This is a weird one, out of left field, but it is the best analogy I can think of:

I think I need to come to the understanding about myself that the Cylons ultimately came to about Humans in the tv series Battlestar Galactica (not the absolutely dreadful 1970's one, the 2000's remake). The Cylons destroyed almost all of Humanity because they viewed humans as flawed, imperfect, and they viewed it almost as a kindness, an act of mercy, putting them out of their misery. Their religious/philosophical belief was that they sought "perfection" in everything. It was very much the pressure I was raised under - had to be perfect, even in isolation of the prison camp of my home. The penalty for imperfection was severe. You never knew when you would do something to merit the death penalty - in other words, I lived my life, especially my teen years, feeling there was a very real possibility he would snap and kill my mom and me. To add to that fear, one of my school friends in 6th grade lived less than a mile away, and one November night, for whatever reason, her mother lost it, shot her father fatally, then killed herself. So I knew it could happen in real life.

So, a bipolar diagnosis instantly threw me I to the darkest pit I have ever known. It made me feel like I was irredeemably flawed. Two things the quack said to me profoundly scared me - it can be "managed" but there are cycles, etc, and that it can be progressive and degenerative. So, I felt like I was completely hopeless, helpless, and beyond redemption because of the first, and that I was going to come to a really bad end after a few miserable years because of the second.

I used to fantasize (I guess that is the right word) about being executed like a Chinese prisoner, taken out and dispatched. I felt it was all I deserved.

I felt that I had transgressed, broken the family code of perfection, of keeping up appearances no matter what, of living in silent suffering (because there was no way I could keep this under wraps forever was my thinking). And I also broke the greater social contract - as I thought society had laid it out -crazy isn't acceptable, people who are crazy are marginalized to the fringes of society, shunned and abandoned, looked down upon, scorned and shamed - and they deserve it because they are weak. Calling it a disease is a cop-out, it is moral weakness, it is a sin, and they're to be punished in the here and now, like they will be punished in the afterlife. They aren't sick, they are malingerers, social parasites looking for a handout, wanting to suckle off the government teat and suck dry the hard working, virtuous good folk.

That was my thinking, I myself was both bigoted and stupid. I self-stigmatized far more than anyone IRL who knew stigmatized me. IRL, the few I did tell some aspect of the story to, some certain parts, were all kind and accepting.

I'm stopping here at the half-way point, I have got to get around for work, running almost an hour late already. I need to finish this later, it's T time today, I need to "go there" and face this stuff- stare it down, take it on, let it pummel me, but get up off the mat no matter how bloody and finally give it a knockout with the fiercest hook, uppercut, straight right combo I have ever thrown.