My family has gotten better ever since I got an Official Diagnosis and an Official Prescription. My friends, well, in fairness most of them are not aware of my mental issues because I don’t want it to define me, and also, when people do find out their reactions are generally negative. One of my housemates last year knew, and he mostly responded with assorted drunken “jokes” throughout the semester, like calling me a basket case and stuff. So no, I’m not going to talk to my friends about it.

Ok. I agree that mental illness is hard for everyone.

i have done what Miri describes back when i was pretending to be a man, and had people react in a good way. i have also had negative reactions to me being unable to cope in social situations.

i think you need to talk to your friends and family, and try to help them be able to react in more useful ways. hopefully they will listen to you and want to help once they understand what is happening.

queequack, this isn’t a competition. I don’t know who has it “worse,” men or women, and I think that women of color in particular experience a lot of constraints on their ability to display this sort of vulnerability.

In any case, I can guarantee you that I’ve faced pretty serious social consequences throughout my life for this sort of thing. The reason I didn’t this time is because my friends are amazing, not because I’m female. But again, I don’t want to get into a competition about it. Mental illness sucks for everyone.

The whole thing where you shut down in the middle of big social situations. It’s happened to me; it used to happen a lot more often when I was younger. Eventually I just had to learn to deal with it, because I knew that if I didn’t I would, depending on the particulars of the situation, get shit on by (a) my family, or (b) my friends (“friends”).

What kind of thing?

Learning how to reframe things is, I think, one of the things I’ll be working on with my therapist, because I don’t feel like this is a skill I have, especially where my mental illness is concerned.

Hope you enjoy your next steam-punky concert better, while for me spending a night out just listening and reading/writing/drawing in my notebook is pretty much the definition of having a good time.

=8)-DX