Illness is inevitable. The human body does not always work as it should, and sometimes we need to use medication and physical therapy to get it back on track. Obviously, that is nothing to be ashamed of. However, when it comes to mental illness, many people do not see it that way. Instead, they consider it a problem with who they are as a person. People who suffer from anxiety tend to blame themselves. If only
they were stronger. The same is true of depression.
They should be able to snap out of it. With more complex mental illnesses and personality disorders, the self-judgment only gets deeper.
There are two main reasons for this. The first is that most societies do not really understand mental illness. They tend to see it as a weakness of will, rather than an actual disease. To those who haven’t experienced mental illness, “snap out of it” might seem like good advice. The second reason is that self-judgment is a symptom of most mental illnesses. When one is feeling anxious, hopeless, despairing, it is hard to see oneself from an objective perspective. We see ourselves as weak because the illness affects our thought patterns and feelings.
