"Quiet" or "masked" mental illness?

Does anyone else suffer from one of these? Do your friends, family, and even pdoc and T consistently underestimate the depth of your pain and the severity of your illness? Do you hide it so well that you've forgotten how to take the mask off? Do you feel uncomfortable telling your mental health team about the scarier elements of your illness (suicidality, psychosis, etc), because you are afraid they won't believe you because you look so healthy?

I'm so mad right now at everyone who didn't care enough to see through my damn mask.

I really wish that more research (or any research) would be done on this topic.

i get what your saying. i am really good at carpartmentalizing. i function because i have to. nobody else is going to pay my bills. my ability to dissociate is one of my strenghts so i dissociate from my pain so i can function. so i look really good on the outside. look really strong and together. i go to T with real concerns and he brushes them off. when i talk about how much i want to die he says i have existential issues. is the desire to die no longer taken serious because i am no longer actively suicidal? there is no reason to address it? it really bothers me that my pain is minimized because i cope so well. but just becuase i learned coping skills to deal with my emotions/reactions, and balanced out those brain chemicals, the deep desire to die did not go away. life is well, nothing to complain about, but T just doesnt get it.

I do well when talking to friends/relatives about my illness, but if I'm talking to my therapist about things I fall apart at the seams! I end up a crying, blubbering idiot -- so they take me seriously. I don't know WHY that happens -- I really don't! I try and try to keep it together, but I just can't. When talking about painful things, and the past it just seems to be too much for me. I thought I'd gotten "over" that, but it wasn't that long ago I talked with a therapist, and it happened again.

So they don't doubt I'm seriously depressed. I can function very well on the "outside" cause I hide it like everyone else -- but get me to a therapist or doctor, and I'm a blithering idiot. Go figure.

I'm pretty sure family and friends have little to no clue, for the most part. Counsellors haven't either, unless it's come up in one way or another. The counsellor I see now didn't think I was depressed at first, I don't think; now he's saying that if the herbal remedy I'm taking now doesn't work, I should seriously consider medication. I don't tend to talk about my problems unless I feel it's a direct question I can't weasel out of — it's pretty much taken a year from when I first saw him to get to this point, and I'm feeling pretty much around the same, maybe a little worse.

And I really, really hate crying in front of people — crying in general. The last time I did in front of anyone was maybe a year ago when I saw a cat get run over. And that was after somebody approached me to ask me what was wrong. After I'd wandered around for a while, before sitting near some people, one I sort of knew, who then came up, moreso to say hi than out of concern. If I didn't feel like I really needed to talk to someone, I doubt anyone would have realized.

It doesn't help that I beat up myself about the way I feel, saying it's all in my head, I haven't got it that bad, and I should suck it up. Or something along those lines.

This is a touchy subject because everyone is different. Just try to be yourself!

I understand that mask a little to well that I start to believe it. lately though I have not been all that successful at wearing it as my T saw through it but my family has no clue what is really going on inside of me all the conflict. I do think the mask can prevent one from getting healthy is one is in denial of the truth. Yes there is a time for the mask but time comes when we must take it off and show our true self.