“You are not your illness. You have an individual story to tell. You have a name, a history, a personality. Staying yourself is part of the battle.” — Julian Seifter

To the person with a mental illness,

First of all, no matter what mental illness you may have, you are not crazy. You are not stupid for the way that you feel. You are not abnormal just because nobody understands how you’re feeling. You are not ‘weak.' You are more than your mental illness. Your mental illness does not define you, so don’t let yourself believe that it does. You’re amazing, unique and you’re someone that nobody else can be. You were put on this planet for a reason, and though it may not be fair that you are stuck with this mental illness, it doesn’t mean you can’t make the best of it.

People will call you crazy, and they will tell you to “just stop thinking like that." People will tell you to “just distract yourself," or “you can control your thoughts so stop." Or the best one, “well maybe if you just thought more positively." These are probably all things that you’ve been told, and if you have, I’m truly sorry that someone ever made you feel like the things that you are feeling are "crazy," or "all in your head" or things that you should be ashamed of. Those people that find it so easy to tell someone with a mental illness to ‘just stop thinking that way,' that ‘you sound crazy,' that ‘you’re in control of how you feel’ or to even try and say that it’s not a disease/disorder because it’s not visible... those people are unfortunately uninformed and uneducated on the topic. These suggestions may be effective and beneficial for a person who doesn’t have a mental illness, someone whose brain works properly as it should be, but for the people who do have a mental illness, these things are extremely distressing and rude to say. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.

Mental illnesses are the result of poor neurotransmitter activity. Our brains have neurotransmitters which are the “messages” that travel from one cell to another cell in the brain. When this chemical messenger is interrupted, it throws all the messages that are supposed to be being sent to the brain completely off. Remember that the next time you feel like your mental illness is something that you should be able to control. It isn’t. When someone tells you that you should just ‘stop thinking about it’ or that you can ‘control your thoughts,’ remember this and feel free to tell them too.

There are probably times where you feel so overwhelmed with your own thoughts that you just want to break down and cry, and maybe sometimes you do. When you try to understand why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling, but can’t even comprehend your own thoughts in order to make sense of it. When you try to explain to someone how you’re feeling, but you can’t even organize the thoughts in your own mind enough to construct a reasonable explanation in words. When you try to distract yourself from the thoughts, and no matter how hard you try, they keep consuming your mind. When you just want to sleep or stay in bed because you don’t even want to deal with the thoughts that you know you’re going to be thinking throughout the day. When you can just feel people judging you based on what you’re feeling. When people call you ‘crazy’ for how you’re feeling or tell you that you ‘sound crazy’ when you try to explain the thoughts in your head and how they make you feel.

I hope you never let yourself even be associated with these kinds of people. I hope you know that you deserve people in your life that will at least try their best to understand what you’re going through. People that may not understand, but will still be there for you and allow you to sound confusing or lost and not judge you one bit. People that will try everything they can to help you and be there for you. Never let a person degrade you because of your mental illness.

I know all you want is to be happy. I know that whatever mental illness you may have, you want to wake up and find yourself beautiful or feel happy with life, a genuine happiness that you can feel from within. You want to stop feeling vulnerable and helpless. You want to wake up and look forward to the day. You want to be able to find happiness in simple things. These are all habitual desires. And one of the first steps to attaining these goals is admitting to yourself that your illness cannot control you. Don’t let it.

The main person that needs to realize all of this, though, is you. You also partake in the degradation of your illness. That’s not okay. It’s not healthy, and it’s something you need to learn to stop doing. You’re already feeling hopeless, misunderstood, crazy, lonely and ashamed, why would you continue to let yourself feel like that? Why would you encourage yourself to feel that way? You need to realize that your mental illness does not define who you are. You are not less than anyone because of it. Don’t listen to the people who tell you that mental illnesses aren’t a real thing. Trust me, I know they are, you know they are and a lot of other people know that they are. Don’t feel selfish for your thoughts. Don’t feel selfish because you think that you’re feeling this way while there are others going through “worse” situations, because every battle is a battle. One is not more important or less important than the other. Stop thinking that being ‘different’ is a bad thing. You will get through it, and you will learn to deal with it. Also remember that you’re not alone, trust me.