I wanted to start a thread and see if it takes. I have had a lot of trouble finding a place where I can talk about both my mental illness and my sexuality. I thought this would be a great place to open up the floor to people who deal with mental illness and identify as LGBTQ particularly given the greater presence of stressors often present in our lives. NOTE: I want this thread to include people without diagnoses. However please refrain from asking for one. You will inevitably receive a response stating that we are not qualified to give you one. I'll start: I am bipolar and have had a particularly difficult relationship with my parents regarding my sexuality. They have a lot of trouble with it and have done a lot of horrible things thinking that they're helping me. It's made my recovery a lot more difficult and I've had severe depressive episodes resulting from their lack of acceptance. I'm trying to come to terms with my sexuality because I know as long as I have this huge trigger of feeling inferior or wrong in my life, I'm not going to be stable.
I'm autistic (which is a developmental disability, not a mental illness) and have PTSD (which I think counts as a mental illness). And I'm asexual, which is more common among autistics.
I feel like mental illness is a loaded phrase and I probably should have gone with psychological or psychiatric problems. I definitely think PTSD falls under that.
I'm also autistic (Asperger's Syndrome) and have been having loads of anger and stress on my shoulders without anyone to talk to. I'm pretty much in-the-closet except with my best friend, who's accepted me, and my mom, whom I'm getting mixed signals from. It's very frustrating not knowing if she'll accept me or not. But, I have a feeling it's not going to go well, simply because since I came out, she's avoided the topic all together. I'm pretty sure once I do come out to my family, all hell is going to break loose but it can't be avoided and I know I can't live my life in that kind of fear so....I might as well see how it goes. Hell, no one knows I have an account on here.
There's already a thread like this if you want to check it out. http://emptyclosets.com/forum/chit-chat/80282-disorders-conditions-thread.html
I have some form of autism, and social anxiety, both undiagnosed. I also had pretty bad depression, until I joined here, and I can still feel it, just waiting to come back if I don't start making progress in my life.
Julia, the reason I started this thread is I think it's important to have a place to talk about BOTH sexuality and psych stuff. I saw the thread you mentioned and thought the two can often be tightly intertwined. Unfortunately we often only get the chance to talk about one or the other.
They definitely are for me. Research has shown that autistics have a significantly higher rate of asexuality, bisexuality and transgender identity than non-autistic people. Especially autistic girls. Hetero cis is still the majority among autistics, but less dramatically so. My PTSD (due to sexual abuse) also intersects in that most people assume the sexual abuse caused my asexuality, when in fact there's no relationship. Plus, research suggests that asexual sexual abuse survivors tend to have fewer flashbacks (probably because sexual urges can trigger flashbacks in a sexual abuse survivor).
I have bipolar disorder as well. It is definitely an important thing to consider sexuality/coming out alongside mental illness. I have trouble accepting my mental illness, and I have trouble accepting my sexual orientation, so it's doubly difficult. I feel like the weight on my shoulders is exponentially higher than someone going through the coming out process who does not suffer from a mental illness.
I have depression, and it's all a bit of a mess but it kind of stemmed from the five years of hell I had at an all boys' school, and was made worse by my parents' rejection of my sexuality. My mother has said she had depression when she was of a similar age, and despite having it confirmed by a doctor, she has decided to ignore the fact that I do too. I already have a difficult relationship with my parents - they're the cold, distant kind of parents you never hear say "I love you" - and it's definitely been made worse by their treatment of my sexuality. I'm heading to university (hopefully) in September, and I'm semi-worried, semi-not-caring that I imagine I'll have little to do with them when I start having long term relationships and moving in together and marriage and babies and all the rest, which hasn't helped my depression at all. I go through stages where I'm relatively okay (even in good times you wouldn't exactly call me happy, I'm far too much like my parents where I don't particularly feel emotions as strongly as 'normal' people) to the opposite end where I sleep most of the time, become almost mute and stop eating. It's not particularly fun, but any attempts to get help have been brushed under the carpet along with everything else as per usual.
