Nightmare Moon and Her Mental Illness

I am a grown woman who loves MLP Friendship is magic
because it is the shit.
For those of you who DGAF about the show... give me a chance. I think I have the potential here to open your minds, and hearts to not only how Rad Ass Princess Luna is, but how mental illness is absolutely necessary in leadership.

I read a thread this morning that had many theories and attempts to psychoanalyze and reach a consensus on Princess Luna and her alto ego, Nightmare Moon. While these were all clever, creative, and nicely written, I am going to respectfully disagree with all of them.

I am not a psychiatrist but I am a mental shit show. And nobody knows mental illness better than a self aware, walking, breathing, mental shit show. so here we go....

PTSD, Bi Polar Disorder, Anxiety, Anger, Depression, & all that other fun shit nobody wants to be plagued with.
While we are all born with our brains wired differently and some of us are more prone to these disorders than most, the foundation of these particular disorders (usually) stem from some sort of childhood trauma (suppressed memories included), a series of minor mistakes to major failures throughout your life, and receiving criticism. Some people are capable of coming out unscathed.
But those of us who are lucky enough to hang onto these often emotionally damaging experiences-and wear the scars-we truly are fucked up in a very special way.
I do believe that a psychopath is the mental illness that is all genetics and a psychopath is born a psychopath. Don't quote me on that. I am not sure how a person comes to have Split Personality Disorder. But I would like to note that many of those on that MLP thread are confusing Split Personality Disorder with Multiple Personality Disorder. You have to look at Luna/Nightmare Moon from a Jekyll/Hyde perspective.

Nassir Ghaemi knows his shit.
In his book A First Rate Madness, this dude sums it up like a boss.
Our strongest leaders throughout history tend to suffer from a mental illness listed above. Lincoln suffered from depression. William T Sherman was a M- F'ing-BA with Bipolar Disorder. And Winston Churchill suffered from some gnarly depressive episodes AKA his "dark dog." And unlike his mentally healthy counterpart, Chamberlain, He saw right through Hitler. Without Churchill's seemingly paranoid, yet accurate judge of character, well... Chamberlain and rest of his crew would have made some terrible decisions that would have altered the course of history.
Why is this? Because in order to build realism, empathy, and resiliency you must first experience turmoil in your life. You have to suffer, fail, and learn how to heal.
You feel. You Deal. You heal. You are blessed with the ability to keep shit real.

Without Princess Luna, Equestria and Ponyville would be fucked.
Now I do not know what life in Ponyville was like before Twilight Sparkle and the other five elements of harmony came to be, but what I do know, is that it's thug life from the first episode on.
Princess Luna is a crisis leader. Straight up. A prime example is the episode where "everypony" has crippling nightmares. She jumps in. she is fast on her feet. She instinctively dives into crisis and handles business.

Celestia manages the day-to-day
She can handle the mundane shit. I compare her to George W. Bush and Richard Nixon (First Rate Madness). She is a mentally sound manager of daily tasks. But she is a terrible leader. In the heat of a crisis, Twilight and the others are often left to their own devices. At least until Twilight can come up with a game plan. And even then Celestia is not very good at helping out. She handles crisis situations similar to how the insane handle the mundane. You might also notice that she never, ever asks for feedback. Another trait of the mentally healthy. Luna values feedback. She asks others for their input. Remember that time she was struggling emotionally on account of Pinky Pie getting all of those little trick or treaters worked up over Nightmare Moon? She relied heavily on Twilight and Applejack to guide her and help her manage her bi-polar-like rapid mood cycling. This is what makes the difference between a leader and a manager. Luna is a leader. Celestia is a manager.

I could go on and on and on and on on this topic
But my 4 and 6 year old daughters are beating the shit out of each other. And So I must throw on my cape, and dive into crisis.

Thanks ya'll!