There is no such thing as “sick enough”.
As I write this I am several hundred thousand kilometres and quite a few air-hours from home. No support, no back-up. Just me and my condition.
And this one truth hits home – I am responsible for managing myself.
If I need help, then I get help. I may not feel like I deserve assistance. I may loathe the idea of asking for help – I usually do – but in this case no one else is going to do it for me. Because they can’t.
They don’t know.
And why not? Because there’s no measure for when someone is “sick enough” to get help. If you saw someone bleeding, you wouldn’t stop to measure how much blood they had lost before deciding to lend a hand. That’s counterproductive – you would help, or get them help, as fast as possible. Assess their needs, sure, but not dismiss them out of hand. Because there’s no such thing as bleeding enough, is there?
And it’s the same for mental health. If I am depressive or hypomanic, then that’s reality. It is happening – it is fact. Except in my case, no one can see the medical emergency going on. It’s all internal.
It’s up to me to act.
So if you are struggling, if you feel the need for assistance, do not listen to the thought that you are not “sick enough” because that definition does not exist.