I'm not trying to protect myself from this community, nor the devs, nor the government.

I don't know if I've posted this factoid or not, but there was an instance of a family member of mine who knew about my illness and blamed themselves over it and developed a serious case of grief stricken depression that had to be treated with medication. I had no idea. It wasn't until years later that I found out, and had them talk to my doctor to reassure them that they were not to blame for my illness and that I was doing quite well.

This was also true about my mother, and I posted about this elsewhere:

I am doing remarkably well at hiding my insanity from friends and coworkers. In fact, only my immediate family knows anything is wrong. My extended family which I talk to regularly has no idea as well. Some of those people (specifically friends) are on Hubski. I don't want them to know because when I initially told my immediate family and them going through all the craziness, shit got serious for them. They feared I would be permanently hospitalized, would commit suicide, etc. I don't need nor want people thinking things like that when it's pretty obvious that's never going to happen. When Robin Williams died I mentioned (stupidly) to my mom that he had bipolar. I think that freaked her out, again fearing I might commit suicide like him knowing I have similar issues. I want to make it clear to anyone who does discover this account, that's just plain not going to happen. It's impossible, I wouldn't be able to do it nor would I ever want to. I've already experienced the worst of my illness and I didn't do it then.

I also have friends who are psychotic who, when the wrong coworker found out that coworker became the biggest bully in the world. He shouted about the illness over the rooftops, and the company decided that the mentally ill individual was to blame for the situation simply because he was sick and brought the situation into the workplace. He was fired.

I also know other mentally ill people who were bullied to the extent that they committed suicide. People I called friends. I have heard of, but not known personally, instances of mentally ill patients being physically harmed because they figured in the eyes of the court they would not be believed if they accused someone else of a violent crime.

A lot of these statements being made are practically accusing me of trying to deceive this community. No, I'm trying to protect my identity. Not from the government, I really don't give a shit about them, nor do I care about the devs. I am protecting both myself from average people who are either malicious in their intent (it is very very common) or people who are vulnerable to becoming depressed or ill themselves over blaming themselves for my illness or worrying over it.

I will not apologize for defending my own safety, my own mental well being, and others' mental well being. If you are ignorant about the stigma associated with mental illness that is fine because it is quite common. Informing people of things like what the stigma feels like is exactly what I'm going to attempt to solve by being here. I wish to inform people of what it's like to live with illness, not just the aspects that involve the illness itself.

If a woman in a physically abusive relationship were to come on hubski and try to talk about her experiences, would you attack them for hiding their identity as well?

All I (was) trying to do was not tie my interests together in one account. It's very easy to figure out that someone who watches Homeland, Supernatural, and Modern Family who also listens to Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus, and also believes in and speaks out for gay rights, could actually be the person sitting right next to them, triggering them to investigate the account and find out that yes, this is in fact their coworker.

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