Throughout my life, I have suffered from a mental illness. I have met so many people who do not understand why I do certain things and how this mental illness affects me. I can't be mad at them because they generally do not understand and have never felt anything like this in their life.

I want to take this time to help them visualize what living with a mental illness is like. Here are some quotes that might help someone understand how a certain mental illness could make a person feel.

Anxiety:

"It's like the walls are caving in" -Shawn Mendes: imagine sitting alone in a room and just feeling the walls cave in around you and not having a way of getting out.

"I'm crawling in my skin"- Shawn Mendes: imagine thousands of tiny bugs crawling underneath your skin.

“When I say can’t take on even one more thing, I really need you to understand I really just can’t.”

“Anxiety makes you sit there and overthink every single thing. At times it makes you think people in your life are leaving you. You begin to feel abandoned, and not worth anything because the most important people in your life don’t want you.”

“Anxiety is the most silently painful experience. It makes no sense and you sit alone and suffer for an unknown reason. You can’t explain it. You can’t stop it, It is horrible.”

“Depression is being colorblind and constantly told how colorful the world is.”

“What people never understand is that depression isn’t on the outside; it’s on the inside.”

“When you’re depressed you don’t control your thoughts, your thoughts control you. I wish people would understand this.”

“I am not using my depression as an excuse. Trust me, I’d give anything to function “normally” on a day to day basis.”

“The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4 am knows all my secrets.”

“I've always envied people who sleep easily. Their brains must be cleaner, the floorboards of the skull well swept, all the little monsters closed up in a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed.”

"Insomnia is a vertiginous lucidity that can convert paradise itself into a place of torture."

I wish people could really understand that no one with a mental illness wants it, I know personally that I would never even wish this on my worst enemy. It's frustrating for people to tell me to just smile or breathe but it's not even close to that, it's so much more and it pains me that people can't understand that.

I asked someone I know dearly to give me some input on how they view my mental illnesses. Here's what they said...

" I always found it so hard to comprehend how you could be depressed and self-harm because I see you as an amazing perfect beautiful woman who has everything going for her. It was not until we met with your therapist that I had a better understanding of the condition. He asked you if you’ve hurt yourself and thought of suicide, you said yes and after I pulled myself together he asked me what I thought about that and I said I don’t understand it.

You have everything going for you, you started to cry and he asked you how did that made you feel. You said you felt like I don’t believe you. He then told me even though it makes no sense to me it is real for you and even if I don’t understand. It’s real to you and I can not disregard that fact. From that point on I got it! I didn’t understand but it was your perception and I needed to respect it."

I wish people could really understand that no one with a mental illness wants it, I know personally that I would never even wish this on my worst enemy. It's frustrating for people to tell me to just smile or breathe but it's not even close to that, it's so much more and it pains me that people can't understand that.