I am very afraid of receiving the stigma in my life that my illness will not be a good 'excuse' for all my struggles and short comings that I feel it is causing.

Even we fuel we preach this mentality by preaching to our affected peers with "Mental Illness is no excuse!" and "we are responsible for ourselves" and "take charge!" among so many other adages about coping and succeeding with our disorders. Unfortunately, I believe it is altogether too easy to be clouded by the poor judgement of a disease that eats away at our perception of ourselves and our world -- and we may suffer personal disasters that leave us crumbled and with "no excuse" because we were "responsible" and we simply failed to "take charge."

The reason that this is on my mind is because I am currently in a situation where I have already lost grants for my college education and am likely soon to lose my scholarships. I think anyone that knew me in high school would envision me as soaring academically and not descending the way I have. In fact, my first two years of college have been DEBT FREE! But since I started 'going nutty' about halfway through my freshmen year, I believe the biggest hit to my performance has been the anxiety attacks that keep me from sitting through class and often from even approaching the doorway. I feel like a damned basket case of a "promising" student who can't keep herself together anymore. It's amazing to think that a mere year and half wreck my life.

My adoptive mother understands mental illnesses (she studies them!) but at the same time doesn't sympathize with my behavior. My parents have always placed pressure on succeeding, and have for the most part excluded my brothers from the 'family' for having dropped out of college. They even told me they were disappointed when I told them I was thinking about transferring to a technical school for an associates. Perhaps the only good thing about dropping out of college for myself would be seeing whether or not my parents will support me afterwards.

I feel like I really need a solution right now that possibly involves pulling out of classes for awhile before resuming. But who do I talk to about this? My parents will shake their head, and who else would perceive "I'm sorry, I have class anxiety" as nothing other than a dumb cop-out?

I am afraid of dropping out, failing to get a job, and being left poor, lonely, probably not able to afford meds that help me, and my only explanation is "I was too sad."

Who would listen to that BS?

I think if you can get past your illness and succeed, no one is going to look down on you -- you're a 'healthy', responsible person who has their life together. I think the stigma falls onto people who struggle to the point they stumble into a pathetic life they didn't deserve because they may have succeeded far more with a lot more help.