mental health is health

So this is a long one. It’s about my health and your health, or your friend’s health. If you’re healthy and don’t care, just skip this, you’ll be fine.

So I fi­nal­ly fig­ured out what I have. Af­ter a whole lot of wor­ry, af­ter lots of tests that ba­si­cal­ly all came back to­tal­ly nor­mal, and af­ter be­ing told count­less times that I just have anx­i­ety, and more re­cent­ly, chest wall pain, noth­ing to do but take these pills and “it usu­al­ly goes away on its own af­ter a few years.”

I found what it is and it’s most like­ly the cause for those and all the oth­er things I’ve been go­ing through. I just start­ed treat­ment, so we’ll see how that goes.

Why am I post­ing this? Be­cause I think I’m not the only one.

Friends who have talked to me a lot (or even a lit­tle) know I’ve been go­ing through lots of dif­fer­ent things over the last few years and ba­si­cal­ly fig­ured just like my doc­tors, that “it’s all in my head.”

I’ve been called hypochon­dri­ac, over­ly anx­ious, etc.
And I’ve been told I’m fine, noth­ing wrong, just ex­er­cise more, med­i­tate, bla bla bla just shut up al­ready with your problems.
I’m para­phras­ing of course but that’s ba­si­cal­ly what doc­tors say and think once they hear the word ‘anx­i­ety.’

First doc I saw for all this – af­ter things were get­ting crazy bad – was ob­sessed with samples:

Oh you have acid, here’s Nex­i­um sam­ples x6.
Oh you have anx­i­ety, here’s Brin­tel­lix sam­ple x8.

I came back to him with a list of things I thought matched up with my symp­toms off the in­ter­net. He ba­si­cal­ly said “that’s nice” and ig­nored it.

He and I did­n’t get along very well.

I’m not writ­ing this to say, “I told you so.”

This post is for any­one else who may be suffering
and is­n’t be­ing tak­en se­ri­ous­ly or is be­ing dis­missed by doctors,
be­ing told you’re
fine and healthy,
when some­times you feel like you’re dy­ing, if for no oth­er rea­son than you can’t fig­ure out what you re­al­ly have – you’re spi­ral­ing – and it’s mak­ing you cra­zier and sicker.

I’m here to say, don’t give up, and don’t stop look­ing for answers.
Don’t let oth­er peo­ple tell you that you’re fine when YOU know you’re not.
Be­ing calm and re­laxed might make you feel a bit bet­ter, but that does­n’t mean there is­n’t an ac­tu­al cause be­hind these things be­yond just your every­day stress (and be­yond even your every­day clin­i­cal anxiety).

And brain meds. That shit is a del­i­cate balance.
These meds of­ten fuck peo­ple up who DO have the con­di­tion they’re there to treat.
There’s no ex­act treat­ment for most of these things.
We just don’t un­der­stand the brain enough yet.
But i can see how those drugs would make it worse some­one with a nor­mal sup­ply of sero­tonin get­ting a sud­den ma­jor boost of it … though that’s just ask­ing for trouble.

If you know some­one who’s suf­fer­ing and they’re open­ing up to you, don’t dis­miss them, or be­lit­tle them, or call them a hypo.

Don’t judge or as­sume. Not all ill­ness­es can be seen.
                 Not every dis­abled per­son has a wheel chair.
                 You may not un­der­stand what they’re go­ing through but you can still be there for them. Even if it re­al­ly is only anx­i­ety, it’s nev­er “just” anxiety. 

Men­tal health is health. You would­n’t tell some­one with a bro­ken leg that they’re fine, would you?
 
 

—noam weiss

* With spe­cial thanks to Eriks for help­ing me find out what I ac­tu­al­ly have.

Flom­mist Noam Weiss made his way from Tel-Aviv to Cal­i­for­nia to be­come a game pro­gram­mer – FLOMM! v.1.33 show­cas­es his hand­i­work. His su­per­pow­ers in­clude ex­pert cod­ing, mak­ing lists, and breath­ing. Copy­right © 2016 Noam Weiss.

Pic­tured: Ac­tor Kris­ten Bell re­cent­ly chal­leng­ing the stig­ma of men­tal health.

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