Strong Memories of My Own
I am a mental health consumer who has been living with mental illness for just about seven years. I have been receiving your newsletter for some time now, but in the past I have hesitated to read it, because every time I started to read your newsletter or the one I received from NAMI, I felt scared. The personal stories bring up strong memories of my own experiences. Those experiences were very scary at the time and even now, discussing them can sometimes be discomforting to me. In the past, I haven't even liked being reminded that I am mentally ill. I did not want to even see myself as mentally ill despite the fact that I have been hospitalized three times and am living on SSI and have been taking medication since the fall of 1991. I thought that if I acted "healthy" and "normal" I wouldn't be "mentally ill." Many times have I felt shame when people have asked me about my mental illness. I think this was because I was and may still sometimes be very sensitive about being stigmatized. I have felt stigmatized many times by friends, family and health care professionals.
I have been feeling well for a while now—I have not been hospitalized for five years—but I spent a lot of time recovering and delaying. I am uninformed as to all the aid that is out there for the mentally ill, but I am going to start reading your newsletter and getting involved. At this stage of my recovery, my focus is on getting over the inertia I have built up during the time when I was less able. I would like to eventually reenter the work force, but at this point I am afraid of losing my benefits and entering a situation that may cause me more problems than it solves.
I am not really diagnosed specifically. I am currently under the care of a wonderful psychiatrist. During our first meeting last year, he asked me what I thought about my mental illness. I was a little confused and started to tell him how I had been diagnosed in the past. He stopped me halfway through and said that he didn't really believe in diagnosing people specifically, but that each person should be dealt with as an individual who has a specific set of problems that should be addressed in a way which is tailored to that person. I am very lucky also to have a very supportive family and therapist that I have been seeing for over five years.