I feel it is very important for people to talk
about there mental health about how they feel about the problems
they have had and how they have dealt with these. Now I feel first of
all it is important to say that everyone has mental health and that
mental health and mental illness are not the same thing. I dont want
to go to heavily into the academic I want to try to keep this nice
and simple so that anyone can understand. Often when you hear the
term Mental Illness your brain will think of certain things and in
some cases it will turn to cliches of people being mad and hearing
voices or shouting at people who are not there. When it comes to
Mental Illness there is a stigma attached to it people are seen as
simply being mad instead of being seen as people who need help.
We all have mental health at all stages of our
lives the real question is how good or bad this health is. You see
mental health is not a case of crazy or normal its a spectrum and you
can sit anywhere on it from feeling amazingly healthy in yourself in
your mind, to feeling a little bit down and maybe anxious to more
extreme cases such as being incredibly depressed to possibly
struggling to maintain a grip on reality. During an average persons
life they will move up and down this scale, when times are good they
could be described as mentally healthy but at other times something
may happen which causes them to be ill, to display a mental illness.
When someone displays signs of mental illness they are not crazy they
are vulnerable and in need of help. A lot of people wont seek help
because either they don't know that it exists or they are so scared
of being called crazy and of facing stigma either now or in the
future because they admitted that they were struggling that it just
doesn't seem worth asking for help. When someone does ask for help
its not always that easy to get it, there is the fact you need to go
and convince someone that there is an issue and often this issue
needs to be assigned a label and then you have to go on a waiting
list to be seen for it, because of the stigma attached to asking for
help people will often wait till they are near boiling point before
asking for help so then being met with a long wait after this can
further add to the problems.
I know that my mental health has taken swerves up
and down over the years from early bits of depression, anxiety and
panic attacks to a latter breakdown and case of Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder. I figure that I need to tell my tale so that it might help
other people to look at there own mental health, to try and manage it
and to seek help if they need it. So many people have gone through
these kind of struggles and if more people would stand up admit it
and be counted then it would feel a lot more like a natural part of
life, a part we can talk about and discuss free from stigma. I want
to talk about my issues today to try and help others either not face
them tomorrow or at the very least face them knowing that there not
the first one to feel this way, that they are not alone and that they
are not weak or mad.
I would blame my first stumbles upon bullying and
ignorance about some of the disorders I suffer from such as Epilepsy
and Dyslexia, ignorance on both my behalf and other peoples ignorance. School was tough for me with constant snide comments
and even teachers being less than supportive and I didn't know how to
deal with a lot of this I developed a somewhat hostile outer shell
one which claimed that it did not care and one which pushed me to
become a bit of a mix between a class clown and someone who had just
lost hope. I hated myself and looked down on myself on an almost
daily basis but I simultaneously smiled and tried to bring joy to
others either through being a clown or by standing up for them. I
would often get in trouble for sticking up for people in the face of
authority and it was simply because although I couldn't see anything
worthwhile in myself I always saw the best in others and couldn't
stand to see people try to put them down or to try and make them feel
bad about themselves.
I soon found that video games were a bit of a
coping mechanism for me, when times got tough I could just retreat to
my room and play some games. My home life was great I had a very
supportive family and I felt totally safe when inside the walls of my
home. It was during my GCSE's that I found video gaming first really
save me. I had zero confidence about my GCSE's I was certain I would
fail them, a lot of teachers had led me to believe I would fail them
and yet I tried really hard to study. I didn't have any ambition to
go to college or university but I just wanted to come out with half
decent grades, ones I could read without feeling too ashamed of
myself, ones I could actually find work with. The issue was the more
I tried to study the more stressed I got, it got to the point where I
was wasting more time blankly panicing in front of my notes than I
was studying this is when I made a deal with myself. The deal was
this if I could study for a set amount of time then as a reward I
would allow myself to play Mario Kart. It worked it got me studying
and although I didn't get the best grades it did allow me to get 4
C's which was a lot more than was expected of me. I have been making
myself deals like this ever since deals which have helped me to try
and manage stress and anxiety. This is what is called a coping stratergy, its a plan for how to keep yourself calm, how to keep going and how to cope with the situations your dealt.
I will bring this topic up again soon because I have a lot to say about it but for now I just want to push the fact that if your struggling you are not alone, lots of other people will be in or have been in the same position.
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