Are you guys surrounded by people who are mentally ill or are blended nicely in society

Are you guys surrounded by people similar as you people who are mentally ill or are you all blended nicely with people in society?

I had hoped to be only with people who are similar to me,will that helped or workout?

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After reading this post it dawned on me that out of all the people I’m closest with, the ones I talk to and hang out with daily, we’re all schizophrenics. I just don’t think of them as such. I mean the topic comes up, they sometimes struggle with symptoms, but I never think of them in terms of the illness. They’re just my friends.

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I can’t say I am blended nicely into society no. I dropped out of that beast ages ago. All of my friends and acquaintances I’ve made since my mid 20’s have also had a mental illness whether sz or bi-polar or what as I met everyone in treatment programs or later clubhouse programs. Though I can’t say I’d ever have known they had a mental illness if I hadn’t of known that. They have all been rather normal people, even the one or two with real bad symptoms presented as normal people most of the time and you’d never really know.

I guess I prefer to live amongst those who suffer rather than those who tend not to. There’s something about those who’ve suffered that makes me feel at home. This is where I belong for whatever reason, even in recovery, amongst the “mentally ill”. Though I’ll admit I have a preference to relate to the more high functioning I try not to discriminate. I feel that this is where I can make a difference, this is where I want to live my life and make my mark on this world.

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I’m not surrounded by anyone,but aside from family my interactions are mostly with other mentally ill people.

no im plonked outside of society i have a boyfriend but no friends ive joined groups trying to make friends with little success
i think i like the iea of friends but deep down i find it a huge hassel. i had my trust of people severed at quite a young age where a lot of stuff happened and i kind of lost thenability to socialise.

My nephew and myself are the only ones with a severe mental illness in my family, that I know of - a lot of the rest have some form of anxiety, panic and depressive disorders - I choose not to have any in person friends

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My family has a scatter of mental illness running through it. So some family is… some family isn’t.

My ability to get along with family who has MI or doesn’t have MI is a personality thing, not an illness thing.

My girlfriend isn’t MI. My friend who came back into my life has been fighting off depression. I’d guess I’m about 50/50.

Nope, I’m the only one except you here reaching out across cyberspace.

I don’t think that I blend in anywhere very well. I’ve tried to get involved with some MI people but with no success so far. My few friends that I’ve got are okay with me. My niece has bipolar and my brother has ocd. I’m the only one in our family that I know of with sz. Social withdrawal makes it difficult to blend in anywhere but at least I do survive and cope somehow.

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I see mentally ill people in my “group” I have every other monday. We share and encourage eachother and it makes me feel better. One woman there always has bad headaches and asks me to do my “pressure point” pinch on her collar muscles to make the headache go away. It’s weird to me doing that, but she’s always in so much pain and the rest of them just gawk at me like I’m weird, but I don’t mind helping.

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I have no friends now but I’ve had a few close friends who were mentally ill in the past. They were good friends, better than any “normal” friends I’ve ever had. And it was totally natural. We went all over, we did things. we hung out. Went to clubs, bars, hung out on Stanford University Campus. Played basketball in the park. Our friendships were no different than anybody else. Occasionally we talked symptoms but even when we talked about our symptoms or our hospitalizations it was just like discussing the weather or how the Giants or 49’rs are doing this year.

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I have some friends who are psychologically abnormal, whether they are paranoid schizophrenics or my female asexual lithromantic non-binary friend, I have some friends who are not normal, other schizophrenics and a bipolar girl included. I have a friend who gets panic attacks, he carries his little bottle of xanax everywhere he goes, which is funny because I cant carry three pill bottles, I have a tiny pillbox which I put my daily meds in. I had a friend with benefits who was raving bipolar. The rest of my friends are normal.

It helps to be with similar people. I almost get in phases where I only want to see my abnormal friends. Normal people are sometimes assholes with their stigma towards mental illnesses, I don’t associate with people who say things like “Well I hope you don’t start thinking we’re poisoning you and kill us in your sleep” like bitch I have a 3.9 in the honors psychology department at a university, Im also very muscular and well-groomed, do I look like I am symptomatic and legally insane? I have gone on so many dates and told them that I am in remission from paranoid schizophrenia and they then either never answer my texts again, say they have a boyfriend, ect.

