Not everyone is "mentally unwell" or has a "temporary depression"

[KuriGohan&Kamehameha]

Don't you love it when someone manipulates your words out of context to suit their narrative. As if I or anyone else here is a part of a hivemind who cannot form their own thoughts, opinions, and convictions.

Apparently acknowledging that there cases in this world where a person has tried everything within their power to improve their suffering, then ends up ctb out of desperation, is saying that "mentally unwell" people who haven't tried to get better must see it as the only valid option. The loaded phrase mentally unwell is almost always seen as a pejorative as well, a dogwhistle to indicate that a person is irrational and incapable of thinking clearly.

Oh silly me, I didn't realize decades of suffering after failing pretty much every treatment on the market for chronic illness was the exact same situation as a few weeks of depression that was healed with first-line SSRIs! Get real. These are not remotely similar contexts, and anyone insinuating that these are similar is being purposefully obtuse and disingenuous.

Trying to equate apples and oranges is invalidating the horrible agony that accompanies fighting a battle that you know you can't win. Having an incurable disease that there is no remedy for is not comparable to a temporary situation where a person has not yet found the courage to seek some sort of help, or a story where someone was rapidly cured and now touts their panacea as the solution for everyone.

There are people who are brought to their knees by decades of depression/anhedonia that wasn't cured by any pill, therapy, lifestyle change, or traumatic intervention like ECT and forced hospitalizations. Likewise, there are people with complex trauma, chronic pain, volatile socioeconomic conditions, individuals who are reeling from the aftereffects of abuse, who are constantly blamed and shamed for piss poor methods of treatment failing them. Our voices are actively silenced by this temporary problem crowd.

It is wonderful that for some people, suicidality is a temporary problem. For others, we are hurting for years, upon years, upon decades, and are silenced by bullshit insinuations that our pain is temporary, because so-called health advocates refuse to acknowledge that current interventions are incredibly inadequate for complex cases.

Does it make me mentally unwell to acknowledge that my life is objectively rubbish and full of hardship? Am I out of my mind for having to deal with the pernicious consequences of child abuse, sexual abuse, having no family, being disabled, bullying, being groomed by a coercive devil, and watching my body fail me? Or is that grim reality just a cognitive distortion?

Until you have walked a mile in my shoes, or peered into the mind of anyone else who has persisting, long-term problems that have plagued them and poisoned their prospects, you don't get to tell us that we didn't try hard enough. You don't get to castigate, point the finger, and assert that this hopelessness is a case of mental unwellness that we haven't sought assistance for, or that somehow our existence is encouraging the last resort for a person with mild depression that can be managed.

I've lost my patience with blatant spindoctoring and lying. The cognitive dissonance is astounding, just label people as mentally unwell when they disagree with you and believe that certain situations, in this present moment, cannot be improved.

Unironically this rhetoric speeds up my desire to gtfo of this world. Don't ever want to hear words put in my mouth again, or have assumptions made that are false and carry hefty implications. I wish people would listen and try to understand rather than pushing a sanitised, one size fits all, panacea touting narrative that refuses to acknowledge that we need radically new means of trying to comfort those who are ailing.

I'll probably be six feet under and dumbasses will be saying, "if only she had the right help!" When I've tried dozens of medications and numerous therapists throughout my life to try to remedy my chronic pain, ptsd, autism, and health issues, and all of it hurt me worse. There are no resources out there for people with no family who can barely survive, yet forever we will be labeled mentally ill and insane! It's a joke and a pisstake.

 

[Of The Universe]

Well,another horrible Saturday nite! Remember the song:" Another Saturday nite and I ain't got nobody/ I got some money cuz I just got paid.
Now how I wish I had someone to talk to/ I'm in an awful way!"
Nice to hear from you! I wish you a good nite KGK!

 

[WhiteRabbit]

I'm going to CTB due to years of illness and chronic pain, and I don't consider myself mentally unwell or unstable. I don't really care what people say about me though, I'll be dead soon enough. People say and think all kinds of ignorant things about situations that they haven't been in. I'm probably guilty of this myself on occasion.

 

[Life sucks]

The terms are unscientific and offensive. Mental and physical pain happens because of something else that caused it. When they don't know the reason or even want to know it, it's only a form of abuse, gaslighting and invalidating. Sometimes the pain is incurable and not temporary and that goes against how many people think "life is good no matter what" because it's a situation where living is no good at all regardless of type of pain. They only use the mental part because it's invisible and use the label as a tool of abuse rather than trying to understand the core problem and help.

