Project UROK: The Amazing Wil Wheaton

Project UROK is a nonprofit organization with the goal of de-stigmatizing mental illness — a difficult, but worthy venture. Recently Wil Wheaton made a video for them in which he opened up about his own struggles with anxiety and depression and what he had to say made me feel hopeful about my own struggles with anxiety and depression. I’m still working on getting the help I need. I’m frustrated with how slow my progress has been and I often feel like a yo-yo because I’ll start to feel okay for a week or two and then I start to feel like things are spiraling out of my control again. The past few weeks have been a little intense, but hearing about Wil’s own experiences makes me feel a little more reassured that I can learn “how to live life with depression, rather than living life through depression.”

Opening up about one’s own mental illness is really difficult. I go back and forth everyday in regards to how much I feel like sharing because the stigma of mental illness is alive and strong, but talking about it is the only way we’re going to raise awareness. Many thanks to Wil Wheaton for opening up about his own experiences. Hearing about his experiences means a lot to me because he’s someone I admire. Yes, he was the adorable Wesley Crusher in Star Trek TNG, and he was the bad-ass Fawkes in The Guild, along with many other cool characters in various films, but he’s also a super awesome human being. If you’d like to learn more about Wil Wheaton I recommend following him on Twitter and checking out his blog WIL WHEAT dot NET.