One of the reasons I choose to stay quiet.

Being open about my mental health wasn’t a decision that came easily. Theres so many layers to a mental illness, its so complex and private. For years, I told no one about the way I was thinking and feeling, then even when I became so ill I ended up under CAMHS, I still simply told people that I had flu and that’s why I was off school.

A number of years later, and here I am managing to speak quite openly. But even in the recent year, there have been situations that’s pushed me back. This is just one, which I hope if you have the time to read, you can understand and maybe learn how to ask for help from those around you, or help someone you love better.

One reason that holds me back, is because when someone knows you struggle, consciously or not, they will always look our for it.

Every time I decline eating something, for whatever reason, there’s that immediate ‘illness’ assumption. 

Every time I’m sad, people get scared I’m getting bad again. That I’m a risk to myself. 

Everytime I’m happy, there’s the panic that I’m manic. 

Every time I say I need space, It’s assummed I’m pushing people away due to negative thoughts. 

Or when I have a panic and walk out the house, that I’ve run away again.

Because when I say I don’t want to take my meds, it doesn’t mean I don’t take them. It just means it’s hard. 

And when I have days when I look in the mirror and cry, it doesn’t mean I’m engulfed by my body dysmorphia... just that I’m having a bad day. 

And when I don’t finish my plate, or I say I don’t want dessert, or say actually i don't want a donut today, it doesn’t mean I’m relapsing. 

My mental health is something I’ll always struggle with, and I don’t blame anyone for having those immediate thoughts.... I know for years I did do all those things for the wrong reasons. It’s just hard when you’re trying to rebuild your life, balancing recovery and normality but people still jump to the same conclusions. 

My message? When supporting someone in recovery, you have to learn to trust them. Even if that trust has been broken before. It’s hard, I know. I’ve been the person who broke it, and been on the receiving end of having the trust broken by people I care about who were also struggling. 

But you can’t keep assuming they’re in the same place as before. 

For me, this not only makes me reluctant to say when i am struggling, but actually makes me worse because it makes me doubt myself. Recovery from mental illness is a slow process of, in my case, having to trust professionals and external people from along time, instead of myself. Slowly that responsibility was handed back to me. It's scary and i constantly doubt what i'm doing... so when someone else doubts me it just makes it 100X worse. 

My old therapist said ‘you’re not going around in circles, you’re going around in a spiral. Everytime you come to the same place, you have a little more knowledge, you’re wiser, you’re more equipped. You’re higher up, closer to recovery and you have NOT gone backwards’. 

Be there to hold their hand, give them time to be, to explain, to work it out. Please don’t continue to assume that every moment of struggling means a relapse; because it doesn’t. it just means their human.

Fi xxx