I have a whole selection of health problems. I take meds for some of them. Most of them are physical health problems. Some are mental health problems. Some are mental health problems that are made worse or are triggered by physical health issues.
When my health problems flair, I hate it. I hate the judgement that comes with it.
I hate the judgement that I get from people when my asthma flairs up. People don’t judge me for being asthmatic but they judge me for being asthmatic and fat. As soon as they see me using my inhaler, they judge me as being unfit and needing my inhaler because I am fat and assumed to be unfit. Whilst there is no significant stigma to having asthma, there is a stigma for being fat and asthmatic.
I spend a lot of my time fighting stigma and, in the majority of areas, we have come so far in the last decade.
But, we haven’t come far enough. We have fought stigma and made a lot of people understand that there should be understanding. The trouble is that the understanding is only afforded to the poster girl/boy versions of the acceptable face of a condition.
The same is true of my mental health. I don’t experience stigma for my anxiety disorder. I don’t experience stigma for my depression. When people become aware of them, they say all the right, caring, supportive things. It’s not challenging. It’s horrible to experience them but, most of the time, my anxiety and depression fit the bill of being horrible but worthy of empathy.
That changes though when my chronic PMT gets added.to the mix. That’s when stigma still is very apparent. I’m not nice at those times. I have a tsunami of unpleasant emotions. My tolerance of others is diminished. My anger at myself and the world is huge. And more than that, I’m nasty. When PMT hits me with all of the other things, my tolerance and kindness towards myself disappears. All the things that I work hard to be OK with and to not dwell on over the rest of the month are suddenly very obvious. My not fitting in. My not being responded to by others. My being an outsider are all obvious. As the hormones take away my strength, I look at myself through the filter of all that and I can find clear and obvious reasons for why nobody would want to include me.
When that happens, I need to drag those feelings out into the light to stop them growing and destroying me. I sometimes let them out on twitter. When I do, I get some lovely virtual hugs. It is when I let them out that I become aware of mental health stigma. Each time, I express my struggle on twitter, I lose followers – not that those followers really matter. The thing that makes me aware of the stigma and makes me sad is that each time I let these thoughts out, more people stop interacting and chatting with me. People that I used to chat with have reduced to occasional comments. Others don’t respond to me. It’s the twitter equivalent of saying hi but avoiding talking to someone for a whole party.
I don’t know what I hate most. It’s hard to decide whether I hate that I have ‘let myself down by shoeing myself up with my pitiful tweets’or to hate the fact that I am not the right sort of presentation of mental health problems or avoid the stigma.
All I know is that it gives me PMT demon of self loathing an absolute feast to grow strong on and gives me a harder mountain to climb in recovery after it passes.
This struck such a chord with me, Honey! Thank you for posting. I’ve been having lots of conversations lately with someone who I love very much but who is “so worried about my health” because of my weight. I tried to explain about the judgement I feel and they said “I’m not judging you! I’m just worried about you!” Ugh.
Anyway, this was such a brave post to write. I think sometimes (often) we feel like even mentioning an illness or injury is just opening ourselves up for judgement and shame because we think the reaction will automatically be “well, you wouldn’t have that problem if you were thin”. But I’m also starting to realize, at least for me, that a lot of that judgement is what I place on myself when I imagine what others are thinking. Not all, by any means, judgement is so real. But some. And in that I am trying to figure out how to have compassion for myself and also believe that there is commpassion in others toward me regardless of my weight. (Easier to believe on some days than others, and easily proven wrong by a-holes) I don’t know if it will help and honestly maybe it’s misguided on my part, but I do know my brain can be a sneaky liar sometimes.
Anyway, I’m sorry for the long rambling comment. I’m so proud of you for putting this post out there. It’s helped me feel not alone. xxxxx
I feel like I have been neglecting you as I have not been interacting much on Twitter lately. I am always here for you, luv, always. Sorry you get stigmatized. I wish there was something I could do to help with that. Sometimes I think people find it easier not react or to react neutrally when someone else goes through difficult times because they don’t know what to say or how to handle it. I know in my surroundings people think I should just ‘act normal because everything is behind you now’. They are so wrong. Some people just don’t understand and never will.
Always here for you.
Rebel xox