Unknown userMember
Feeling like a fraud/imposter with mental illness
This is a difficult one for me.
I have moments when I feel an overwhelming sense that I don't really have a mental illness, or somehow the psychiatrists have got it wrong, or worse, I have been able to fool everyone, and I'm a fraud. It is different from denial, as I know I am unwell, and I know my condition enough to see that I fit the bill, as it were. Still, I have this cognitive dissonance where I both accept the reality of my condition while simultaneously having thoughts that I am an imposter. This thought can be triggered when I am talking to someone, and they will give their uneducated but strident opinion that I 'don't seem crazy to them.' Or when people tell me, I am quite articulate and self-aware for someone with my condition, as if to say they are 'on to me.' I often try to psychoanalyze myself, which brings on the doubts and guilt of feeling this way.
It's hard to speak to people about it because I feel like even by bringing it up in conversation, I am planting the seeds of doubt in other people's minds. Once when I was hospitalised, another patient revealed that they have the same feeling and thoughts. We would spend time in the arts and crafts room painting and telling each other how relieved we were that we found someone else who had these thoughts and would try to assure each other that we were in the right place. Surely the doctors would know if we were frauds and would tell us if they thought we were faking it because they would not waste the money and resources on people who were imposters.
