High-Functioning Mental Disorders Are Killing Our Society

Uncomfortable with depression

Mentally, sometimes it’s like we’re still living in the dark ages. It’s uncommon to talk about your feelings. Generally, you’re told not to feel your feelings.

We live around this narrative that feelings are for fools and one must be strong, no matter how they feel.

This is a damaging and harmful narrative, but it’s a part of our society. It lives with us, inside us, and it’s perpetuated in our beliefs and the way we live.

It’s the belief that “Boys don’t cry,” and “Girls are too emotional.”

“Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong… It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two opposing sets of ideals.” — Emma Watson

Internally, you’re taught to not feel. Feelings make you weak. Feelings make you spineless. You can’t be strong and have feelings.

You’re not supposed to feel, so you minimalize your internal states. You blow them off, thinking it doesn’t matter.

Now, you struggle with the fact that you don’t want to feel. You struggle to turn your emotions off, but you can’t. You want to get it out, talk about it, get it off your chest, but when you do, you’re judged.

Expressing your feelings might as well make you a leper.

All of this only propagates the problem.

You’re not supposed to feel, so you struggle with your feelings. You struggle with your feelings and want to let them out. You know that if you do so, it’s unlikely to be received well. You keep it in, letting the emotions fester, until one day you blow up.

You could avoid the blow-up all together if it weren’t taboo to talk about mental health.

Can’t recognize mental health

You know what it’s like to have depression. You know what it’s like to get up every day and go about your life.

It’s labeled ‘high-functioning’ as if the mere presence of a mental disorder means you can’t function. It’s talked about as if one version of mental distress is better than the other.

“At least you can get out of bed and go to work, right?” It doesn’t invalidate your depression that you can function like a human being.

Your body was made to withstand hurricanes, earthquakes, and typhoons. It can survive a few bad emotions. It seems like a big deal that you aren’t incapacitated by your mental illness.

As if the only way your mental illness is valid is if it incapacitates you.

Everyone is hurting in their own way. You can’t tell by looking at people, and that’s the point. You can’t tell based on someone’s appearance whether they’re depressed or not.

Depression doesn’t have a look. It comes in all shapes and sizes.