a-rinna:

i have such a seething annoyance bordering on actual hatred for almost any post that is like “x mental illness isn’t this, it’s this!” or “what people think x mental illness is vs what it actually is”

because i get the point! mental illness is stigmatized, some are downplayed while others are vilified, and there’s a great amount of ignorance over what mental illness actually is and what it looks like and how it presents, and people want to educate others and correct that and that’s fine!

the problem i have with these posts, though, is this: in pretty much with every single one of these posts the “x mental illness isn’t this” and “what people think x mental illness is” are…also ways that that mental illness can present itself.

“depression isn’t sleeping all day, it’s wanting to kill yourself all the time” / “social anxiety isn’t feeling nervous about going to class, it’s locking yourself in the house and never leaving for months at a time” / “bpd isn’t feeling happy one minute and sad the other, it’s being so overwhelmed by your emotion that you can’t function right” 

in literally every single one of these example, both of these things presented can be ways that mental illness presents itself. not the only ways but these are all potential feelings and behaviors that people with these mental illnesses can have!

because not every symptom of a mental illness is the most severe symptom and some people have milder forms of a mental illness than others with the same illness and while not every mentally ill person exhibits the ‘stereotypical’ symptoms/behaviors associated with their mental illness there are plenty of people who do!

again, i get the point of these posts but when you’re a mentally ill person whose illness presents the former symptoms—the depressed person who sleeps all day, the borderline who has constant mood swings, the person with anxiety that while mild still exists and still fucking sucks—it can be incredibly annoying and invalidating if not straight up harmful to see posts which low-key imply that we’re not actually mentally ill because our symptoms aren’t “bad enough” or because they’re stereotypical to what people think of when they think of our mental illness.

rather than making these kinds of posts, consider instead making posts discussing the fact that mental illness is not a monolith and neither are mentally ill people even if they have the same illness. the level of severity for symptoms of the same illnesses vary, the symptoms themselves experienced by people with the same illness can vary, and just because two mentally ill people share the same illness does not mean that they share the exact same experience with that illness.

also consider that there’s a major difference between saying “x mental illness is never this” and “x mental illness is not always this and here are some other things it can be”. the latter is good but if you’re saying the former? 99% chance you’re wrong and you’re erasing the experience that plenty of mentally ill people actually do have.