Having Difficult Conversations: Depression Edition

The last couple of days have been hard for me. I’m moving out of my apartment and the whole “leaving the country” thing is starting to get real. That means my emotions have been all out of whack, and I’ve been trying to rely on the coping skills I’ve built up in the past year to deal in a healthy manner. One of the things that I’ve really been trying to practice is asking my friends for help when I’m in a bad place, particularly if I think I’m going to use symptoms. But as I experiment with this, I’ve noticed that there are some serious potential pitfalls to asking for help. As someone who wants to be a responsible adult who manages their emotions without demanding things from other people, I want to be able to ask for help without being manipulative, obnoxious, or clingy.

The first issue I’ve run into is that when I tell someone that I think I’m about to use symptoms (especially self-harm), it can come across as extremely manipulative. “Pay attention to me or else!” it screams. “If you’re actually busy and can’t make time, it is ALL YOUR FAULT if bad things happen” seems to be hiding under “I think I want to hurt myself”. Partially this is your support person’s responsibility: they need to learn that they are not responsible for your behavior, and that a request for help is not the same as foisting off responsibility. Oftentimes when we think we’re going to use symptoms we have to pull out every coping mechanism we have, and even when we do everything right we still slip up and do the thing we’re not supposed to do. That’s ok. Part of being a good support person is knowing that you can’t fix the other person or control their behavior.

All of that being said, there are better and worse ways to ask for help. Any “if…then” statements should probably be avoided (e.g. if you don’t talk to me then I will hurt myself). If you are capable of letting your support person know what it is you want from them, that’s also preferable (instead of just saying HELP, say “I want to talk to you/I want someone here/I want a giant hug and a bowl of ice cream”). One of the hardest parts of this for me is giving the other person a way to say no if they legitimately feel as if they can’t help in that moment. It comes across as super passive aggressive when you say “well it’s not important but…” or “don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine…”. These things seem to imply that you really really actually do want and need the other person you just don’t want to be pushy about it. I have yet to find a really solid method of signalling to my friends that it’s ok for them to say no in nasty jerkbrain situations, but thus far the best method has been to let them know that I do have other people I can go to.

But there is some tension in trying not to put too much pressure on someone while also letting them know that you are really truly struggling. This does actually make a difference because a. if you want help it’s best to be honest about that rather than just trying to chat with someone and then halfway through sliding your problem into the conversation and b. your friend might be a lot more willing to make themselves available if they know what’s up. There’s a balance to be found between signalling that you really could use some help and that your support person should probably prioritize this interaction higher than any old chat, but also signalling that they have the space to set boundaries and take care of themself. I suppose this is just a microcosm of the struggle that is all human interaction, namely finding ways to get what you yourself need while allowing the people you interact with to get what they need as well.

So even asking for help is extremely difficult, but let’s say that you ask your friend for some time and they say yes: one of the other things that is extremely difficult is that when you’re in the midst of a depressive episode, your honest to god feelings are things that are not deemed socially appropriate. They’re things that no one knows how to respond to, they’re things that are ugly and gross and embarrassing. And quite often, they come with an intensity that means it can feel as if you’re beating your friend about the head and shoulders with your Sad!feels.

I have been on the receiving end of an interaction in which one party just throws all of their depression at me. It’s overwhelming and leaves the support person fairly incapable of doing anything useful or helpful. It feels icky and like the individual is fishing for compliments and over the top. Especially when the depression feels are of the self-hating variety, it’s like walking through a minefield (often because the person with the self hatred feels both wants to be contradicted and validated).

The problem is that when you are in the midst of feeling incredibly depressed, you really truly feel that you are the least lovable human being on the planet, and that you’re ugly and horrible and stupid and disgusting and cruel and selfish. And for me personally, I often just want to be able to say those things out loud to get them out of my head. But what do you and your support person do with those ugly words once they’re out in the open? How do you make them something that is ok to talk about and acknowledge and validate while also letting your support person pull you back onto the solid ground of facts and reality?

I mean, if I knew the answer to this I’d probably be making a lot of money off of an innovative therapy technique, but it seems to me that it might be a good idea to ask your support people to set up some ground rules with you before you’re in the midst of a shitty headspace. These might include: no invalidation (I get to feel however I want), if you have evidence that might change my feelings, please present it, or here is our secret signal for when I just need you to listen to how I feel. Conversations in which someone who has a mental illness can actually tell another person what they feel about themselves without being judged and without putting pressure on the other person to fix or reassure are few and far between, but they also have the potential to be transformative. While they are difficult and terrifying and vulnerable, they also illustrate to someone with mental illness that those bits they feel the most shame about are acceptable and wanted. I’m still working on my scripts for these conversations, but hopefully we can share them as we make them.

Wanderlust and Fear

It’s springtime, and that means that my wanderlust is out in full force. Not just wanderlust for travelling, but for anything new and different. I’ve suddenly decided that I need some new friends and new piercings and new hangouts and new everything. Everywhere I go people look more interesting and shiny than the people I know and love. Different clothes look like they would make for a better persona than the boring one I have now. I’ve thrown myself into TV shows and books as a way to be someone else for a time, but that won’t hold off the need for change too long.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who gets these fits of longing. I’m not the only one who sometimes gets bored of my life or myself or my relationships, even though I know that the people and places and things I surround myself with are quality. And yet I rarely hear people talk about it. I think we’re often afraid of saying that we’re not loving the space we’re in unless we’re ready to change the space we’re in, because others generally interpret a complaint or criticism as reason to end a relationship, leave a job, or change yourself.