 

[HappyForever?]

The term "temporary depression" is made up by people who haven't truly suffered. They don't know what it's like to have a permanent problem. They haven't been stuck in unfavorable life circumstances with no way out. They haven't had incurable physical or mental conditions. The biggest pain they have experienced in life is probably a breakup or a loss of a loved one, which can easily be remedied with enough time. However, due to the nature of our suffering, we will be constantly reminded that we are living a less than desirable life, and we're better off dead as that's the only way we can end the pain.

 

[symphony]

It seems most people who haven't been in the mental health system, and even many who have and have been fortunate enough to recover, cling on to the false believe that any mentally ill individual can get well with just the right treatment and the right mindset. But we know that's clearly not the case, and the suggestion otherwise is honestly pretty insulting.

 

[Nemeshisu]

I understand what you mean. Our society loves to blame the one having the problem if that problem can't be easily solved in 5 minutes with some simple textbook solution. It is easier for them to say that it is victims fault, not that they aren't able to provide adequate help or admit that someone's problem can not be actually solved.

 

[waitingforrest]

It couldn't be more accurate in my experiences. There is a annoying, "if I can do it, you can do it" attitude to adversity.

It's only the motivational stories and successes that are told by the media. The amount of times I have heard about the riches to rags stories, I remember most of the stories being told through rose tinted glasses.

I despise it when I people tell me whatever I am experiencing is temporary, it's not so much the invalidation, but more so the fortune-telling. It peves me when people make false promises and assumptions, like my pain will all amount to something greater.

Yet, experiences does not equate to facts.

Being told that depression is temporary feels like another stab in the back every time I fail to get better.

 

[FuneralCry]

I believe that wanting suicide can be perfectly rational in a world like this. We live in a world where there is unlimited potential for suffering after all. I believe that many people who ctb simply come to the conclusion that their life is not worth living, it does not mean they are mentally unwell, or that the problem is them. I want to die as I want to escape from decades of misery and suicide is what makes sense for me personally. Many non suicidal people who do not understand what we go through always dismiss those who are suicidal as being irrational, they are delusional. It really is an awful world we live in, one that I want to escape from more than anything.

 

[KuriGohan&Kamehameha]

I'm going to CTB due to years of illness and chronic pain, and I don't consider myself mentally unwell or unstable. I don't really care what people say about me though, I'll be dead soon enough. People say and think all kinds of ignorant things about situations that they haven't been in. I'm probably guilty of this myself on occasion.

You're tougher than me, that's for sure. I try not to care what people think to an extent, but sometimes it is quite hurtful, especially when the person has sway with others and can easily mince unrelated words for the newest hit piece the media churns out.

There's quite a lot of truth in the sentiment that no one ever truly understands us, I used to believe ignorant things about chronic pain as a child until it struck me as a teenager and made me reevaluate the simple-minded assumptions I held about those conditions.

I consider myself to be rather mentally stable, I've only had extreme emotions when something devastating was happening, including constant abuse which was gnawing at me and conditioning me to fear homelessness.

When I failed a ctb attempt, the cops who beat on the door, as well as their paramedic buddies, kept trying to insinuate that I must be depressed to attempt suicide and that I must seek psychiatric help, when they didn't know a thing about me or my situation.

Outside of that interaction, I have been told many times my desire stems from depression. I don't consider myself depressed at all, and this term was used to deny me treatment or diagnostics when my chronic illnesses began, since my main problem was fatigue. I was drugged to high hell throughout my teenage years, because no one believed me that I was sick, in their eyes I simply had low mood, when the reality was that I was (and still am) so exhausted to the point where I hardly function.

When you are suffering some sort of physical pain, it feels like you're a gazelle surrounded by lions. They are ready to pounce with that mentally ill label as soon as you admit weakness, as soon as you bring to the table your esoteric and shocking proposition that an incapacitated life may not be worth living when the pain becomes too much to bear.

In chronic illness and pain groups I have joined, they are very quick to separate these sentiments as delusions of "mental illness" separate from the somatic pathology which is making your life hell. For the most part, groups for my condition ban any talk that is not affirming of boundless optimism and motivational mantras that reminiscent of cheesy sports films. You can't even talk about anything that's helped you in detail in any way either, because it's medical advice and won't be tolerated.

