness and our course of treatment fall in the danger of becoming who we are not what we have/what we face. As a mental health blogger, I hold it as my obligation to report my struggle and successes to my followers, but it only takes one misunderstanding or taking text out of context or one negative comment to tumble all that. And when we tie our illnesses and pathway to adaption, we tie our identity (sense of being) and our emotional stability to this. So, while being your own advocate can be awesome and seems to be one of the only ways in which we might be able to change our society’s approach and preconceptions of mental illness, it is not an easy job. It can be down right exhausting, but it also has many forms. I’ve chosen to do so on an advocacy lane through the social media arena, but there are many effective and meaningful ways you can make some dents into the mental stigmas our society has.
On that note, here are some tips I have on the topic-some ground steps to take to start challenging our own contributions/problematicness to mental stigmas and to start being our own advocates.
1) Define what you want others to know about you and your illness and how much you’re comfortable sharing. I know I’m a big advocater of over sharing, but there is no right way to do this. Share as much or as little as you’re comfortable doing so, you only know what’s right for you.
2)Establish a firm support network whether that’s one person or several doesn’t matter just have reliable and self affirming support. Avoid having numerous support members whose varying opinions and contradictory advice giving may confuse you. Really be picky about who is considered support and remember “Quality over quantity”.
3) Try figuring out what you want and how you’d like others to help you( in your head first and eventually communicate as explained on later steps)
4)Figure out what you don’t want or need. This is vital and you need to be able to flesh this out. Avoid over rationalizing or explaining why- you don’t need this. You don’t need to explain yourself to anyone if you don’t want to. Respect yourself. If the support is right, then they’ll understand and/or respect your limits.
5)Set boundaries- make them known and respect them yourself. Don’t let yourself talk your way out of having them. It’s okay to not be okay with things. Your happiness and self worth are valuable and doesn’t have to be compromised or disregarded. You’re human you have wants, needs, and boundaries.
6) Narrow down your needs from your list of things you need and don’t need to the first three you want to work on first. Don’t fret about picking ones and not others because the idea is that we’ll address all these needs just some before others.
7) Start the hard work: the explaining.
This part can look very different for each person there is no right way to communicate as long as you get your point across and your needs/limits respected. I’d love to give a secret recipe for success, but I’m still really struggling with communicating with my support network. I have got as far as recognizing some of my needs, but I have yet to past communicating and respecting my boundaries. I will write another post specifically focused on this at a later time, but for now, do not fret if you’re stuck in this step too.
Doing the above steps (all or any of them) is HUGE!!!! And you can’t minimize that! You my friend are a ROCKSTAR if you’ve even read this! Keep fighting the good fight and working to readapt to your new lives.
Love and support,
-lifeasanagoraphobe
Remember you are the one who can to self advocate for yourself to your support network because they will likely not know how to help/support you (unfortunately they aren’t mind readers). I know it’s very tiring and just plain annoying, but I hope this work now will pay off later so we and others later won’t always have to explain everything. Please feel free to teach out to me via this website or private message. I may not have answers or magic potions, but I can and want to support you (and others struggling with mental illnesses)
life as an agoraphobe 