Accepting Mental Illness in Real Life
If someone having visible symptoms of a mental illness makes you uncomfortable, the solution is not for them to stop. Society needs to learn to be accepting of mental illness in more than just theory. And this doesn’t only hold true for mental health. People with illnesses and disabilities of all kinds face this kind of stigma.
I’ve been on both sides.
I remember sitting on the L train in Chicago one evening with a friend. Across the aisle, a gentleman who had been muttering to himself began to hit himself on his forehead repeatedly. It made me uncomfortable because I didn’t know how to respond. Do I intervene? Would that make things worse? Would it turn this man’s pain and anger onto me? I felt bad. I felt bad that I didn’t know what to do. And I felt frustrated with myself for being uncomfortable around this man when I prided myself on my acceptance of people with mental illnesses of all types. But it wasn’t because I lacked empathy. My heart went out to that man. I just didn’t know what to do or if I should do anything at all.
Throughout my life, I’ve spent a great deal of time trying to hide my symptoms.
There are two reasons I hid my symptoms. The first, shame. I was overflowing with shame after my schizoaffective diagnosis. Every move I made terrified me. What if someone found out? Would they leave me? Persecute me? Be afraid of me? And while some shame still lingers, I’ve become more confident in owning my disorder. But that’s the other thing. I own it. Exhibiting symptoms could potentially take away my power to decide who finds out and when. As someone with deep-seated issues with control, this is a major concern. For me, there is a sense of security in having control over that information.
But it’s getting to the point where I don’t care.
There is no reason for me to hide my symptoms. If they will prevent me from doing something, they will do so regardless of whether or not others can see them. My anxiety has the same impact on me whether I’m sitting at my desk trying not to come undone or sitting under it unfurling the threads in my seams. I’m not productive. If anything, keeping my symptoms purely invisible can prevent people from understanding what I’m going through. I know my coworkers have grown aware of my anxiety, but they have no way of knowing the level of severity if I never express it either verbally or through physical actions.
In many cases, what’s visible may actually be a coping mechanism
Actions like crying or rocking back and forth can be ways of comforting oneself. I feel better after I cry. Swaying back and forth calms me. And for some, it’s a relief to just stop caring what people think. The people I hear chattering and walking around me are there whether someone knows it or not, but shushing them or telling them to go away out loud does make me feel a bit better, like they have less control.
We think we’re breaking down stigma, but are we succeeding?
There’s been a great deal of work in mental health advocacy that has been put towards normalizing the conversation around mental illness. But, in my experience, we haven’t had as much of an impact as we think we have. It’s easy to think you are accepting of depression, but how will you feel when you see scars on someone’s body? We fight stigma around anxiety, but some still don’t have patience when something seemingly trivial triggers a burst of severe anxiety. Unfortunately, illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are often left out of the conversation altogether.
So what do we do?
I don’t have a brilliant plan about how to erase the stigma around all mental illnesses, but accepting others as they are is an important step. While I believe education on mental health disorders and brain diseases is crucial, you don’t necessarily need to fully understand a disease like schizophrenia in order to allow someone the space to experience their symptoms. If rocking back and forth helps them calm themself, let them do it. If someone wants to talk to their voices out loud, that’s a personal conversation and people ought to treat it as such. They are accepting themselves the way they are, which is something I struggled to do for years and still do on some level. But accepting others as they are is much easier to do on paper than in real life.
In meditation, we are often instructed to allow thoughts to enter your mind, acknowledge them, and then let them go. Similarly, you may notice someone displaying a behavior indicative of mental illness. It’s okay to acknowledge that and of course note if they are in danger, but then let it go. Sometimes this takes effort for me. I feel compelled to know everything and help everyone, but I try to acknowledge it and let it go. People don’t need someone meddling in their life uninvited or gawking at their symptoms. And mental illness isn’t going away. Learning to understand is incredibly important, and there is a time and a place for action, but the first step is learning to accept that people living with these illnesses are not fundamentally different. They are just people who happen to have different struggles than you do.
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