Dear Lucas:

You wrote that you would like to “hopefully change the rather narrow viewpoint a lot of people seem to have on mental illnesses”- it may read to some as if most people are not mentally ill and are not viewing mental illness correctly. I think that most people at any one time suffer from significant anxiety or depression and that lots of that “narrow viewpoint” you referred to, regarding mental illnesses is held by mentally ill people no less than people doing well at any one time.

You wrote: “You become used to the feeling (hating yourself) and develop a strange kind of addiction to it”- whatever we get used to, whatever habit we develop, mental and otherwise, we tend to repeat and find some comfort in it, for a while, at the least, and to some extent. It is in the nature of habits, good habits, bad habits and all in between.

anita