Trauma Doesn't Make You Stronger

 Many a time you hear people talk about the struggles of having a loved one who's mentally ill; how challenging it is for the family and friends to live with the constant stress and pressure of someone really important fighting their inner demons. There's a lot of support groups meant for family and friends of the mentally ill, where they can share their experiences and sympathize with each other. Offering such support to those who have a mentally ill loved one is an important part of preventative mental health care. It is, evidently, very common that mental illness spreads its poisonous tentacles around the entire family and friend group if it's not taken care of. Mentally ill parents have mentally ill children – especially when the illness goes untreated for too long.  So a part of me can't really fault the people who put an emphasis on the struggles that the close ones of the mentally ill face. It's all done in the name of preventative mental health care, which i...

 The year was 2017 when I started cutting myself. I was a second year student in higher secondary school, 17 years old. The autumn of that year was when I first noticed myself getting bad: the first symptoms of depression, soul-crushing anxiety, dissociation in math class – and the overwhelming urge to rip my skin apart.  The concept of self-harm was not new to me, for I had spent a great deal of time on the internet by that point. I knew there were a lot of people who did that to themselves, and that there were as many different reasons for that kind of behavior. Still, it never really clicked with me, until I was in that situation myself. I guess it's one of those things that you won't understand til it happens to you. In 2017, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. I got my first antidepressants, I am still on that pill five years later. I remember feeling confused: I knew there was something wrong with me, but I couldn't put a finger on it, and being on meds felt ...

 "Have you considered doing everyone a favor and killing yourself?" People say all kinds of weird shit online. Sometimes, the anonymity of a nickname is really tempting, and you feel like you can say basically anything to anybody. Usually, there tend to be two reasons for that: the first one is the feeling of being liberated from the consequences of your own actions, and the other one is the idea that the things you say online can't cause actual harm. You can always close the computer and log off. The things people say to you online will stay there: they don't have a lasting impact on your life, and they aren't following you around on the streets. The internet is relatively often considered an entity disconnected from reality. When I was a kid, we were always talking about our online lives and IRL lives. IRL as an abbreviation has probably been lost in MySpace times, but it served as the distinguisher of the life that wasn't real and the life that was. Those w...

 "So, you said that you've experienced childhood trauma, right? It doesn't seem like it comes from your home, though, because as far as I've understood it, you're relatively close with your parents. So what do you mean when you say 'childhood trauma'?" This summer, I spent a total of five weeks at the psych ward, and the previous quote is what my psychiatrist asked me the first time I met him after signing in. The nurses had told him that I was living with my parents and that my relationship with them was healthy and fulfilling, so obviously, he was a bit confused. How could I claim that I had childhood trauma when clearly my childhood home had been a safe environment for me to grow in, when I still kept in touch with my parents and chose to live with them in my current situation? What could that childhood trauma be then? ⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅ In conversations, childhood trauma is usually synonymous with familial trauma or sexu...