Yes, it would be so nice if people could get this through their heads so they could stop telling me to just think positively and go do something fun. That's like telling someone with a broken leg that they would be fine if they would just make an effort to walk normally. I've been pushing through despite everything for years now, and yet the illness doesn't magically go away. This is why I rarely tell anyone what I'm going through.

I'm also starting to really resent the overhyping of meditation and mindfulness in relation to mental health. It's nice that there's a push for more understanding of mental illness these days, but I feel like that movement has been hijacked by people who never had severe mental illness. They just went through one rough patch at some point and now they go around telling everyone that meditation is the magic cure for all mental illness. It's actually harmful for the general public's understanding of real mental illness as opposed to temporary dissatisfaction with life.

I hate it because it totally trivializes what all of us with more severe conditions like bipolar and schizophrenia are going through. Now whenever someone finds out I'm bipolar it's almost impossible to convince them that it's a lifelong condition and I'm not taking these meds just because I haven't heard about meditation yet. I sometimes find myself having to defend the fact that I take meds because some people appear to think it's just an easy solution for people who don't want to put in the effort to really "work on themselves," like taking vitaming supplements because you don't want to put in the effort of making healthy meals. I'm not choosing to live in this hell because I'm "afraid of change" or "too lazy to try something new." To me, insisting that meditation would "cure" me is just another way of saying you don't think bipolar is a real illness, that it's "all in my head," and that I have only myself to blame for it because I don't try hard enough.