The world is finally beginning to wake up to the issues of mental illness and the far-reaching effects that it has on everyone’s life. Nobody is immune. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, how “social” you appear to be, or how many times you smile. There are people out there who cannot control their thoughts and that’s not due to a personality flaw or a mental weakness. Mental illness is an illness. For some, it is one that never goes away. For many of us, it is something that we live with and find strategies to deal with in order to keep ourselves functioning, and in many cases, alive on a daily basis. We would change it if we could.
For people who don’t experience these things, please understand: it is not your job to judge if we “should” be feeling this way. We know we shouldn’t. That’s not a question. What we really want is your support and understanding. We want to be like you without these feelings. Show us your compassion and empathetic sides. We just want to know we are not alone and you don’t think we are weird. We want to know that when we get enough courage to tell you about our sickness that you don’t look at us with pity or distain but instead with an understanding and strategic side that will help us make it through our bouts.
I’ve written about this many times, trying so hard to destigmatize mental illness and to forget the look on the face of the one person who didn’t understand what I was going through; the catalyst for this mission. That face is ingrained in my head. When I saw this tweet from Emily Thomas
Can we start a MeToo campaign, but for mental health ? I would love to hear everyone’s untold stories so we can all support each other ❤️ — Emily Thomas (@emitoms) June 8, 2018
regarding beginning a #metoo campaign for mental health, I knew I was all in. I had been racking my brain to try to find another way to shed light on the topic but didn’t know how. It was a lightbulb moment, and I’m all in.
#ItsTime to remove the stigma.
#ItsTime to recognize the far-reaching effects mental illness has on people.
#ItsTime to do something more than nothing.
The more we talk about it, the less of a stigma it will have, and less of a control that it will have on all our lives. I don’t want myself or the people I love to feel like they need to keep it all inside because they are well respected in the community/profession and they don’t want to show that as a weakness. #ItsTime to take control and stop allowing these illnesses to control us.
I know that my blog is primarily education focused, and it will continue to be that way. I love the work I do, but I also am 100% positive that we are not immune to these issues. I will continue posting about issues in education once a week, as is my goal. However, I will also try to post a second time during the week regarding anything I’ve learned about mental illness from writing my book or just being me and living with it. But in the meantime, let’s get this going. #ItsTime.
