Take Your Meds by dm gillis FYI, telling a person who you know has a mental disability to ‘take your meds’ when you disagree with her or him, is bigotry. It’s also a cheap and lazy way to make your point in a conversation. It’s the same as calling them a psycho, a mental case, [...]
Carrying the Message By Bruce Ario With the onset of my illness, I felt I had a lot to prove. What it boiled down to is that I had to prove my self-worth. My ego required some kind of reaction to my diagnosis of schizophrenia. At first my reactions were private and clandestine. I felt [...]
I am what my therapist and doctor call “high-functioning.” I have major depression and anxiety disorder, but like many with this illness, you would not be able to tell by looking at me. I am able to get groceries, read books I like, and participate in life, MOST of the time. One of the rotten [...]
OPEN LETTER TO SOCIETY Dear society, People who suffer from mental illness are not second-class citizens. They are not jokes, they are not puns, they are not attention-seekers. Their lives are not worth any less than your own and their illnesses are no different from those you call 'physical', as if though the brain was [...]
I feel compelled to share my story for two reasons. One, because I am tired of being quiet; I have been suffering in silence for a very long time and I want to be heard. And two, in hopes that it will help somebody, because I believe a lot of people find themselves in similar [...]
Learning to be present I have lived my life by to-do lists ever since I was a child. Throughout high school, college, my career, and my home life I have meticulously planned out each activity and relish the moment when I can check something off the list and move on to the next. A dwindling [...]
I Cried... Long, Hard, Delusional, Anxiety, Depression Cried... I should be writing my book. I had absolutely nothing planned for this weekend except for book writing. It's just awful that my brain had other plans... My brain is acting out the Civil War in my head with the South being my Depression and Anxiety and [...]
SELF-DIAGNOSIS: THE FIRST MISTAKE OF AN IGNORANT, MACHO MAN “I can’t believe how easy this is going to be!” I said to everyone quietly reading around me. No one else in the Reference Room of the 13th & Broadway Branch cared how well my research was going. But they should have cared. It’s a really [...]
Overwhelming Emotions I don’t know whether I’ve really talked about my connections with Stigma Fighters before, but they’re important (to me, at least) and related to recent happenings. In early January 2015 I was offered the position of Executive Assistant, and I accepted. Then in early September 2015 I received an email from Allie asking [...]
I’m a runner, when things get too much and I can’t face my world, I run. When I was small shy and anxious were the words people used to describe me. I lived inside my head, reading, writing and drawing. Getting lost in another world meant I didn’t need to face my own. I still [...]
