Stigma Makes Mental Illness Feel Like a Confession

Letting others know you have a mental illness can feel like a confession because of stigma. Telling someone about the illness for the first time can be a large, daunting task because of this feeling that you're revealing a deep, dark secret. This is because stigma tells us that reactions to mental health struggles will always be negative.

Opening Up About Mental Illness Is Scary

I grew up with a lot of negative reactions to my mental illnesses, in particular excoriation (skin-picking) disorder. I was the weird kid, the one with the disgusting "habit." The negative reinforcement from my family, which I recognize now as misguided attempts to get me to stop what they saw as a dangerous habit, left me feeling like I was a bad, weak person who couldn't control myself.

This resulted in feelings of terror when even considering telling someone else about my mental health struggles. These reactions, and the mental health stigma that bred some of them, made the whole experience of being sick and telling someone else about it scary. Revealing there's something about you that people react to so negatively becomes a moment of confession because there's this fear of being seen in a new, negative light ("Sharing Your Mental Health Story If You're Afraid of Stigma").

How Confessing Your Mental Illness Affects Both You and the Other Person

I came across a meme that depicted, in summary, a person disclosing mental illness to a potential love interest preparing to be abandoned ("Borderline and Relationships: The Fear of Abandonment"). That resonated deeply with me as for the first several years of my relationship, I didn't talk about my mental illnesses, especially the skin picking because of that kind of fear. What would confessing to having these issues make me lose?

I showed the meme to my boyfriend with a light chuckle of "this was totally me" and his response took me a bit aback.

"What did I ever do?" he asked. 

His concern was what impression of himself did he give me that I would have thought that. It's an incredibly valid question.

These kinds of thoughts—about being abandoned for confessing having mental health struggles—are less about the other person and more about the stigma we've faced. It's about the stigma that says having a mental illness is something we should not talk about. Additionally, it's about how others have reacted before.

Discussing 'Confessing' Mental Illness Helps Create Understanding

When the only outcome you've known to "confessing" your mental illnesses is repulsion or rejection, it seems that's what everyone will do regardless of their character. The only possible outcome seems to be negative and anything else is a pipedream. It's something you believe in your core.

These days, I don't think of revealing mental health struggles as a confession, but I understand why it feels that way since I've been there. After that conversation with my boyfriend, I began thinking about how these conversations are an important part of understanding one another and the impact that mental health stigma can have on us all. In having these conversations, those we're speaking with can understand how stigma silences people and for those of us making the "confession," we can begin to understand that mental health stigma isn't always true. With these levels of understanding, challenging mental health stigma becomes easier.

When have you felt like you had to confess your mental illness? How did the person react? Share your stories in the comments.