Well despite my poor mental health at the moment I managed to have a very good few days talking with my adopted family and even spent some time with folk who are very dear to me and whom I haven’t seen for a while.
These conversations were both stimulating and refreshing and I am so very grateful for them. As always I spent so much time afterwards simply replaying them and reflecting over the things that we have discussed.This then led me to spend some time thinking about my mental health issues and the effect that it can have on different people. It also gave me the opportunity to reflect on how different people seem to react/respond to my mental health.
This in turn led to the compilation of the following list…
10 things that someone’s mental health should never be used for…
1. A reason to isolate them (other than where that isolation REALLY IS for their own good or the good of others.)
2. A reason to isolate yourself. (other than where that isolation REALLY IS for your own good or the good of others.)
3. A convenient excuse to avoid your own responsibilities or justify your own failings or inadequacies.
4. A reason to undervalue someone or remove, reduce or damage their worth.
5. A convenient excuse to dismiss valid arguments, observations, suggestions, or criticisms that they may offer and which you know you really should respond to and act upon.
6. Justification for making someone a whipping post or scape goat or the target of your frustrations.
7. An easy and all too often inaccurate and inappropriate reason for your inability to understand.
8. A certificate of exclusion.
9. The basis of your need to feel better about yourself.
10. A barricade from love.
Well said.
I agree Jill, well said. Most of these have or do apply to myself and to others I know and love who suffer with mental illness. It is so easy to wrap oneself in the comfortable and secure blanket of our illness because it is so much easier then the unknown. (If that made sense hehe)
Also wanted to add something and that is the frustration that can come with the opinions and feelings of those we love who do not understand or even attempt to understand mental illness and worse yet those who refuse to accept that someone they love suffers with it.
Hi Hon,
Actually, whilst some of the list are specific to us and our attitudes and approaches as those who suffer from poor mental health, most of that list was aimed at those we have to deal with.
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