With having any sort of mental illness, whether it be anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder etc., it is easy to feel like you are alone, and that could not be further from the truth.

Mental illness takes over your life and can completely turn your life around, and not in a good way. It is easy to feel like you are the only one experiencing what you are feeling. You feel like nobody understands you or knows what it is like. It is hard to think that other people can relate. Most people suffer in silence, they do not even know what it is exactly, but all they know is that something is off, that they do not feel well mentally.

The truth is you are not alone. More people than you think are battling a mental illness themselves. It is extremely hard, basically impossible to know what someone is going through mentally. Someone could seem like they have everything together and look amazing on the outside, but in reality, they could be struggling immensely on the inside. There is no way to really tell if someone is struggling with mental illness unless they tell you straight up, or if you are close friends with them.

A great way to cope is to talk about it. Do not be ashamed of it. It is very hard to go about your day to day life wearing a mask, acting like everything is perfectly fine and that you are happy, when everything actually feels like it is falling apart, and you do not even understand how you feel, but you know that you are not okay.

If you continue to hide it and keep it bottled up for so long, you will eventually overflow, and your mental illness will only get worse and your mental health will continue to deteriorate at a faster rate.

Mental illness does not make you weak. You are stronger than you think. It takes a lot to deal with any kind of mental illness and those people do not get enough credit for simply living life and having the strength to do daily tasks. You are not your mental illness, you are stronger, and braver because of it. It will not last forever.

Everyone should learn to understand that anyone could be struggling with mental illness and that we need to be kind to everyone and treat them with respect because you do not know other’s personal battles that they are currently fighting.

You can either help them or hurt them. Be wise with your words around the people that you know are struggling mentally, but do not treat them differently. Do not treat people with mental illness like they are fragile, as if they can break any second, this could make matters worse. Treat them as a friend and with kindness, which is what we should all be doing to each other anyway. It is your decision on how you choose to treat others.

Be nice to everyone you meet. You never know what someone could be going through.