Separating Struggles From Identity

It’s 6pm and I’m sitting on my hotel bed in Florida. I just wrapped up a week of speaking and I have a free night before flying home in the morning. I’m talking to Joenelle, my fiancé at the time, and she asks if I’m going to meet up with an old friend who lives nearby for dinner.

Up until eight months ago, I would have already reached out to a friend in the area to make dinner plans. Since my panic attack, I’d been finding ways to talk myself out of it.

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen him in years and he’s obviously going to ask how things have been. How am I going to explain the anxiety, the panic attacks, the spiraling?”

She exhales, exasperated and clearly wanting to avoid the 100th rendition of this conversation. With patience and grace, she says, “I know it’s something you’re dealing with, but it’s not the only thing you have to talk about. You remember we got married last month?”

I started cataloguing the conversations I’d had that week. Unless someone was a complete stranger, they had heard all about my mental health struggles. How many of those same people even knew I got married last month?

It’s not that I shouldn’t share what I’m going through, but it wasn’t the only important thing happening in my life.

Joenelle was right. I’d been in a mental health battle for the better part of a year, and slowly I had let it transform from what I was dealing with into who I believed I was. Most of us have times where one struggle gets so loud it becomes the only thing others hear.

Unfortunately, this has become a common phenomenon in society. We see social media bios centered around diagnoses or symptoms, almost as if to say, “Welcome. This is who I am.” We create friend groups centered around a shared struggle, with little mention of progress or solutions. We even hear it in everyday language when we say, “Well, I have ____, so I can’t…”

We don’t do this because we want attention or to make excuses. We often do it because it’s the clearest explanation we have of who we are at the time.

Mental health is a chapter in our book, but it’s not the whole story. When we let our problems become our identity, we close the book before the next chapter has a chance to be written

We all have problems, but we are not our problems.

I met Chad for dinner that night, and as we sat down he asked with keen interest, “How have things been going?”

I took a drink of my water, smiled, and said excitedly, “I got married last month!” It made me wonder what else I’d forgotten to talk about.

Fact

Research in psychology shows that when people view mental illness as something they experience rather than something that defines them, they report higher hope, better self-esteem, and stronger engagement in work, relationships, and recovery.

Action

Fill in the following blanks regarding your identity with one word.

I am _____

I have _____

I will _____

Question

What else are you forgetting to talk about?

Quote

“Illness of any kind need not define an individual.” - Elyn Saks