Like the friend who I want to hangout with tonight, he is eccentric and has ADD and anxiety. He is buff like me, he works out, he also watches even more anime than I do, which is saying something. He had Gundam action figures on his bookshelf, like a big collection of them. He’s not normal. He is a really good friend and accepts me for who I am and keeps a sense of humor about my condition.

It helps to have personal friends in real life who are psychologically abnormal. I seek people like that out, actually. I wish there was a mentally ill dating site. I think there is but I heard that it is dead and has like 1k members globally. That would be nice, to scroll through profiles of mentally ill guys and girls and be like “lol were all crazy”

It stresses me to tell some people I meet about my condition and my past. I am planning on telling a guy I have been talking to about it tonight. He seems like he will understand, he is really nice. But I am ready for him to just hangup, block my number and block me on facebook.

Yes I sometimes do find myself in the company of high-functioning mentally ill people. I am at ease around them. It has done me a lot of good. But I still have more normal friends than abnormal friends.

It is nice to be able to talk about symptoms, prognoses and medications with other mentally ill people. What I secretly want out of life is a mentally ill partner who is high functioning. Either that or a very empathetic perfectly healthy person. Someone who listen to me tell the truth about my past and not get scared. Maybe I will meet someone in a psychology graduate program, I plan on going to grad school. Elyn Saks met her husband in grad school. John Nash met his wife as a teacher. Im only 21 and get too emo about not having a partner.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows being recovered. Its basically like being a normal person but you have to take six pills a day to stay normal and you have a skeleton in your closet. Life is never really the same. Side effects, emotional problems from the trauma of the whole experience, having a terrible past that scares people off, it sometimes feels unfair. My schizophrenic friend who is on the same antipsychotic as I am who is 29 tells me to get a doctorate and then worry later. A recovered schizophrenic who you call “Dr.” is more impressive than a recovered schizophrenic who is in his third year of undergrad who lives with his parents. He also says that he only dates abnormal girls and that he needs the company of an abnormal person. He and I talk for several hours when he comes over. There is never a dull moment when he is around.

One day I guess I will meet the right person. As of now I have been on about 20 dates in the past year and seen the person for a second time only four times. Two became friends with benefits and one turned out to be asexual but likes to hangout. One just ditched me randomly after a third date where I kissed her goodnight, like I had the other two dates. She just quit answering my calls and texts.

I hope to work with mentally ill people. Lol. I want to be a therapist, either an LCSW or a psychologist. I will one up all of my patients, it will be great. I will not be phased by anything they say. I will just be glad to hear that they too are ■■■■■■ up and are trying their best to deal with it. My therapist is really good, he only takes referrals and is old and very experienced and respected, and he repeatedly tells me “everybody is ■■■■■■ up. It’s how people deal with it that really matters.” I asked my Aunt who worked in psychology and is retired now, and she said my therapist is one of the top psychologists in the city. I believe it, he knows his ■■■■ and I wonder how a person can retain so much knowledge. That and he is really expensive.

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I live in an assisted living center for the mentally ill. All the people I associate with are either case managers or mentally ill. It’s nice to live in such a judgement free environment. We all have something in common because we are mentally ill.

I am completely surrounded by regular people. Notice I didn’t say healthy or normal. I have work friends. I have church friends, but I don’t actively hang out with them outside of their respective categories. I mostly do stuff with my family. The last time I had friends that I hung out with was in high school. I kept them into college even though we didn’t go to the same school.

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I am mostly friends with people who are mentally ill. I have very few neurotypical friends.

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I’m surrounded by mentally ill and regular people. I go to group a couple of times a week,so my friends are mentally ill but at home are regular people like my partner.

I like that term. It just “is” there is no judgement in that term. Thank you.

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I would answer that I am surrounded by people who suffer their own mental illnesses, but who I do not blend with. At all. I don’t understand sports nuts who walk around shirtless with team colours painted on their chests and faces. I do not understand people who buy and massively modify monster pickup trucks so they are ungainly, dangerous, loud, and belch smoke unnecessarily. I certainly don’t understand people who take pleasure in hunting and killing animals to so they can proudly display the body parts in their homes.

On the bright side, I may be sick, but it turns out I could be sicker.

10-96

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You’re welcome. I do what I can to avoid judging others for as I do wish them to not judge me

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it was “are you guys surrounded by people who are mentally ill” thread.

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