I (23f) have been diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety, have been struggling with it since I was a teenager. I've now gone from having major meltdowns and blowout fights with my family at the age of 16 to only having a panic attack here or there and have little to no negative feelings about them directed at my family. Today I realized I made a lot of progress.

For reference my family doesn't handle emotions well at all, my dad routinely told me to bury my feelings deep down and my mom just shuts down when I try to talk about my feelings. My mom has a tendency to belittle people's problems which has been irritating me. Today, she did that over something trivial but I decided to tell her that it was hurting our relationship that instead of supporting me when I have problems she tries to make it a competition about how she had it worse when she was my age and laughs at me.

I managed to stay very collected during this exchange which is huge for me because normally this kind of confrontation would lead me to hysterically sobbing and yelling, possibly spiraling into some very dark thoughts. But I talked coolly and rationally. On the other hand, my mom was mad I even brought it up, saying that it was my mental illness that made me want to talk about it with her and asking me if I was on my meds. I told her that it was unfair that she blamed me not liking the way she belittle my problems for years on my mental illness and that I can have valid feelings that aren't because I'm "crazy". 

In the end, she said she was sorry about the belittling and she'd try to be careful. She said that the whole discussion was blown up and took too long (she said hours but it was 30 to 40 min tops) because of my mental illness and refused to acknowledge that I handled the discussion calmly, way better than I ever would before.

It just hurts that my family doesn't see my progress because they don't think it's okay to talk about your feelings at all and just shutdown. It's hard to be making progress with my mental illness but everyone blames healthy normal feelings on me being "crazy" and it's very lonely. Anyway I just wanted to vent somewhere. If you've read this thanks, and if you're making progress on your own problems and feel u acknowledge, you're not alone and I'm proud of you at the very least.