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Wow I’m upset

cw/tw: mental illness stigma, slurs, swears

So I was just in the middle of writing something about my depression and instead of using the term “mentally ill”, which I do not feel is an appropriate term for me specifically and my experience, I wanted to do a quick search to see if there were any other phrases/words out there that I felt resonated better with me.

And like the first thing I clicked on was a thesaurus site and I just. I can’t believe my eyes.

The words listed were so incredibly insensitive, ill-informed, gross...

Words like “d*ranged”, “d*mented”, “d*maged”, “ps*cho”, “cr*zed”...

And then I instantly couldn’t help but think about how terrible a contribution to the discussion of mental health that things like this function as...

And right now I feel very triggered and just like started crying and I feel so disgustingly shitty about it. 

I was so surprised by my own emotional reaction to it too, because normally I’m not so easily effected but I just don’t know how to process this information, that that’s the kind of language associated with me/people like me, and how horrifying that is. I just thought about how there’s so much stigma around mental health issues and how things like this are exactly why I don’t talk about my own experiences or feelings basically ever except with three specific people. 

I’m also feeling angry that a) this is the sort of stuff that gets spread around and people who don’t know any better would just read that and think it’s true, and b) this misinformation which is already toxic towards me has now also made me feel so terrible and insecure about myself that it’s not only affected the larger system at work but now also specifically my life and my night and

I just want to disappear right now.