Placeholder lady

I consider myself a placeholder in this work until someone better takes it over

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

This is hard but I don’t always want to be on here talking about this. I really want precious time with the people that I love, not trying to reduce stigma towards people who have suffered from symptoms such as paranoid thoughts, psychosis, mania and severe hallucinations- anything that has resulted in public and private humiliation.

But I was subjected to such prejudices myself and the harm that they caused are still playing out in my life to this day, even though in my life of 50 years, only less than 2 years altogether have been spent ill with psychotic depression. The rest of the time I have been mostly completely normal and many people have no idea I have ever had psychosis at all.

But there are many people out there who don’t get the chance to express how they feel about their illness or the treatment they receive because of it. Maybe they are homeless, in and out of psychiatric institutions, trying to stay in work and masking their symptoms to avoid stigma, or far too ill to be able to express themselves clearly at the moment. I’ve met some of them. People don’t realise how easy it is to become one of them.

So I carry on, trying to roll with the punches about who I am as a person and why I am doing this. One day it may take too much of a toll on me and I might step back and try to rebuild my self esteem when it begins to crumble. Someday, I know it will become okay to talk about this subject in open conversation.

I’m just a person. I don’t have all the answers to these problems. But we need to get them out into the open. Now. So back to the grinding mill for me here, and I hope I have encouraged you to look at some of your best mental illness products, both pharmaceutical [and talking therapy] with fresh eyes. Enjoy your Xmas break! I’m not cooking this year for mine, I’m going to get my son to organise it all. What could possibly go wrong?