I've been doing this recently and within the past year. I'm not entirely sure why I still decide to hide that part of myself. More often than not I'm not hiding it, it just never comes up. Back when I wasn't hiding it, or anything at all, I learned the more I talked about it the more others would say they've been institutionalized too. Or that their friend or family member was. When I do talk about my past in detail, I see no stigma. I receive no stigma. I only see and hear from people who have been through the same shit, or are going through it now. And more often than not information of my past helps them deal with their present.
I have talked a little bit about it recently and in more detail with certain friends however I find myself not wanting to go further and the reason why is interesting: I miss those days. They were a hell of a lot more fun lol. I suppose it's only natural to reminisce those days I was a total recluse. Considering these days I have responsibility and shit. I'd equate it to how 'normal' people reminisce about high school or childhood. Though I also don't believe people living in the past are all that mentally healthy. Which is probably why I refuse to go into depth about my own.
Thanks for the reply...
Usually, attempting to describe my experiences, I've found it difficult to get through to people about how sick I was. They always seem ready to say "I understand what it's like", when they almost never do. I know that they don't because when I describe things I've experienced in more detail they go silent and have nothing left to say. One of my friends had a brother with a very similar diagnosis to mine who committed suicide, and another friend was hospitalised for quite different mental health problems, but I think they are they only two people I've really encountered who I have felt had any meaningful understanding of what I went through. At least so far as I am aware by having spoken with people, I haven't met other people who have been processed through the hospital system for psychiatric problems.
But maybe you and I take different approaches to these things - maybe you tend to look for common ground with others, while I seek to set myself apart from others as some sort of special snowflake. Maybe I should try harder to see similarities between the experiences of other people and my own.
Over time in disclosing information about my mental health history to acquaintances and especially to employers I have had this feeling that after that disclosure I have been seen as vulnerable, and perhaps as somehow inherently incompletely competent. This has sometimes given me the sensation that I am being treated as ever so slightly childlike, with resistance to giving me opportunities for responsibility, no matter how hard I worked. Or then again, if I am perceived differently after disclosure, maybe it's got nothing to do with mental health, but more to do with a willingness to share information that is seen as personal in a context that should be professional. Although, maybe it's all just my imagination. But in any case, I don't want to share things about myself that I'm not convinced other people will understand properly. I would rather not share this information with employers or work colleagues again, I would rather keep it private if I can, I would rather be evaluated on my work performance alone.
But in regards to being seen as vulnerable, I have sometimes thought that the dominant cultural idea is that a person who has legitimate mental health problems is seen as being dispositionally weaker, less robust mentally than other people, and more susceptible to mental breakdowns, explosions, or whatever. My own idea about all of this is that there is no "type" of person who is more susceptible to breakdown, but that when exposed to the right amount of the right kind of pressure for them, any person at all would "crack", no matter what "type" of person they are. I don't think that my idea is the culturally dominant perspective, I still think that the "weak person" perspective is the culturally dominant one. (I have no evidence at all to back this up - it is just an irrational belief of mine.)
I relate to what you said about responsibility in my own way. As I was recovering from my problems, I missed the feelings of simple, straightforward convictions that were symptomatic of my disorder - for example seeing everything as black and white, and nothing as grey. I got sick of having to constantly work work work at my disorder and part of me missed those moments when I seemed to always know what was true, or even when I was so sick that it was not possible for me to be responsible for myself. I just wanted to forget about all of it and go crazy, throw my whole life into the toilet, and never keep trying to go back towards wellness anymore. I have always hated hospital though and after the third time I was in there I promised myself I would never go back, and the desire to stay out of hospital was a powerful force in propelling me towards wellness.
Lately I've been feeling very differently about ever wanting to go back to the simplicity of depression. The shades of grey don't bother me anymore, I don't crave the simplicity of black and white, because in any case my head space is much more simple than it ever was. I'm sick of thinking about those problems I had and the enormous slab of my life that they ate up, all the time and opportunities that they wasted, and how much harder it has been for me to do things that seemed easy for all of my contemporaries, and have taken me so much longer. They're all enjoying their fabulous lives doing what they dreamed of doing, but I never seem to be able to catch up. I hate those problems, I want to forget I ever had them.
Sorry for this massive essay. Um, hope it was fun reading.
