Last week I wrote about how fighting bipolar disorder is like fighting an invisible enemy. And I suggested that creating an internal visual of an "enemy" was a helpful way of differentiating the sick person from the illness itself. I think stigma is similar. We can let stigma, or thoughts thereof, get into our heads. We can start to believe the ignorant judgements of others and we can let stigma bring us down. But we don't have to. We can fight. And while stigma is often something one feels, sometimes it is something one can see too. Like in print. Like in The Daily Athenaeum piece on depression that I wrote about on Monday. It was chock-a-block with ideas of stigma. But I chose not to believe it and instead I chose to fight.

I'm not a person who takes on a cause de jour - I simply have too much self-preservation for that. I have enough going on without worrying about the plights of the world. However, when someone tries to spread mistruths and tries to silence my voice, then I start to get peeved. Case in point. Recently, the West Virginia University's school paper, The Daily Athenaeum, printed an article about lifestyle factors and depression. And while I have no problem with that subject, the things they said therein were wrong and inexcusable. And when they tried to silence my criticism of that article, I got peeved. I will not allow the voice of mental illness to be ignored simply because someone doesn't like what we have to say.

I've been having a really hard time. Immobilized with depression. Frozen in time and agony. The pain of blinking keeping me weeping sporadically throughout the day. And so today I am angry. Oh sure, I'm depressed too, but I'm also largely angry. I'm hateful. I hate everything from people to stoplights to walking to moving my eyeballs. I'm just angry that I'm alive. But I have chosen this anger. I have chosen the anger over the depression because it is more useful. It's better to hate everything because hate comes with energy, depression does not.

"Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." ~The Princess Bride Life is pain. Or, at least, it can be. I've found that during severe episodes every breath, is, in fact, pain. There is nothing else. Just pain or unconsciousness. I prefer unconsciousness.

I have spent many months of my life with an inability to feel pleasure - this is known as anhedonia. This means that no matter what happened, no matter how great it was, I couldn't feel happy about it. I couldn't feel happy at all. However, there is something I have learned about anhedonia, even without an ability to be happy, I can be thankful.

There is a popular misconception that depression is the same thing as sadness. I understand why you might think this if you don't have experience with depression. Depression is sad; it's true. But depression is a lot of other things as well. It's a whole new echelon of sadness. It's sadness 2.0. This morning is a good example - I woke up depressed and the experience is nothing like sadness.

Recently, a man I have come to respect and care about attempted suicide. I am grateful he is still here to tell the tale. His suicide note was online and his pain was so evident it tore at my soul. I was tremendously relieved to hear his friends had rescued him in time to save him. But I was then left with the problem as to what to say to this man. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was make the situation any more difficult for him. What do you do when someone you care about just attempted suicide?

The journey of a thousand miles doesn't begin with a spin class, but everyone knows they should exercise. People should be doing it right now. Me too. We should slowly and calmly step away from the Internet. And most of us even know exercise acts as an antidepressant. Which means if we actually got up and walked around once in a while, we might feel better. But we don't do it. Not the average North American and especially not the average mentally ill North American. How does a person with a mental illness fight that?

People with mental illness have various levels of functioning. Sometimes a good day is when you talk in your group therapy session at the psych ward. Sometimes a good day is getting out of bed. Sometimes a good day is going to the doctor. And sometimes a good day is giving successful presentation to a bunch of executives. It varies from person to person. And while anyone can tell you to “take your meds,” that doesn’t really tell you how to get from non-functional to functional. It’s true no one has the exact answer, 33 high-functioning people with bipolar disorder identified six things that keep them moving forward.

If you’re in treatment for depression and have ever mentioned a desire to die, you’ve probably heard these questions: How would you commit suicide? Have you make a plan to commit suicide? And others. So a commenter recently mentioned that this is just a way of “covering their backs,” and “. . . if I were serious about killing myself and had made a plan, why on earth would I tell them?” This is a logical question, but an uninformed one. In studies, we know that people who attempt suicide do reach out for help and do not really want to die.