Mental Illness + Identity
BY : SHELBY MILLER
I changed my Instagram bio to mental illness survivor. I talked about my anxiety. I shared posts about mental health. I made reels about anxiety. I became so passionate about not being ashamed and keeping quiet, that it became the only thing anyone knew about me. I was the girl with panic attacks. I was the girl on Prozac.
My mental illness had become my identity. In my mind, I was nothing other than a girl that had deeply struggled with anxiety and depression. That’s what I had to offer the world.
To give you some backstory, I did in fact struggle with anxiety. I battled depression. It was ugly, it was dark, and it felt like it would never end. I do not minimize those feelings, and I am really dang proud of myself for not giving up. But when healing came, through relationship with Jesus, community, medicine, and counseling, I wanted to shout it from the rooftops that people weren’t alone. I became a self-proclaimed mental illness expert. When I think about why, I really believe that I wanted that dark season to feel purposeful, and this felt like the best way to do that. As soon as my head was lifted enough to see out of the dark hole I was in, I scrambled to make anxiety my brand, my identity, my worth.
Growing up, my cousins and I would play freeze tag. I remember running all over the yard trying to keep from being frozen, strategically creating routes in my escape that gave me the chance to unfreeze my friends. There was nothing worse than being frozen, watching everyone else run around, feeling like you can’t contribute and are just watching the fun go by while you stay stuck. On the other hand, there was nothing more fun than unfreezing my friends. I mean it felt like I had all the power, like I was saving the day! They would stretch their hand out so I could tag them on my way by. What I don’t remember in all of my freeze tag games is tagging someone and them staying frozen. Can you imagine if you raced over to your friend, risking your game to save them and then they just stood there? Screaming “OMG I WAS FROZEN!!! Did you see how frozen I was?? Oh, let me tell you how horrible it was.” That would look absolutely ridiculous.
But that’s how I looked. It’s how we look when we allow our mental health to become our identity. We are free, but instead of getting back in the game we are screaming about being frozen. Another word for this is victimization, and it’s an ugly trap. When we minimize our story and our worth to one tiny part of who we are, we miss out on the game going on all around us. We miss out on the joy of unfreezing others! And in a real game of freeze tag, guess what would happen? We would be tagged and frozen again. Victimization is a dangerous trap because it usually sends us right back into the struggle we have fought our way out of.
Whether you are on the other side of mental illness or in the trenches fighting for your life, let this be your reminder that there is so much more to who you are and what you have to offer this world than a diagnosis. Your identity is more than your mental illness. It is a part of your story, whether a few pages or a chapter, but it is not who you are. You are beautiful, loved, talented, and a wonderful you! With gifts and passions and dreams and ideas. You are a daughter, a sister, a mom, and a friend. You are you, not your mental illness.
