The ability for people suffering from mental illness and psychological damage to be able to reveal their personal truth through blogging has been a great outlet for many people.
People who once had no one they felt they could speak honestly to, found this gift of the blogging world. They found that they were not alone in their suffering and even in their feelings of being alone in their suffering.
I believe that blogging about mental illness and trauma has been the one thing that has been a lifeline for many people.
When I hear about people getting comments about their posts being too dark and that they should only write about certain aspects of their particular mental illness, it upsets me.
Everyone is an individual. Each person experiences their mental suffering in a unique way. Two people with the same diagnosis are not necessarily going to experience it the same way or have the same perception of those experiences.
Just because one person does not experience ( or has not yet experienced) being is very dark places, does not mean that someone else hasn’t. We are not in the job of making mental illness look pretty.
There is enough stigma about mental illness from the world. It is a shame for people with mental illness to perpetuate stigma within the blogging community.
People should be able to have their tiny little space in the blogging world to be able to speak their personal truth and express their feelings, whatever they may be.
No one should be telling anyone how they “should” feel about their mental illness or tell them to make their writing more palatable for others to read.
Everyone is free to read or not read whatever blogs they want to. If someone’s blog is not for them, then they should move the hell on to another petson’s blog.
There is no reason to tell someone to water down their writing. There is no good reason to tell someone to make a particual mental illness come off to readers in a certain light.
We are all individuals. Let us celebrate our differences and our right to express those differences.
I have recently read a post by someone who is considering quitting blogging about her mental illness because some readers told her that she does not show bipolar disorder in the way they feel it should be.
What is the “should be” all about, when we are writing about our individual experiences with our individual brains?
If there is any “should be” then it is this….People should be able to talk and reach out to others for validation and understanding without feeling like they are not following some random person’s rules.
Why should we start holding back our darker experiences just to satisfy some agenda. That is what I would call stigma…someone telling another person with the same diagnosis not to reveal the darker sides of it.
We get enough of having to hide things and faking it when we are in our day to day lives. What business is it of some bloggers to direct another blogger about how they want them to portray any particular mental illness. If they are writing about their experiences then those are their experiences.
It is almost like high school when people tell someone to dress a certain way if they want to be one of the cool kids.
I said it once and I will say it again….If someone’s blog about their mental illness is too dark for some people then those people should go read a different blog.
They should not try to dictate to someone what to write about or how to write it.
Blessings for peace of mind,
Annie<3
GentleKindness 