Agreed. I think the stigma around mental illness has a lot to do with how people react to it. Society tells us it's embarrassing and a sign of weakness and many people suffer in silence until it's too late. Fortunately this industry appears to be more open about it.
I cannot wait until we stop using the term "mental illness" entirely. I have a serious medical condition. It is classified as a dread disease because enduring it is horrible. I also was molested and raped as a child.
On the one hand, some of my suicidal tendencies are rooted in physical, chemical side effects of what my condition does to my brain. On the other hand, there is absolutely nothing crazy about wanting my suffering to end and feeling like death is the only answer.
And it pisses me off, because it doesn't have to be that way. But that is a rant I do not even want to get into at the moment.
Please be charitable. Maybe it was patronizing, but maybe it was heartfelt and genuine too. Intervening aggressively makes the conversation worse, not better.
OCD does not begin to compare to what I suffer. Look up cystic fibrosis. It has an average life expectancy of about 37 in the U.S. It impairs gut function and lung function and immune function. Most people with it struggle to achieve a normal healthy weight while eating twice as much as others and it accounts for something like one third of adult lung transplants and one half of pediatric lung transplants.
Telling me you hope I feel better is the kind of thing that absolutely is best left unsaid. I am, in fact, gradually feeling better because I have, in fact, figured out how to fix my body. This gets me nothing but shit on by other people, who accuse me of being crazy and a teller of tall tales.
Do not assume your suffering begins to compare to mine. It most likely does not. And do not ever tell someone you hope they feel better when they are talking about being suicidal if you do not have concrete suggestions for helping them actually feel better. It just comes across as incredibly obnoxious. (Yes, I am a Pollyanna who has done similar things in the past. I try to offer solutions these days, not empty wishes.)
Oy. I don't see any reason to abandon your account. Nothing I said was intended to make you feel awful, make you feel you should delete anything and so on. I have made the same mistakes in the past and I am still working on trying to learn to effectively communicate online. The lack of voice tone, facial expression etc ad nauseum makes Internet discussions especially challenging. I get wildly misinterpreted in an ugly way on a regular basis. I absolutely have no plans to abandon any accounts over it.
If you learned something from the exchange and are more careful in the future, that's as good as it gets. Lots of people keep making the same mistakes over and over, never getting any better. As long as you learn from your mistakes -- so you can go make all new mistakes -- you are fine.
You don't need to do that, the world is big and our perspective can only incorporate so much of it. It's not really healthy to let one (relatively small) mistake or a couple of people you don't even know getting mad at you cause you to abandon things of a higher priority. (Like your current identity on a website you like.)
As Mz said, if you learned from the mistake flagellating yourself isn't necessary.
Thanks. I was ashamed, but I think you're right not that it's not worth abandoning an identity over. A better strategy will be to avoid participating in non-technical discussions on HN. So that's what I'll do.
Nah. I am probably the best possible person to make this kind of mistake with. I am not grudging, I have excellent family support -- when I am suicidal, my sons make sure I am not left alone -- and I explain certain kinds of things well.
Take a break until it smarts less, but don't swear off nontechnical discussions for all time. :-)
