When You Miss Your Mental Illness

We’re going to talk about something that many people without mental health issues may think is crazy. Hell, you may have mental health issues and think I’m crazy for talking about this, but I think it’s an important topic. Some of us hold ourselves back from healing because we’ll miss our mental illness, and that’s something that I had to grapple with recently.

What It’s Like in My Crazy Head

Years ago, when I got sober, I was diagnosed with a Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) as well as Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Aside from that, I’ve always had emotional regulation issues. On a scale from 1–10, many people feel emotions at about a 5 whether they’re good or bad unless something life-changing happens. For those of us who have emotional regulation issues, we’re at a 10 when we feel emotions.

Although I don’t have borderline personality disorder, this is something many people with BPD can relate to. I’ve found that many addicts can relate to this as well. The way I describe it is that people like us don’t just feel…So, rather than being happy, we’re ecstatic. Instead of just getting angry, we get pissed. We don’t just start liking someone either. We fall in love with them.

With all of these different things going on in our head, it creates a slew of problems that makes life…