All you're allowed to say is gee, life may suck but I'm so happy to hear the birds chirping outside! Just wait decades before this disease gets proper research funding, stop being such a negative nancy and a quitter.

These are meant to be support groups where people can openly discuss the harsh realities of living with chronic illnesses, but it turns into a positivity circle jerk where acknowledging the standstill of innovation and progress being made in the sphere of chronic pain research- or saying that you genuinely cannot survive and function with this condition because you don't have a rich husband and family looking out for you- immediately gets you banned.

It's almost as dogmatic as religion. Force yourself to be positive, to waste thousands on doctors who will invalidate and hurt you more, so you get to be a part of the club of "chronic illness warriors" rather than "losers who gave up the fight" because they lack fortitude and discipline due to an assumed mental illness.

Guess it makes me unwell to not want to live with all these conditions though, of course.

 

[WhiteRabbit]

You're tougher than me, that's for sure. I try not to care what people think to an extent, but sometimes it is quite hurtful, especially when the person has sway with others and can easily mince unrelated words for the newest hit piece the media churns out.

There's quite a lot of truth in the sentiment that no one ever truly understands us, I used to believe ignorant things about chronic pain as a child until it struck me as a teenager and made me reevaluate the simple-minded assumptions I held about those conditions.

I consider myself to be rather mentally stable, I've only had extreme emotions when something devastating was happening, including constant abuse which was gnawing at me and conditioning me to fear homelessness.

When I failed a ctb attempt, the cops who beat on the door, as well as their paramedic buddies, kept trying to insinuate that I must be depressed to attempt suicide and that I must seek psychiatric help, when they didn't know a thing about me or my situation.

Outside of that interaction, I have been told many times my desire stems from depression. I don't consider myself depressed at all, and this term was used to deny me treatment or diagnostics when my chronic illnesses began, since my main problem was fatigue. I was drugged to high hell throughout my teenage years, because no one believed me that I was sick, in their eyes I simply had low mood, when the reality was that I was (and still am) so exhausted to the point where I hardly function.

When you are suffering some sort of physical pain, it feels like you're a gazelle surrounded by lions. They are ready to pounce with that mentally ill label as soon as you admit weakness, as soon as you bring to the table your esoteric and shocking proposition that an incapacitated life may not be worth living when the pain becomes too much to bear.

In chronic illness and pain groups I have joined, they are very quick to separate these sentiments as delusions of "mental illness" separate from the somatic pathology which is making your life hell. For the most part, groups for my condition ban any talk that is not affirming of boundless optimism and motivational mantras that reminiscent of cheesy sports films. You can't even talk about anything that's helped you in detail in any way either, because it's medical advice and won't be tolerated.

All you're allowed to say is gee, life may suck but I'm so happy to hear the birds chirping outside! Just wait decades before this disease gets proper research funding, stop being such a negative nancy and a quitter.

These are meant to be support groups where people can openly discuss the harsh realities of living with chronic illnesses, but it turns into a positivity circle jerk where acknowledging the standstill of innovation and progress being made in the sphere of chronic pain research- or saying that you genuinely cannot survive and function with this condition because you don't have a rich husband and family looking out for you- immediately gets you banned.

It's almost as dogmatic as religion. Force yourself to be positive, to waste thousands on doctors who will invalidate and hurt you more, so you get to be a part of the club of "chronic illness warriors" rather than "losers who gave up the fight" because they lack fortitude and discipline due to an assumed mental illness.

Guess it makes me unwell to not want to live with all these conditions though, of course.

I'm not tough, I'm just getting close to 40 and I don't give a shit about other peoples opinions anymore. lol

 

[whatevs]

I'm not tough, I'm just getting close to 40 and I don't give a shit about other peoples opinions anymore. lol

Sounds good. One weight you don't need to worry about anymore. I want that for myself.

 

[Final-push123]

I think the reason why people think like this is because they fear realizing that there are things that are out side of their control that can change their life for better or worse.

People like to feel in control/feel like anything is possible with enough effort so to make themselves feel better they say stuff like "you are mentally unwell" or some other form of "pull yourself up by the boot straps"

I honestly just tune most people out because of this