Over the past four years, I've really struggled with mental illness and how it intertwines with my identity - does anxiety and depression define who I am? Or at least a part of who I am? ...and is that a good or bad thing to let an illness help define me?

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That is where this project started: my hatred for my own anxiety and depression.

 

I hate describing my anxiety and depression. I can never distinguish between the two. My brain doesn't have tabs open dictating which thoughts and feelings are labeled as anxiety and depression. I get really annoyed when people ask me to. The only reason I have both diseases is because my therapist and psychiatrist told me that I do, so I guess I have to trust them. To me, it just feels like I am thinking normally and humanly. Granted, it sometimes feels really difficult and impossible to live with those thoughts, but it’s what I’m used to.

 

Distinguishing between trains of thoughts that are from a mental illness and thoughts that are deemed normal seem arbitrary (not to mention confusing as hell). 

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Not only do I struggle with panic attacks and depressive episodes, but I also struggle with the fear associated with not knowing when they will happen. What if I get a panic attack during an exam? During a first date? Explaining anxiety and depression to other people is the worst.

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As I embark on this project, I want to know why it all sucks so much. I want to know why society has tried to address the problems associated with mental illnesses,

                                                                                                                and continually fails.

 

Throughout this project, I have collected my own experiences, as well as people who live with a mental illness and those who live in support of someone with a mental illness. My goal is to make an amalgamation of individual experiences that highlight the social contexts of mental illness. As inherently social beings, we will never live in a vacuum. Although mental illnesses are isolating, they are mostly defined in social terms: and there is a problem with that

 

 

because mental illnesses are fundamentally individual experiences.

 

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Nobody feels the exact same way as another, and oftentimes, feel confined by societal expectations of the disease they are diagnosed with.

 

The format of this project is to analyze both the advantages and disadvantages of four different types of solutions that society implements for mental illnesses (hint: none of them are working), and discuss why this is important and where to go from here. The goal of my research was to answer the question, can mental illness exist outside of the realm of society and how does society interact with the individuality of mental illness? 

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Lots of love, 

Lyndsay

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TW // some of the content on the following pages can be sensitive to individuals struggling with or supporting those with mental illnesses and evoke strong emotions. some topics include: depression, anxiety, addiction, schizophrenia, disordered eating, bipolar disorder, suicide. 

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