One risk of being in the mental health system is that it makes you lose trust in your own reactions to life. Everything becomes a possible symptom of mental illness and your own body's reactions to your life situations are deemed unnatural, something not only to be ignored, but beaten down with medication.

For instance, I have recently been going through some mood swings. Crazy anxious one moment, laughing and loving life a few hours later.

A few years ago, I would have been concerned that I was having a destabilizing manic episode and talked to my therapist and my psychiatrist.

Now, I can see it as a perfectly normal reaction to some major life stressors and changes I've gone through. Once I made some difficult decisions, I started sleeping through the night and getting back to normal.

Note: I was misdiagnosed bipolar because I had a manic reaction to antidepressants.