I am someone who fights against injustices. When I see something that I feel isn’t right, I will fight against it, whether it’s racism, misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism, or any sort of discrimination. I’m not only a fighter when it comes to discrimination, I also fight for the relationships in my life. When I make friends with someone and they are important to me, I want to maintain that relationship. When there are bumps in the road, I will fight to keep that person as my friend. I won’t give up and I will work out any disagreements we might have. The same goes for romantic relationships; I fight for them. That’s why it’s difficult to understand when people won’t fight for me. I am worth fighting for and I know it. I fight for other people all the time. I am a fiercely loyal friend and I make that known. I enter into friendships taking them seriously and when the dynamic in the friendship in unbalanced and I don’t feel emotionally reciprocated, it’s extremely painful for me.

But one of the worst feelings is when a person chooses not to fight to keep me in their life. I make an extraordinary effort to help the people I love. I want them to know how much I care about them and what I would do for them. I fight for them hard. And there are people who fight for me too, whom I appreciate and then there are others who are more passive and take for granted that I will always be there because I am a loyal friend. That isn’t fair to me and I feel taken advantage of.

It’s not as complicated to fight for somebody as it might seem. “Fighting” is a subjective term and it might mean something different for you than it does for me. What it means to me to fight for your friends is to show them that you love them by taking action and never giving up on the relationship, unless it is toxic for either one of you. I love to demonstrate my ability to care for people. It’s a quality that I am proud of. My mama raised me well and I am happy to be an empathetic person who loves to show other people how much they mean to me. The trouble that I have is that not many people are like that in this world so I seek out others who share the same qualities. There are plenty of empathetic people out there, you just have to look hard and you will find people who can join your kindness tribe. For one insensitive person, there is one kind person; this isn’t based on any actual studies I’ve conducted, but rather on the informal empirical evidence I’ve discovered as a human living in the world.

There are times that I want to help someone, but I feel like I’ve exhausted all the emotional resources I have and I don’t know what to do for them. This makes me feel bad because I don’t want to see anyone hurt or suffering. If there’s any way that I can help someone I love who is in pain, I’ll do that. I often ask people when they’re going through a hard time what they need. How can I support or help them? Sometimes people don’t know and other times they have a specific idea about what they need. It’s helpful for me when the person tells me what they need so that I can help them effectively. I don’t want to do something that will hurt them more than they’re already hurting.

But the specific situation I’m talking about now is: what do you do when you have no idea how to help someone? What if you’ve used up all your brain power trying to come up with creative ways to be there for your friend and you don’t have any more light bulbs going off. It’s not that you don’t care, it’s that you’re out of potential solutions. When I get to this place personally, I start to feel down and bad about myself, which is ridiculous because I didn’t cause the problem the person is having. I just don’t have a way to make the issue go away. I have empathy for their pain and I don’t want to see them suffering anymore but I don’t know what to do about it and how to stop their suffering.

What I’ve realized is that, as much as I care about people, it isn’t my responsibility to alleviate their pain entirely. I can give the best of my ability, offer them love and unconditional support, and if that helps them, then that’s wonderful. But if their pain remains after I’ve done everything I can do as a friend and loved one, it’s not my fault. I didn’t fail or do anything “wrong.” I don’t need to be the hero, swoop in and save the day for every situation where I love someone. I can give love to the best of my ability and the majority of the work to get well isn’t up to me anyway. The person who is experiencing the life challenge is responsible for doing the work to get through it, process their feelings and heal.

We can be there for people when they are suffering, lend an ear, be a good friend but we cannot fix people’s problems, nor is it our responsibility to do that. There’s a difference between being a supportive friend and swooping in wearing an imaginary cape or carrying a magic wand to make someone’s problems disappear. As much as we’d like to envision ourselves as superheroes or fairy godmothers, we are humans. Humans, for the most part, have good intentions but we don’t have the power to end pain and suffering entirely. When a friend is going through a rough time, you can be there to support them, but it’s not all on you to mend it for them. Be a good friend, be there for them however you can, and understand that pain is a real part of life that we sometimes cannot control. What we can control is who we choose to be and what we do for those we love.

