I have mental illness
I've been on SNRI anti-depressents for 1 year and continue to take them.
I've been on a a benzodiazepine for almost 1 year and continuing.
I've been on an anti-psycholtic for almost 1 year and continuing.
I finally realized that I'm not dealing with a multi-issue phase; I've been doing this for 25 years. I got rid of my guns in the last year, because I knew when I started hallucinating that it was prudent to not have them. You read newspaper stories and you think, why didn't somebody take the guns?
My psychiatrist says I have major depression, anxiety, and mild psychosis (I hallucinate). My psychologist says I have C-PTSD from beatings and priest rape, and sexual orientation confusion. My doctor explains that I have anhedonia which robs pleasure from normal experiences.
When we took a marriage angry-problem to our marriage counseling psychologist, he suggested the problem was Me, not Her, and it was based on my PTSD. That was a real eye-opener to me.
I always thought I was a regular guy with a medical issue, like for instance: Diabetes. Take the pills, mind the menu and you're going to die from something else. Like: I'm a guy named Ralph, I'm a plumber, and I have diabetes. Ralph's a person with a problem, but his identity is primarily Ralph.
Today I realized: I've got mental illness. I'm not always the person with a problem, sometimes I'm just the aggregate of the problems. I've been taking mental medicine for 25 years. I am all fucked up.
Somehow, "mental illness" never clicked with me, and today it did. It's kind of a big deal.