You Are Not Your Mental Illness

Mental health problems don’t define who you are – they are something you experience. You walk in the rain, but you are not the rain.

                                                        -Matt Haig

 

                  I saw this quote on a NAMI California social media post.  It really speaks to me as someone has lived most of my life with mental illness.  Depression and anxiety are a part of me, but they do not define me.  It took a long time for me to understand this.  When mental illness plays a dominate role in your life it is often difficult to separate who you are from the illness that you are diagnosed with.  I am no more depression and anxiety than I am the cancer that I am also diagnosed with. These are illnesses.  They impact how I live my life, but they do not determine who I am. 

                  Depression and anxiety make feeling good about myself difficult.  At times these illnesses affect the choices I make, but I am still making the choices.  I experience difficulties with my mood.  A cloud of darkness often hangs over me because of the depression.  My mood is often low, and I struggle to be a part of things. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want to engage with others.  Just like heart disease might prevent people from exerting themselves, depression at times prevents me from engaging with others.  It is a part of the illness.  I want to be a part of the life that goes on around me.  Depression, the illness, prevents me from doing so.  

                  In the same way that I am not cancer, I am not depression.  It is an illness I experience; an illness that impacts me. There are days when the depression is not as apparent.  There are days when I can act as if the depression is not lurking inside of me. Depression like the cancer cells is inside of me, but it doesn’t always make itself apparent to the outside world.  I have some control over what the people around me see.  By no means do I have total control. On the days when the depression is expressing itself more, I tend to hide myself within my home.  Still, I am not the depression.  It is impacting how I live, but not who I am.

                  Don’t get me wrong, depression and other mental illnesses impact us in ways we cannot always control.  Mental illnesses can drive us to isolate, to act out in pain, to be overcome with anxiety.  These illnesses ring loud in our brains.  At times they are debilitating. I think that is true of any illness.  Having cancer has taught me that there is a similarity present in illnesses.  I can have good moments and I can have bad moments with both illnesses.  At no time am I my illnesses.  

                  Haig refers to walking in the rain, but not being the rain.  I get it.  I walk with depression, but I am not depression. This is where person first language is important. I am a person with depression.  I am a person with anxiety. I walk with depression alongside of me. It affects me, causes me to struggle, but I am not depression. Possession does not equate to being. I have depression.  I am not depression. When we focus on ourselves as individuals, we push the illness to the background and move ourselves to the foreground.  We are not our mental illnesses just as we are not our physical illnesses.  

                  Another aspect of this quote that struck me is Haig’s choice of walking in the rain as an image.  We usually think of rain as being dark and gloomy. Certainly, mental illness can be dark and gloomy.  I have lived with this darkness.  I understand the comparison between rain and mental illness. At the same time there is beauty in rain.  Without rain, trees and flowers wouldn’t grow.  We would be thrust into drought.  I believe that despite the darkness, there is beauty in depression.  It has brought people into my life that have enhanced who I am. Writing about depression has given me purpose.  This blog was born of the darkness of depression, but it offers hope. There are people with depression and other mental illnesses who are achieving amazing things. Depression is a dark cloud, but even rain clouds clear at times.  

                  We are not our illnesses.  We are people living with illness. That requires strength.  We walk in the rain of mental illness, but rainbows emerge after the rain.  I hope to focus on the rainbow that is hiding behind my depression.