Nothing annoys me more than hearing sentences like the following:
"Sorry, I just have to put this book back on the shelf. I'm so OCD!"
"Calm down, you're being so bipolar!"
"I had a hard time falling asleep last night - insomnia, am I right?"
"Yeah, I was just feeling so depressed last night."
The idea that some people wear mental illness on their shoulder like a cute new purse disturbs me. People do this all the time, even if they don't realize it. The next time you're talking about how you're feeling, be mindful of your word choice. The vocabulary you use may surprise you. The use of real, psychological problems as adjectives in our daily lives needs to stop, and here's why.
Every time a mentally healthy person uses the name of a disorder as a way to describe a normal emotion, the idea that mental illnesses are not real is reiterated into the minds of everybody around them. If you think about it, if everybody has these traits, the words lose their severity and all meaning attached to it.
My high school AP Psychology teacher used to say, "Feelings are normal. Anxiety is an emotion, just like sadness, happiness, anger, you name it. However, when the feeling becomes irrational, abnormal, and disruptive to everyday life, that's when you have a problem." So yes, maybe you were feeling sad after your favorite actor or musician passed away. Normal people would be too; grief is very real and sadness is an emotion that humans universally share. But when your sadness becomes so overwhelming that you feel as if you physically cannot get out of bed, or you stop taking care of yourself, or you start thinking about suicide, that's where you have an issue. That is depression. That's a mental illness, and not an adjective.
Biologically, mental disorders are very similar since they all involve a mishap somewhere in the brain. Disorders tend to manifest themselves in many different ways however, making it difficult if not impossible for people to understand all of them. There is also a stigma that comes with mental illnesses, making sufferers not want to seek help or tell people about what they've been feeling. On top of that, the desensitization of the names of the disorders themselves make the problems seem universal and normal, but they are not. Sufferers then feel like what they're going through is okay and that they may not need help after all. Whether this is an eating, personality, mood, anxiety, or any other kind of disorder, it's the same across the board.
Some experts have said it better than I have, so I'm going to leave links below.
Sufferers, survivors, warriors--you are not alone. There is great strength in those who are open about their mental illness, and great admiration for those who carry on or try to improve their lives, with or without medication.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fighting-fear...
