Comfort the Disturbed, Disturb the Comfortable - Mental Illness Awareness Week

It's Mental Illness Awareness Week.

This may mean nothing to some people, and it may mean everything to some people, but if one has read many of my recent blog posts, one will know that I feel rather strongly about the issue of mental illness awareness. Naturally, I have something big planned for this week, some great manifesto or well-thought-out speculation to share.

Well, I don't.

I spent most of the past few days trying to think up something to write about, coming up with a single relatively silly idea (which, while interesting, was not the great contribution to Mental Illness Awareness Week that I wanted to make), then coming up with a bunch of ideas (none of which really stood out to me as particularly interesting or strong), then coming up again with a single idea. This single idea, however, was not silly, and it was perhaps the exact thing I needed to write. And, to make a satisfying idea even more satisfying, it relates to art.

Have you ever heard that saying, "Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable?" It occurred to me that it's very applicable to the issue of mental illness. Any sort of mental illness of any variation in severity is enough to qualify one as "disturbed", where "disturbed" could mean "having great difficulty with something that most people would find easy" or "recovering from something hugely traumatic" or "unable to cope with life on a regular basis because of how one's brain works". And while I acknowledge that not all neurotypical people have easy lives (far from it; misery and hardship can strike anyone), there must be something very comfortable in having a brain that works properly and which you don't have to constantly fight.

The mentally ill are the disturbed, and the mentally well are the comfortable. I will comfort one and disturb the other.

To those living with mental illnesses:

First off, I don't pretend to be able to speak for all of us, and I know that I have it pretty easy in comparison to some of you folks. However, I can somewhat understand your problems since I am, after all, one of you, and, using my experiences and the experiences of the many mentally ill people I have known, I can hope to make some sort of statements that you might relate to and that might comfort you. If say anything that is somewhat offensive, I apologize, and if I say something that, while not offensive, does not apply to you...well, it was not directed at you.

While I can't say that your problems are normal (since the reason we even have a concept of mental illness is because it is not what people normally experience), they don't make you bad or wrong or dysfunctional or even sick. At least not by necessity. Different people handle different things in different ways - it's just something that happens because we are all very human and thus all very different from each other - and as long as the way you handle your mental illness does not hurt others or yourself, however you choose to handle it is perfectly fine.

If you're one of the roughly one out of four who have a mental illness, ideally you can treat it with professional help and/or medication, but if that's not possible, then know that (at least in some cases), it is still possible to cope with what you have. Depending on what you have, you can either learn coping tactics for how to deal with things that cause you trouble and aggravate your mental illness, or you can learn to avoid certain things while still functioning in life. Your life may look very different than other people's lives, but it will still be a life, and as long as you're pleased with it, it will be a perfectly sufficient life.

People talk about "recovery", like you get better from your mental illness someday, through a lot of therapy or a lot of meds or a lot of luck, but that's not always what happens. Some people do not recover from their mental illnesses. Actually, I could speculate that most people with mental illnesses don't "get well". But that's okay. Maybe you don't have to recover. If you're hallucinating grandiose scenarios that aren't remotely happening or so depressed that you literally cannot get out of bed or unable to go out in public for fear of panic attacks, then you need help and hopefully you get better, but that doesn't mean your problem is going to go away. You might get to a point where you just sometimes see things you can tell are probably not there, or you might have trouble motivating yourself because life is empty, or you might have to work up a great deal of courage before going out into crowds. But even those challenges aren't those experienced by most people, and you're still not entirely "well". That's not bad, though. Not everyone functions completely well or easily, and that's okay. We live in a world where things aren't perfect and where people have struggles. Some have more struggles than others, and some people's struggles may be fewer but greater, but everyone's struggles are real, and if you can cope and if you can be okay with who you are and what you're like, you don't need to worry about "recovering" or "getting well".

You go through an astonishing amount of trouble every day, trouble that the rest of the world cannot comprehend, and you deserve a bloody medal for it.

To those not living with mental illnesses but possibly around and beside them:

First off, I'm going to try to be respectful of you when I say these things, and I might get some of my perceptions of you wrong because I am not one of you, and we with mental illnesses have perhaps some negative preconceptions of you (as you have negative preconceptions with us), so if I say anything that is somewhat offensive, I apologize, and if I say something that, while not offensive, does not apply to you...well, it was not directed at you.

While it's not possible for me to speculate how your minds work (given that I am not one of you), it is quite likely that (unless you have previously suffered from a mental illness) you will not be able to comprehend what people with mental illness go through everyday.  Do not tell us our problems are "normal", because despite that a relatively large percentage of us have such problems, the reason we even have terms and diagnoses for mental illnesses (and why the field of "abnormal psychology" has that name) is because they are not normal. The fact some of you say that "people with OCD should stop worrying about unimportant little things" or "people with depression should just cheer up and stop bringing everyone else down", or "people with anxiety need to chill out" show that they do not understand what we go through nor why these things are quite impossible for most of us.

Just because you cannot understand us, however, does not mean that you can't respect us. You can read things written by people with mental illnesses (and, sometimes, truthful, unbiased medical descriptions of what's going on with us) and, if you know someone with a mental illness, you can (hopefully) talk to them about it and hear them tell you what's going on with them personally so you can better understand how to help them. 

Don't take my usage of the word "help" to mean that you should feel personally obligated to "save" people with mental illnesses, though. Because you can't do that. You may well be a very helpful and good person, but you do not possess the superhuman powers necessary to "save" someone from depression or anxiety any more than you have the ability to "save" someone from cancer or asthma. No matter how much good you bring into the lives of mentally ill people or how much you help your mentally ill friends cope with life, don't ever think of yourself as a "savior to the mentally ill", because you're not. You don't have that power.

The brain is an organ. While it has quite a few differences from lungs or hearts or kidneys (which all have quite a few differences from each other), it can get sick or be "abnormal" like any other organ can, and it should be treated as an organ. The only thing that really separates how we perceive the brain from how we perceive other organs is that it is happens to be the organ that serves the purpose of letting us make choices and control things. It doesn't mean that it can control itself.

You hear about mental illness recovery all the time, but the truth is, not all of us "recover" in the sense you'd think of, and that's okay. We don't need to be like you to be okay. You are who you are, with your own challenges and abilities, and we are who we are, with our own challenges and abilities. You are not the yardstick for success. And that's okay.

For those of you who are accepting and supporting of us, I possibly shouldn't thank you for doing so, as we are human beings, and it's your duty to accept and support your fellow human beings (and not a polite act for which to be thanked), but I am going to thank you because, being a good human being aside, you put up with some things that must try you and confuse you, and that's no small thing. Thank you.

And now, concluding this, I'm certain I haven't done a lot of good in "comforting" the disturbed nor "disturbing" the comfortable. Probably the things I said to people with mental illnesses came off as either platitudes or known facts, and probably the things I said to people without mental illnesses came off as the same. But who knows. Maybe someone with a mental illness will be reading this and be comforted by my affirmation that what they're going through doesn't make them "wrong" and that, if they never fully "recover", they're okay. And maybe someone without a mental illness will be reading this and be disturbed by my proclamation that they are not able to "save" people with mental illnesses, nor can those with mental illnesses control what they have in the ways the neurotypical would often like to them they can. And maybe something I've said here is relevant, regardless of what it was intended for or what it accomplished.