For the past couple of years, I have always felt "off." I struggled with going to many different counselors and doctors who never knew what exactly was happening with me and being put on multiple medications that did nothing but make me feel numb and zombielike. After four years of this, I was finally diagnosed as manic depressive, or better known as bipolar.

With this diagnosis came a flow of emotions. I was excited that finally someone knew why I felt the way I felt, but I also became scared of the stigma that surrounded this mental illness. My psychiatrist made it a point to tell me that I was not "crazy" or "psychotic." The way that society views mental illnesses is very destructive to the people who have theses illnesses. Society says that people who are bipolar are "psycho," which most of the time is not entirely accurate. These types of words need understanding and not shaming.

I found that I was self-stigmatizing myself, which is the belief that you are weak or damaged because of your own illness. I started to call myself crazy and joke around with the word psychotic. I felt that if I could joke about this, it would make it easier for me to cope with it. This is not necessarily true. This diagnoses is a serious thing and should not be taken lightly or joked about all the time. The more I said I was crazy, the more I believed it and then felt crazy, which lead to more depressive thoughts and more intense manic episodes. I tried to avoid hurting myself even more by recognizing my strengths and began attempting to find things that made me happy and feel better. This is where I found my love for writing my stories about mental health and helping other people with these illnesses.

My passion and something that is very positive that came out of my diagnoses is stopping the stigma behind all mental illnesses. I want others to know that they are not alone in their fights and struggles. Feeling alone is one of the leading causes of suicide in depressed people. Stigmatizing illnesses sections off people and makes them feel like they are "different" or not worthy of a normal life because they feel ways that are out of their control.

Stigma comes from the misunderstanding of the subject that the stigma is around. There are still many people with uninformed perceptions about mental illness. Many people still need to be educated about mental illnesses like bipolar disorder. Misplaced stigma's are extremely hurtful and harmful to the mentally ill. But perhaps worse than the stigma received from others because of ignorance and insensitivity mental illnesses is the often self-stigmatizing those with mental illnesses do to themselves.

So, with this being said, I encourage everyone to be careful with what they say and choose their words wisely. You never know who is going through what, so you need to be nice to everyone. And to those of you who feel alone and feel like the world is falling apart at your fingertips, you are strong and you are capable of anything and everything.