01/27/2021
I would say this is a very disrespectful question, but one I do get from time to time.
As someone with a history with mental health challenges, I would say that this question is best asked on a case-to-case basis.
My baseline read on this is that it's rude to folks with mental health. It's too didactic. Mental health is an extremely complex issue.
For some people with mental health, they say that they are super sensitive to energy and the world around them. That the world is a hard place to live in, full of erratic energy, which is why they reflect erratic energy back at the world.
I can relate to this, although I personally did not experience it to be the only part of my mental health concerns.
I was q***r, gender non conforming, an artist, sensitive, neurodiverse, physically different in a myriad of ways, and then later, quite poor. When I was able to access proper supports, and be in environments where I was able to be out for who I was, my anxiety, depression, suicidal ideations, and tendencies were more manageable.
I will always have those mental health tendencies, and I keep myself in a good way with a very rigorous self help routine that seemed to work for me, better than medication ever did. But truthfully everyone is completely different, and using medication is not necessarily a bad thing, or less valid of an option. You just have to do what works for you.
Also this is a complex issue, and one that is highly stigmatized, and often bastardized into stereotypes and self help and self care memes. Which honestly, I laugh and cringe at along with everyone else some days.
No one will really know what the truth is until all of us share our stories, and that's a hard one, because it's not always safe to be mentally fragile.
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Image description: "Are ppl w mental illness seers that can't handle reality" is handwritten on 3 strips of paper on sharpie marker and placed on a tie dye background.
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