What do you wish everyone knew about your disability?

I wish people knew how difficult it is being bipolar. How hard it is to make simple and good decisions when you're bipolar. How impulsiveness rules and can ruin my life. How my mind spins late at night, keeping me awake until 5:00 am on a work day. Yes I'm creative and brilliant, but it certainly comes at a cost.

Something I wish people knew: We cant just snap out of it. And if we do, it takes time.

When someone suggests you snap out of it, they reveal their own lack understanding of mental illness, and at worse, they reveal themselves as unsupportive. Depression can last for long periods of time, even when a person wishes more than anything to wake up and be over it. But its a process, and one that looks different for everyone. Some people go to yoga and others meet new people or taking up birdhouse building.

The one method guaranteed to fail is telling us to snap out of it.

Something I wish people knew: Were not depressed because were lazy; were lazy because were depressed.

Physical ailments like fatigue can exacerbate our inability to get moving and active. It can be tempting to be frustrated with a depressed person who wont get out of bed and do something. Get a new job! Go to a yoga class! When you see someone not take action to better there situation, it can be hard to have patience. It can seem like wallowing or self-pity. This confuses even us. Sometimes we stay in bed all day, unable to move, and watch TV, until we start to question how we got so lazy. The important thing to remember is the underlying illness that makes it difficult to get out of bed in the first place.

How hard it is to live with my mental illnesses.

How hard it is to explain to people who don't have anxiety disorders what anxiety feels like. Trying to be open with someone about panic attacks and how I feel when I have them that I'm about to die in that moment sounds preposterous to most people. Yet it's what I feel every time I have a panic attack. It's a world many people are completely unaware of, and it's extremely painful and debilitating.

I wish people knew about me that I'm not as confident and put together as they think I am. I'm sensitive and empathic and sometimes the only way to protect myself from being overwhelmed is to use humor or confidently go about tasks as if nothing is happening. If I don't, I dissociate. I wish more people knew this because then their responses to me might more tender at times when I feel most vulnerable.

That's schizofrenia is not a split-personality-disorder.

That because I have an ED, I'm not more crazy than everybody else.

That I'm not lazy, if I cannot get out of my bed in the morning because of my depression.

That my decision making skills are really bad hecause of ADHD and Bipolar disorder.

My hair fell out after I got sick I don't need strangers coming up to me in the street asking about somthing so personal