And the irony is, I'm a final year psychology student.
I have so, so much empathy for many individuals who truly suffer with mental illness. I understand how crippling it can be, what suffering the broad spectrum of such illnesses can cause. I can honestly say that, hand on heart.
But for some types of people.... I just lose patience. And considering I want to work with mental illness, I don't think that bodes very well
Especially because the type of person I'm referring to is I suspect very common.
Basically, I feel like some people really cling on to their illness, and it encompasses their entire lives because they let it, I feel they almost enjoy it.
It becomes a part of their identity, something they use to constantly harbour attention and pity for.
I feel like this more applies to the sub-clinical individuals, who are suffering from anxiety/ depression on a sub-clinical level. I'm not saying everyone is like this, but I think quite a lot are.
For example, I have this one friend who suffers with anxiety. Although she doesn't experience the physical symptoms of anxiety, no increased heart rate, anxiety attacks, it's more like extreme worry about her health.
Over the past week, she's suffered with bad period pains. And the fuss that has been made. I get daily texts of her suffering, her panicking. Wanting to go the doctors but then being too afraid to. Going to the doctors and then being disappointed to find out that it's only just period pain.
I feel as if she almost wants it be something more, she sounded so disappointed in her text that it was just her period.
This girl hasn't got much going on in her life, and I really feel like she perhaps subconsciously uses this to get some attention, to have something happening in her life. Because sometimes having a bad experience is better than no experience at all, especially when you get lots of nice attention from it. Which just seems to reinforce it.
It just frustrates me, how people like her have this defeatist "why is it always me
" attitude. When guess what, it's not just you, all of us go through ****. But the difference is, we don't tell everyone about it, we don't offload all of our problems onto everyone, because we know that we aren't the only ones going through bad times.
I've been through a lot myself over the past years, my own mum suffered with anxiety and depression (which she tried her hardest to keep to underwraps), my dad's an alcoholic. And I never offload all of my problems, constantly onto friends.
I'm just a bit fed up of people like this. I have another friend who is the same. And they never seek help, they would just prefer to constantly bring others down with them. I feel like it results from such an inward focus, an almost self obsession, where they are constantly thinking about themselves. If they spend they day doing stuff for others, and thinking of others, I'm sure they'd feel better. But instead they chose to wallow in their own misery.
/rant I suppose.