Yesterday, I Spoke Openly About My Illness. Today, I Feel Great.
The cat’s out of the bag, and it’s not going back in.
I have been open about my mental illness for a while now. I never kept it from my friends in the first place, and the past two years have been an experiment in opening up about it at work. It’s been going well so far.
One of the things that I have learned in talking about it is that my story has value. I had always assumed that I was just a schlub with a dumb history that nobody cared about. The opposite has proven to be true.
This revelation has led me to do a lot of things I wouldn’t have considered a few years ago. I started a project answering questions about my illness. I started writing about it here on Medium. And, most recently, I started speaking about it in public settings.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has a program in my area called In Our Own Voice. In it, two presenters stand up in front of an audience and tell their story of life with a mental illness. It is intended to show that people with mental illness can live full, productive lives and function in everyday society.
I got connected with the program through a colleague who knew of it. I had to travel to a city an hour and a half away for a day-long training. I wasn’t sure what to expect.
The training was fantastic. I met a lot of people with a wide range of experiences and learned a lot. At the end of the day, I returned home ready to hit the road and speak my truth.
After some back-and-forth with my contact at NAMI, I scheduled my first speaking engagement. The date was a few weeks in the future, so I had plenty of time to prepare and review my notes. As the weeks passed, my excitement and anticipation grew.
The Friday before my presentation, everything sunk in. I’m an introvert, and my job requires minimal engagement with people, so I spend most of my day behind a computer. Speaking in public isn’t something that I’m good at.
I had taken a public speaking course earlier in the month to help feel better about it, and I did okay, but the nerves still overcame me. How would they receive me? Would I choke up? Would I look like a fool?
Yesterday was the big day. I had an appointment with my Nurse Practitioner in the afternoon and the presentation in the evening with a stopover at home for dinner in between. The drive home for dinner was spent rocking out to up-tempo music to get my spirits up.
Because the presentation was shifted up half an hour, I only had an hour to eat and prepare before I had to leave for the presentation. Dinner was an oven pizza — simple and tasty. We ate on the couch and watched a goofy YouTube video with dinner. It was a pleasant distraction.
The time came to leave, and I hugged and kissed my wife goodbye. I drove for 30 minutes through rush hour traffic to get to the presentation site at a hospital. I kept up the musical encouragement, but the hesitancy was greater this time. Dealing with traffic and red lights didn’t help.
I arrived at the site with a few minutes to spare, and fast-walked to the classroom. Thankfully, I found it with little issue and strolled in right on time. The nerves had taken over at this point, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would they be upset that I wasn’t early?
The answer, it turned out, was no. Everyone was still settling in, and there was a spread of food available. I greeted the facilitators, both of whom were very nice, and settled in to wait for my partner to arrive. After about ten minutes with no partner, they decided to start the night’s activities.
My presentation was only part of a two-and-a-half-hour class for family members of people with mental illness. The facilitators agreed to power on until my partner got here, at which point we would do our piece. I sat nervously listening to the class.
About 20 minutes in, my partner arrived. She had not gotten the memo of the changed start time. The facilitators were easygoing enough to not mind, and they reached a stopping point and yielded the floor to us. As it was my first time, my partner opted to go first.
She was a bit older than me, and she spoke clearly and confidently like it was the easiest thing in the world for her. She gave a well-rehearsed opener, telling the story of her diagnosis with bipolar, before yielding the floor to me.
My opener, by comparison, was stilted and awkward. I stumbled through with a lot of ums and ahs before getting to the end of my relatively shortened story. I felt awful.
Then, a glorious thing happened. One of the class participants asked me what my last name was. I realized that I had worked with him at a grocery store job that I’d held for a while. Acknowledging this to him, we exchanged greetings from across the table to the delight of the class.
For whatever reason, this put me a little more at ease. My partner moved on to the second part of her story, taking questions along the way, and my pieces began flowing more smoothly. Everyone in the room was very receptive to our stories, and I began to feel better.
At the end of the presentation, we both received a lot of compliments on our presentations. Both the facilitators and my partner told me I did a good job. I wasn’t so sure, but I thanked them anyway.
My partner and I walked out together, and she complimented me again on the way out. Again, I deflected the compliment, but she insisted I did a good job and I eventually relented. We hugged briefly and I went to my car to go home.
As I walked to my car, and on the drive home, I began feeling good. I was a bit drained — talking about past traumas can be a challenge — but I felt pretty good about how the evening had gone. I arrived home to a smiling wife and a batch of fresh cookies.
We spent the rest of the evening on the couch. I needed to decompress, so I was mostly absorbed in my phone. Periodically, I’d talk a little about it and reassure her that I was feeling okay. Aside from the withdrawal, I wasn’t exhibiting any outward signs of depression, so I think she was a bit relieved.
As we prepared for sleep, I was feeling good. It hadn’t gone poorly — quite the opposite. It was just what I needed for my first presentation. I drifted off looking forward to doing more presentations, thinking of telling my story and helping more people. Life was good.
We as humans often need to feel like we have value. Most of us don’t want to feel like a redundant cog in a machine, a thing with no practical use. We want to feel wanted and needed.
I’ve never felt useless — I do an important job for the people who receive services at my agency, and everyone reminds me of how important my work is. But I never really felt like my story had value. To me, my illness was an affliction, a burden on my life and soul.
Having the courage to talk about it with more people — first my friends, then my boss, then my coworkers — has made me think differently. I have come to understand that my story has value for people. Not everyone can relate, but a surprising number of people can.
Along the way, I have been told how much people appreciate me talking about my life. They say I’m brave, that I’m helping reduce stigma and helping people talk more openly about mental illness. That may or may not be true, but I’m happy to do it for myself if for no other reason.
Telling my story and answering questions last night was cathartic. For a long time, I was told to keep it to myself. Nobody needed to hear that. I could get in trouble. I could lose my job. It could ruin my life.
Eventually, I got over my fear and began talking about it. I tested the waters with people I’d known for a while, people I trusted. When I got a good reception from them, I moved on to others I knew less well. Eventually, I started telling my story to strangers.
All along the way, I’ve received a good reception. The people I tell have been happy to hear my story, and I’ve felt better telling people. I’ve gone from feeling like my illness was a burden on my soul to feeling like it is a driving force in my life.
It drives me to prove wrong all the people who said I couldn’t. It drives me to destroy the stigma around mental illness by saying “look what I can do.” It drives me to speak on behalf of people who can’t.
Telling my story started as something to help me. It was a release of all the pent-up crap in my head about feeling lesser. A rebuke of the “keep it to yourself” school of thought.
It has grown into something much bigger. I have told my story and have been an inspiration. I have joined a committee to advocate on behalf of others like me. I have seen the power I hold, and I intend to use it for good.
To those of you who have that power, use it. Not everyone is as lucky as I am, and I recognize that. I am in a position where I can speak out and be heard, Unfortunately, due to stigma, many do not have that luxury. So now, I am weaponizing my catharsis to fight for them.
I used to think my illness was a weakness. It has turned out to be more powerful than I could have imagined. I intend to use that power for good.
As the line from Spider-Man goes: with great power comes great responsibility. If you’ve got that kind of power, I encourage you to do the same. Fight for those who can’t. Defend the defenseless. Do good wherever you go. You never know who you might help.