Conversations About Mental Health
It’s said that at large family gatherings, it’s best to avoid talking about religion and politics. Perhaps, because our views and opinions on these subjects can differ so greatly that it can be hard to avoid frustrating and sometimes toxic interactions. After all, it’s not always productive to converse; there needs to be some willingness to consider different views, where there aren’t two enemies who disregard each other out of principle.
Discussing certain ideas without becoming emotionally charged can be difficult for some, or to talk without verbal violence. Once someone is seen as an enemy, all sorts of tactics may be justified. People will use strawman attacks, introducing a new issue to distract from the original one. Or, ad hominem attacks, attacking the character of the person arguing rather than the argument itself. This makes the vulnerability that accompanies productive conversation potentially unwise to partake in.
They say that before you marry someone, since fights are bound to happen, you should make sure they fight fair. I’d say that’s good advice, though we don’t have the same luxury of choosing our friends that we do with our family.
With these things in mind, mental health may seem to be another subject that is best to avoid. After all, there are a range of perspectives as to why people are mentally ill and a range of ways that are proposed to promote mental wellness that can clash. Mental health deals with personhood and that can include spirituality. And spirituality - well, individual views vary.
These are issues of identity, the nature of our choice (or lack thereof), issues of responsibility and moral character. In my mind, great stuff to talk about. But, I find it’s best to do so with people who may have convictions, but are also open to working to understanding (not necessarily adopting) opposing views. After all, it could be argued that to understand an issue and its nuances fully you should be able to defend views that oppose your own.
Achieving this level of humouring is no easy task with certain issues, it can be very uncomfortable. For example, with issues of harm reduction and the opioid crisis, there is often, deep down, a view that some people’s lives aren’t worth saving. Or, there’s the dismal belief that some people are doomed and can’t be helped at all. Dark. With proper boundaries, however, you can maintain your truth, while working to understand why someone believes what they do.
It’s no wonder we avoid talking about mental health, when we can be faced with views that misunderstand our situations so much, that cut to our core, maybe even serving as a sort of gaslighting that makes us question our own truth. Finding common ground to build from can seem to be impossible.
The value of the lives of those who are mentally ill is non-negotiable, in my mind, but I can hold that view firm while working to understand another perspective. Just as I can leave my home and explore the city, and return home at the end of the day. Perhaps I’ll bring something home, perhaps not. A perspective may not be as devious as I think. Change through conversation can be positive, after all, and isn’t being progressive all about progressing away from something and to something new? At the very least we might learn a more nuanced understanding of how someone's logic is flawed.
What’s the truth about mental health? Here’s my interpretation. With mental health, I propose that there is this paradigm. On one side, which I’ll call “the right” and on the other side we have “the left”. The right believes we are where we are due to our merit (or lack thereof). Cousin Derek was struggling and pulled himself up from his bootstraps and so others should be able to.
The left believes we are where we are due to factors out of our control. In this sense, life “happens to us”. Our social positioning, trauma, all of these things dictate where a person ends up. Cousin Taylor is powerless to change, and so we should have compassion for them.
These are ideals and a simplification. In reality, Taylor may be powerless to change, but not completely. And with that power, they can respond to their circumstance. Derek may have held the impetus to move towards wellness, but that move wasn’t completely his, inevitably being powered by some context out of his control.
One of the problems with mental illness is that if we say we have a choice to improve our situation, we open the door to blame and guilt if we don’t do so. We say there’s responsibility. But we don’t always have that ability. However, if we say there is a lack of free will and that there are determining influences out of our control, we say there are ways that we lack the freedom to evolve.
I hope my paradigm is helpful. These are sensitive issues. Figuring out what’s possible for a person is a very personal pursuit. To discover what power they have and have had, and what power they don’t. This quest of defining one's recovery can be aided by conversors, who question the person's assumptions, moving them away from shame and towards realistic hope and possibility.
As for these different sorts of conversations, less combative ones where we feel comfortable sharing our own struggles; these are so important. Our vulnerability is safe. To have the space to talk about what we’re going through to trusted friends and/or family. It can take away some of the awful weight. You may even choose to set your boundaries in a way where you talk about your mental health publicly, which can be a powerful way for people to see they’re not alone in their struggles, decreasing the isolation they may be feeling.
Mental health and wellness is a sensitive subject because it deals with our identities, and what we’re made of. Things as a society we have varying views on with varying amounts of proposed certainty.
Sometimes we don’t talk about mental health, because we’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. And there are wrong things to be said, or rather, things that insinuate a lack of compassion. There are also wrong things, that insinuate a person having a lack of power.
It can be a difficult dance figuring out what’s what. But, if we make more spaces, or perhaps rather, make existing spaces more hospitable, we can defy the isolation and stagnancy that can occur when conversations are left unspoken. This will require vulnerability, and it’s this vulnerability that will move our collective conversations forward.
We might say stupid things, words we might not say if we knew their implications. We’ll feel foolish but be brave. Hopefully, we’re met not with an attack, but by being lifted up by the other person with their insight, with them recognizing that in a way they’re lifting themselves up, as ultimately, we’re of the same flesh, the same universe looking and talking to itself.
- John F. Gerrard
