I dropped my freshly cooked lunch all over the carpet. It wasn’t the reason I broke down just outside my office, but it was all the excuse I needed. I fell to my knees, screamed at the carpet, and cried as I shakily cleaned up my food. Then I sat down to write this paragraph. The rest of my breakdown would have to wait until work was done for the day.

Like 46 million Americans (according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness), I regularly deal with a mental illness that has the potential to disrupt my daily life. Some days it comes in the form of an emotional breakdown that stops everything I’m doing dead in its tracks. Most of the time, though, it is quieter. It can be a haze that makes work slow, or it can stifle ideas when I need them most.

Unlike many physical illnesses or disabilities, having a mental illness isn’t always visible to the people you work with. This can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it means you might not face as much open discrimination as someone with a more visible condition. On the other hand, when your mental illness makes doing your work difficult, to outsiders it can look as if you’re just not doing your job well, which also makes it hard to get the support you need.

Fortunately, United States law provides some protections for people with mental illnesses — just as they do for any physical disability — but they go only so far. Here, we’ll go over some of the support you can expect from your employer, but we’ll also discuss strategies you can use to get through the day, even when you’re not feeling your best.