So today I'm gonna talk a little bit about mental health, particularly depression.
I haven't scripted anything for this like I normally do for my videos.
I don't even really know exactly what I'm gonna talk about, but I'm going to speak from my own personal experience .
Talking about mental health is something that's really important to me.
I do it a lot on my blog but I realized I haven't really talked about it that much on this channel.
So if you don't follow me on tumblr or other social media then you're totally missing out on what I think is a really important discussion.
On my blog I tag everything, ever, so I'm gonna go through my depression tag and see what I posted
in the last couple months to help explain what depression feels like to me personally, a little bit better.
Got no sleep, cried for an hour, and skipped two of my classes and it's not even 1 p.m. yet. Smiley face.
Depression and anxiety are cool because they make you the flakiest person ever.
Has insomnia because of depression, skips class because of exhaustion, feels like shit for skipping class, repeat.
I'd say that's a pretty good description of depression.
I like how I'm going through my own blog and just being like, "Oh my God, so true."
I also made a little shitty cartoon on my iPad. Not an artist, by any means.
But it kind of helped me figure out my own emotions, and it was productive,
which, I find, doing little productive things and creating something actually helps when I'm depressed a lot.
I've talked about all of these symptoms in the past, in one of my videos, I think over a year ago,
and I think it's actually my most popular video. It's called, "I didn't know I had depression"
because I didn't know I had depression. I made that exact same joke in that video, by the way.
I'm just being honest here because you might watch the video, you might not,
and you're gonna be like, "Man she makes the same jokes all the time."
And I'm just gonna be like, "Yeah, I do."
Something I actually wanted to address in that video was the end where I gave a very uplifting and optimistic message.
I don't really think I gave a full picture of what receiving treatment is like.
At the end of the video kind of made it seem like I had been fixed and magically cured from depression,
which at the time I thought was true. I'd just started taking a new medication a couple months before filming the video,
and I was in an upswing. I was feeling pretty damn good.
The thing that no one ever told me about depression was that even if you go get treatment,
and start feeling a lot better, you're not going to be magically cured.
Depression is an ongoing struggle, and for a lot of people it's something that they're gonna be struggling with for a lot of, if not most of, their lives.
With this kind of depression, even if you take medication or seek some kind of treatment that works for you,
you're probably still gonna have highs and lows.
I didn't know this at the time, but it's actually pretty common for people to go through periods of relapse with their depression.
I don't know if relapse is the best word to use here, I can't really think of a better term.
And I'm not knocking medication and therapy, because I think those things are extremely important.
And even though they probably aren't gonna work right off the bat,
you might have to work to find a therapist that, you know, works for you.
You might have to go through several different types of medication with different dosages
until you finally find the right one, but I think in most cases they can be super helpful.
However, I want to note that even though I think it's always a good idea to get diagnosed if you have the ability to,
I also recognize that I'm really fucking privileged. I have access to health insurance
and I can see a psychiatrist who can prescribe me medication.
I'm over the age of 18, and I didn't have parents who tried to dismiss mental illness or pretend that it doesn't exist.
A lot of people try and pretend that mental illness isn't legitimate.
They'll say that they're overreacting or making a big deal out of it,
or they're just lazy and need to work harder to be happy.
And I'm sorry, but if you've experienced depression you know that that is bullshit.
Shaming people for their mental health issues, or telling them that their experiences aren't valid
is only gonna make it worse, especially since there seems to be this idea that,
you know, teenagers are diagnosing themselves and they're pretending to have all these mental health issues,
you now, to be cool. Which I don't really get because I don't know what's fucking cool
about being anxious and depressed every day of your life... but, whatever.
It's kind of this idea that there's a hierarchy between real mental health issues and fake mental health issues.
A lot of people with depression and anxiety, and probably other mental disorders that I'm not familiar with because I don't experience them...
They feel that their mental health issues aren't bad enough to warrant seeing a doctor.
You know what prevents people from going to the doctor and getting diagnosed?
Telling them that they're overreacting or that their mental illness isn't bad enough.
There are a lot of problematic and scary narratives that surround oppression and the way we talk about mental health.
On one end of the spectrum we're telling people that they're overreacting with their mental illness,
and we invalidate their experiences. And on the other end were telling people
that if they just, you know, get diagnosed and talk to a doctor and take medication, they're gonna be magically fixed.
Which is not only a really privileged perspective to have,
but it's really upsetting if you're a person who believes this, and then find out that's not the case.
I know when I started relapsing and getting depressed again, I felt ashamed and let down.
I thought this was something I didn't have to deal with any more,
and it only made those feelings of depression worse.
Basically, not everyone experiences depression and other mental illnesses the same way.
If you do you seek treatment, it's not always gonna work 100 percent of the time.
And eat your fruits and vegetables, man.
if you've experienced similar things, please let me know in the comments.
If you have a different experience with mental illness altogether, also share that with me because I'm interested in hearing your perspective.
