Mental health from both sides
It’s come round again, and so have all those feelings which made me feel so ashamed last year. Ashamed, but also slightly uneasy (a bad combination); and it may just be that the cape acquired at grumpyoldwomen.com is fitting me rather better. But crazy socks for docs has this effect on me, and I’m not…
This is pure self-indulgence – I know there are many tall people who would like to be shorter, fat who would like to be thinner, old who would like to be younger, and perhaps the vice versas. And what about those who are shunned for race, sexuality, illness? That is far more grave. But we…
I’m never too sure what I think about stigma. If you asked me now, my immediate response would be that it has had no adverse effect on my life, and of course that has to be rubbish. Things affect us insidiously, such that we discount them, or don’t even notice them. Sometimes it’s only when…
What am I most ashamed of? Not of my diagnosis of bipolar disorder, that’s actually reasonably respectable - which is probably why I don’t find it easy to believe. But shame wraps a tight cloak around us all, one that feeds itself and whispers that no-one must know. What is it that fosters shame? Is…