3 ms·
It really depends! Some forms of mental illness come with an inability to understand the illness as one of the diagnostic criteria -- this is part of why so man
by wayoutthere 6y ago
It really depends! Some forms of mental illness come with an inability to understand the illness as one of the diagnostic criteria -- this is part of why so many people are internally resistant to diagnosis.
I was diagnosed as bipolar 2 a few years ago, and I just assumed the mood swings I dealt with were normal. Doesn't everyone occasionally get too enthusiastic during a meeting? Or call in sick because they can't get out of bed? Turns out no, everyone has mood swings from time to time but mine were more predictable and severe enough they were preventing me from doing the things I wanted to. Hence the diagnosis and medication.
This is why mental health professionals are important. It can go both ways -- sometimes folks are just neurotic and overanalyzing themselves, and sometimes they're oblivious to the mental illness they do have. Medication and life changes help, but the first step is to see a professional who can help you sort through whether your mood issues rise to the level of clinical or not.
- renewiltord 6y agoYeah, that makes sense. It's hard to use the instrument of judgment itself to judge itself. I'm more wondering about a healthy individual.
- wayoutthere 6y agoI think it goes both ways though. We have no real frame of reference for “normal” — most of us only know maybe 20 people well enough to see the inner workings of their mind, and we’re probably related to at least half of them so anything congenital would feel “normal”. It seems pretty common that children of people with undiagnosed mental illness end up feeling weird or crazy until they break free and start to discover the world on their own (see also /r/raisedbynarcissists). Trauma is a huge factor in mental illness as well, so much so that the definition of a “healthy individual” can only be really anchored to a specific point in time. Some things that rise to the level of clinical (anxiety, depression, BPD, PTSD, DPD) are largely seen as the result of trauma and/or some hereditary predisposition.
- Talanes 6y agoPlus people tend to be drawn to like-minded people. I know that personally the people that I am closest with are those who I've bonded with over dealing with similar types of anxiety and/or depression. It's just... harder to connect that way with a dissimilar mind.