Having an issue with codependency sucks. It’s hard to break that pattern when you are used to that dynamic. There are meetings for people with codependency issues. They are called Codependents Anonymous or CODA; think AA (Alcoholics Anonymous). Any addiction has meetings to support the addicts. People, for the most part, have intentions to get well, whether or not they get there or not. It’s challenging to have addictions of any kind. Codependency is an addiction that people have trouble breaking because it’s also a lifestyle. People like to feel needed and validated and many times they are unable to provide that need to themselves and as a result to turn to others to fulfill the emptiness or void inside. I am guilty of this behavior and it’s hard to stop being this way. It’s something that I would like to stop doing but I haven’t had much luck getting to an emotional place where I can break the chains of codependency.

I’m afraid to go to CODA meetings because I know I’ll make friends there who are also codependent. Then I may set myself back because they are involved in the same behavioral patterns that I am participating in. It’s analogous to an alcoholic going to meetings and meeting other addicts. Then this person goes on to do other substances because they are reintroduced to the concept of self-medication. It’s unfortunate that this occurs, but it does. Maybe I’m wrong, perhaps I can attend CODA meetings and meet other people who have the same goal: to get well from codependency. It’s feasible that this could happen, but I’m not convinced. Codependency is deep-rooted in emotional traumas from childhood, and from my experience, those traumatic incidents take a long time to recover from: sometimes years.

It could be fun to meet people with similar problems and share stories. That’s the concept behind AA or Al-Anon. I’ve been to Al-Anon and had a great experience there. It was great to meet people who had interacted with relatives who had treated them poorly and had trouble recovering. I could relate to their journeys and I wanted to be supportive of them, but then I second guessed myself and wondered if this was my codependent side! It’s so difficult to determine what is healthy and what isn’t. When you suffer from addictive behaviors, you are hypervigilant about what behaviors could possibly be detrimental to your emotional and mental health.

Remember that codependency is a legitimate mental health issue and you deserve to be well. It’s going to likely be a long road to recovery, but that is the case with most addictions. You have to get used to putting yourself first. And if you’ve been a caregiver or self-sacrificial person your whole life, this is going to feel foreign to you. But it doesn’t mean you can’t do it. You CAN do it when you put yourself above other people. I can relate to this struggle; I have a hard time placing my needs above the people I love, but I am learning! Maybe I will go to a CODA meeting and meet some buddies who can support me on my journey!

People misinterpret anger often because it is an intense emotion that can sometimes feel scary. Anger can be a productive emotion if used in a proper way. I just used the word “proper,” and I feel British right now. Working through your anger issues can teach you about yourself. I know when I recognize what makes me angry I am able to grow from it. Anger can be misinterpreted as hostility, and these are two different things.

I am so glad that I talk about being crazy online. I’m relieved that I don’t just have that dialogue exclusively in my therapist’s office because at the time I was seeing an LCSW as opposed to a Ph.D. Being able to talk about my mental illnesses online has been incredibly freeing. It’s allowed me the opportunity to be fully myself and not judge that person. It’s been a wild ride on the Internet. First I had to get comfortable enough with myself to be able to articulate that I lived with mental illness. I wanted to be real with my readers but I was afraid. I was scared they might judge me, think I was crazy (even though I am) and then choose to stop reading my words or write me off as unstable. Even though I had read so many blogs were the writer talked about taking antidepressants. Even though I knew the dialogue was changing for the better in our society, that people were better able to express the mental health challenges they were dealing with both in “real life” and online, I was afraid to unleash my “crazy” on my blog.

My blog had been a place where I talked about benign things like painting cardboard boxes from Fresh Direct or going to the park with my kids. How could I speak about my crazy panic attacks? It seemed random and not related to what I was talking about. I wasn’t able to fully justify why I would talk about my “crazy” if there was no relation or reason to. It was hard to do that when I didn’t even talk about it in my life. There were only certain people who knew about my battles with anxiety and depression. I’d even lost friendships and romantic relationships because of how crazy I was.

