One more for the road
These days, and maybe it's not just these days, but it seems that people want to community in such a way that it binds them by, and thus gives validation to, their common faults.
This could be drinking. Wine is a solution for all women's problems. I cringe every time I see people celebrating when someone swills some back some wine to numb the pain and take the edge of an unacceptable reality. Getting a low-grade buzz is the perfect remedy for all that ails you and you have the full support of people just like you. What it says is "I support you and join you in your current or future alcoholism" and that is really not ok. It could be mental illness, binding together in depression and anxiety like it's something to be accepted, and then taking it one step more and going on to educate the world on how best not to bother your issues. Sure, maybe telling you to "just get over it" isn't helpful, but it is your job to tend to your own health. If you don't want to, it's unreasonable to expect people to bend to your will to make you comfortable in your mental distress. Doing so by guilting and shaming them isn't education, it's manipulation, and some combination of guilt/shame/manipulation is probably what made you depressed and anxious in the first place. That isn't education, it's proselytizing for the church of poor mental health and gaining converts. If you want to get better, change yourself, don't try to change other people. Start with accepting the idea that mental illness might be a reality, but it isn't a right, no matter how many people agree with you and validate your perceived right to be unhealthy. There's tons of stuff out there that can help you find out how to improve your brain functioning - some works, some doesn't, some works for some people, not as much for others, but what doesn't work is making excuses with a double side order of demands.
And remember pills don't teach skills - so medicate if you need to, but don't think it's a solution in and of itself. Learning how to operate in a healthy way, learning that taking every goddamned thing personality is part of the problem and is in no way a solution, and understanding how to stop doing that might get you off pills, but pills are never going to cure you if you don't attack the root of the problem and there is always a real world problem at the root of your most common mental ailments. And even those that are more innate - those skills help you function far better, even if they never get you off meds.
What absolutely doesn't work is forming communities based on the idea that you are oppressed, finding validation there, then coming out with your list of demands like you're the new revolution. Or finding solace in a bottle with the full support of other people who are friends of the bottle (but not really you) and telling yourself that is the cure, like fibre is the cure for constipation, when history shows just how damaging alcohol is to individuals, families and society at large.
I think we're going down a very dangerous road when we embrace addictions and mental illness like they should be integrated parts of reality. They shouldn't be. We live in a world where we're told to get rid of toxic people, and also a world where we should tiptoe around other people's mental health issues. We fail to acknowledge that most, perhaps all the toxic people are mentally ill and these ideas can't coexist with each other. Until we acknowledge that being mentally ill doesn't give you the right to make demands on people, to post memes about how no one understands how you feel followed up with a set of instructions on how not to offend you, ask yourself if you understand how others feel when you lay that guilt on their feet, and if that is actually helping you become a better person, or if that actually makes you a toxic one.
You know, when my 2 month old daughter died, people said some pretty insensitive things. "Well, you can have another kid..." I could choose to get offended, but even at 20 years old, I chose to understand that they were trying to help. It didn't seem helpful at the time, but I chose not to let it hurt me either, because I knew the intent wasn't to hurt me. They were trying to be helpful, only they were failing miserably. If they said, "Your kid died because you don't deserve to have one," I would have concluded that was hurtful by intent and I might have had something to say about it. But the several people who told me I could (or should) have another kid were not willfully trying to diminish the loss, they thought it was a good solution. Funny thing, they weren't even wrong. Having Matt did prove to be the best therapy and what inevitably led me to become the person I am today, one who does her best to take bad shit and turn it into something meaningful. I'm not sure that would have happened if I'd not had Matt immediately after that loss. So, in the end, that "insensitive" statement was what I needed after all. And just getting over it - is desirable, and possible, if you can find your way. It's not bad advice, even if it doesn't seem helpful at the time.