Understanding your own mental illness doesn't happen overnight – It's a process. So, using the medication she was prescribed, one woman opened up about her long, and sometimes impossibly difficult, experience coping with her own mental illness.
"I had my first panic attack when I was 17-years-old. My body went into flight or fight mode. Well, jokes on me because I was on an airplane flight when it happened."
"I had so many questions, but one stood above them all: Why me?"
One in four people struggle with their mental health.
And only roughly one third of people with mental illness seek ANY form of help.
"I sure as hell didn't like the way I felt and I didn't care who knew it. Well, maybe I cared a little."
"I started going to therapy. I had good days, and bad days... and really bad days."
Eventually, a diagnosis was reached: "Bipolar disorder. Getting a definitive diagnosis meant there had to be a cure, right?"
"...Hope. What a misleading drug in itself."
"I had good days, and bad days, and less really bad days. And then life happened – smacked me in the face and right off my tracks because a guy I loved broke up with me."
"There are no rights and wrongs when it comes to feelings and moods, they just exist. We just feel. It's the choices we make on how to constructively deal with those feelings that define us."
"In seven years time, seven psychiatrists, four psychologists, countless therapists, two misdiagnosis, and over 20 medications... I was finally figuring my mental illness out."
"I cannot hold myself accountable for what happens with my depression and anxiety. That I don't have control over. But I can hold myself accountable for the strength of trying."
