"Just suck it up," "Move on already," "Get over it!" I'm sure many of you are familiar with these phrases. We heard these messages growing up from our parents and continue to hear these phrases from some of our peers today. It would be nice if simply saying these comments to ourselves would solve whatever is causing our distress. Unfortunately, telling yourself, "Get over it," doesn't quite make things any better.

The phrases above are only part of the problem when it comes to the stigma behind mental health. These phrases imply that you "shouldn't" be vulnerable and fixing your problems is as simple as "out of sight, out of mind." What many don't realize is the individuals who tend to say these messages to others are the same ones who struggle with being vulnerable and become uncomfortable with the expression of their own emotions.

Which brings me to my next point. Our society tells us that if you talk about your issues, express your feelings, or even verbalize you have a mental health disorder, you must be "weak." Men struggle specifically with this and are expected to have a strong, powerful, and almost robot like persona. For women, the stigma quickly becomes, "She must be emotionally unstable." Try a social experiment. The next time you have an opportunity to be vulnerable by expressing how you feel, take it. If someone in the room responds with a remark to shut down the conversation rather quickly, there is a good chance you don't know much about that person's true feelings since they rarely express them out of discomfort.

If we want to eventually end the stigma behind mental health issues, we have to do the exact opposite of what the above messages are telling us to do. We must talk about it, Tweet about it, normalize it, and most importantly, not fear it! There is a tremendous amount of power in a secret. The power in this case keeps mental health discussions silenced. The more we shine light on the prevalence of mental health issues, the more power we take away from the secret.