I blamed mentally ill people for allowing their illness to stop them behaving normally. It was my worst coping mechanism for the fact that, for the last 7 years, I have been mentally ill - I used it as a logical excuse to not seek help, tell anyone or solve my own issues.

I regret it real bad because it led me to do some incredibly bad things, like telling a then-undiagnosed depressed friend that “everyone is sad”, and they just had to “carry on” the way they were, all the while using it as a crutch to justify not helping myself. I resisted every attempt by friends to get me therapy, counselling, to tell family etc - it was only their unwavering support and the amazing NHS (I’m British) that finally got me there.

About 3 months ago I was formally diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, Anxiety and a history of Psychosis after 7 years of self denial. In the moment a lot of that opinion came back, with a lot of screaming at the psych and my therapist going on, partially because of the implication that I’d been torturing myself and others for so long for no reason. It was definitely the biggest watershed moment of my life so far. After shouting and threatening my own life for a while, I obviously started crying uncontrollably - I don’t think I could ever explain the complexity of the emotions I felt, like gratitude, horror, relief, hope and sadness all mixed together.

Since then I’ve accepted my own ability to be able to be unable to do things, and obviously feel the same towards anyone else suffering from mental anguish, be it diagnosed or undiagnosed, major or minor. While it’s still true that everyone is sad sometimes, it’s not true that anyone should suffer in silence!

Disclaimer; I don’t want to suggest that everyone everyone benefits from diagnosis or a label - but I definitely did :).

TLDR; used to blame people for their own fuckedup-ness because of my own fuckedup-ness, got diagnosed as fucked up and realised I was a dick.