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Mental Health and Abuse Awareness Series

As someone who has struggled with mental illness, and survived multiple abusive relationships, I am often told that mental illness is not real, or that if someone was abusive, I should just leave.  I created this series to help people who have not been through these struggles to understand how it feels on the inside, and those who have been through it to feel validated and seen.  Through imagery, I am communicating the feelings, isolation, and hardship that people with these struggles carry everyday.

Depression is more than feeling sad.  In its rawest state, it is an overwhelming sense of isolation, darkness, and unfettered dispair.  In this piece, I have created a tangible depiction of how depression can feel like being stuck at the bottom of the deepest, darkest well with no way out.  Alone, cold, dark, it feels as if there is no hope of escaping the ever-encroaching and suffocating loneliness.

Boxed

No matter what you see of his devilish face, most abusers break your spirit before they break your bones.  They start by isolating you from family, friends, and other support systems, putting you in smaller and smaller boxes until you are suffocating under their rule.

Often during abuse or depression, there are moments of hope just before they are doused and taken away. This image depicts the feelings of loss when the air is let out of our little baloon of hope. There are many times that abusers will purposefully build up our hope just to have the opportunity to take it away.

INNER VOICES

We all have those voices in our heads that reafirm how we feel and view ourselves.  For most people, it is a mix of possitive and negative feelings, but to those with mental health issues, or those who have been subjected to abusers, those voices are all negative. "I'm too fat/thin" "I'm stupid" "Nobody loves/likes me" "nobody cares about me" "I don't deserve good/nice things" and so many more.