Then I started learning that there were more people out there who had anxiety, more folks who lived with mental illness like me. And my crazy wasn’t alone anymore. This was especially apparent when I started Stigma Fighters and people started talking about their mental health journeys. I wasn’t the only person talking about having panic attacks because I had other anxious homies. It was a wonderful feeling to be supported anxiously. Let’s also give a shout out to clinical depression, without whom I wouldn’t have recently written a blog.

I have a great friend, Trish Sammer, who encouraged me to “let my freak flag fly.” She is a great friend and told me that my crazy was part of what makes me awesome. And the truth is that “normal” is boring. Normal isn’t who I am or who I will ever me. I am a crazy person who embraces that crazy and in turn, make creative things come to life. If I wasn’t crazy, I would have no career. If I didn’t admit that I am a crazy individual I wouldn’t be true to myself. It’s okay to be different from other people and that’s why I’m glad that I talk about being crazy on the Internet.

We’ve heard the expression “don’t drunk text.” But have you ever heard anyone say “don’t text angry?” It’s the truth. When you are angry, you are more likely to tell the “truth,” however it will be off the cuff, blunt, possibly hurtful and not accomplish your ultimate goal. When you are feeling angry, it’s best to hold off texting, wait until you’ve calmed down and then reassess the situation. Unfortunately,  I don’t take this advice as much I as I should. When I get angry, I let that anger out via text to the person I am upset with. Even though these feelings are true and real, it isn’t productive to unleash them on others. It’s better to journal or even eat your feelings if you need to. Whatever you need to do to release that anger in a healthy and cathartic way, do that.

When you text angry, you might say things that are unnecessarily hurtful when there are other ways to handle situations that are more productive.

The problem that I have is that I am an incredibly kind person until you cross that boundary with me. When you disrespect my feelings, lie to me or make me feel small, my anger comes out. I hate being lied to more than anything in the universe. It makes me feel like my feelings, my truth, doesn’t matter. That triggers me and makes me experience a high level of anger. Once that boundary is crossed I find it hard to pull myself back from that state. I think it’s because when people have lied to me in the past it has cut me deeply. If I find out that you’re lying to me, a switch goes off and I lose it. I don’t know what comes over me, but to me lying is intolerable. I can’t handle being told things that aren’t true.

Recently, I was lied to and I got extremely angry. The lie was extremely obvious and though I pointed it out the person refused to admit that they were lying, which I actually understand. When you’re caught telling a lie, it’s embarrassing, humiliating even, and makes you feel a level of shame that’s palpable. Though I get it to an extent, even if I were caught in a white lie, I would confess to lying. It’s not that hard to have humility and admit what you did was wrong. In fact, if someone told me “sorry I lied to you,” and then explained why I would have respect for that level of honesty. If you admit that you did something wrong, whatever that something is, it takes real ovaries or balls to admit that you messed up. It takes a strong person to say that you hurt someone’s feelings. It’s not easy to do that, but if you can it shows an incredible strength of character.

I’m going to struggle with angry texting because I have a hard time experiencing that emotion. I’m working on letting my anger out in a healthy way. It’s going to happen because I want it to. And when I work towards a goal, I achieve it.

I was talking to my friend Jess, and she is a sensitive person like me. Unfortunately, there is a lack of empathy in our school system. Children are taught to focus on themselves and bettering their academic education. Empathy is something that should be taught in schools so that we can learn to be better human beings and genuinely care about people.

There should be an empathy classes in school. Because the world is a self-absorbed place. Children have the capacity to learn empathy at a rapid rate if we give them the chance. And if we teach kids young to be kind to one another when would they become adults they will be healthier and perhaps we could even change the world. If you look at the world today it is full of selfishness and narcissism. I don’t like talking about politics but how do you think Donald Trump became president? The reason he made it into the oval office is that he has narcissistic traits. I’m lucky to live in a city that is quite liberal and unfortunately, the rest of the country is highly conservative. But that’s a tangent. Back to empathy.