But it’s a very real experience to both want to stay where you are and feel dissatisfied. Human beings are capable of looking at the long run and seeing that the place we’re in is good for us, even if we feel trapped in the moment. But I’m wondering how to balance my need for new and exciting things with the need for security and the fear of losing the things that I love.

I know that at heart I am a bit of a homebody. I don’t actually like things that are supposedly edgy. I like routine. Many of the new and interesting people I’m staring at are probably peacocking and likely would start to drive me nuts after just a few hours spent together. And yet sometimes I’m bored with myself. I’m bored with my need for schedule and structure. I’m bored by the ways I follow rules. I’m bored by the fact that I’ve lived my whole life in the same place. I’m bored by my lack of rebellious teen phase. So what do I do?

One of the beautiful things about life is that it is not a zero sum game. While we do have a limited amount of time and energy, there is no limit on the number of people we can care about, things that can excite us, or places we can love. The difficult part of this is finding ways to keep up contact with your current habits while also trying out new ones. Especially when we’re talking about people (friends, significant others), it’s hard to let them know that you might need to go AWOL for a bit because you’re feeling a bit claustrophobia with your life.

I’m afraid of losing my friends and past hobbies if I let myself explore a bit. I want to know how to have a conversation that says “I love you, but for this moment I want to try something new. You probably won’t see me for a bit. I’ll be back though, I promise.” I don’t know how to continue to grow and incorporate my past into my future.

There is simply so much to do and so many people to meet and love that at times I think I shouldn’t even bother trying to break out of my patterns. But instead I’m going to try to listen to the part of me that says explore. Perhaps I’ll make a few stupid choices along the way, just for fun (because rule followers like me aren’t too good at this). I’m going to try meeting new people and trying out a new hobby and going somewhere new. Because I can, and because I know that the people I truly want in my life are the ones who are willing to be a bit patient while I gallivant off to be myself for a bit.

A Change In Perspective

It’s been a bit of a rough week here in Olivialand. I’ve had some ups and downs in my family life, and a friend that I care a great deal about has had an incredibly bad week. The good thing about having these two events happen at the same time is that I was treated to opposing sides of the mental health talk: that of the person suffering, and that of the person who wants to help. Because of this kind of parallel, I’ve had a chance to gain some insight about the people who have tried to help me, and I think that the conversation between the perspectives can be beneficial for both sides.

One of the things that’s always been hard for me while dealing with treatment and my mental illness is having sympathy for my friends and family, particularly when they become scared and will do just about anything to change my behavior. There have absolutely been times when people close to me have acted inappropriately out of fear, most often in attempts to keep me safe. They’ve done things that hurt me, scare me, and feel overly controlling.

For quite some time I’ve felt resentment about this. I’ve felt like I have to be the one who manages everyone else and that I can’t be open with people because then I’ll have to deal with their fallout and freakout. I’m sure anyone who’s dealt with mental illness has had these feelings before, because no support person comes ready made with a  perfect knowledge of how to support you, and that means sometimes they step in it. Lately in particular I’ve been feeling as if my family wants to control me and keep me close to them so they can keep tabs on my behavior and I’ve been a bit frustrated with it.

However this week has put me on the other side of the spectrum. I have felt the utter helplessness, the desire to just grab the person who is suffering and hold them, the need to make things better. I’ve been part of discussions that desperately try to find some way to ask the other person to listen, to change, to grow. I’ve seen how someone I love and care for is not acting like themself, is lashing out and being cruel, is seeing everything anyone says as negative. It’s so frustrating to see how someone is falling apart and not be able to show them all the ways they’re being self-destructive and all the ways you know they could fix it. There’s this certainty that if they just did what you told them, you would make it better.

Of course that’s not actually true, and probably my solution would be to see a therapist which is a whole bucketfull of hit or miss and really hard work by itself. What is true is that when one is spiraling out of control in depression or anxiety or any other mental illness, it might be a good idea to trust your support crew for a while because they’re likely thinking a little more clearly than you are. What’s also true is that your support crew is not at their best because they’re terrified and they really want you to trust them for a while, so they may resort to bad tactics.

High emotion situations mean that no one is acting at their best. In the situation, it’s easy to always see how the other person is behaving badly rather than take into account the ways that you yourself are not acting the most rational. Experiencing both at the same time made me realize how I was getting frustrated with others for doing the exact same things that I do when I’m put into their same situation. And when you’re already stressed out and frustrated it becomes infinitely harder to cut others slack. Of course this is the most important time to do it.

What I’ve learned most about this situation is that while it’s ok to be frustrated or hurt by someone else’s actions, getting angry and retaliating is the worst possible response. Cutting some slack, recognizing that people are being motivated by fear, trying to see that it’s not actually about you, and then calmly setting boundaries is probably the best response (although like any ideal it’s nearly impossible). In reality, I will probably do my best to balance the anger that I feel when someone violates my boundaries with my understanding that they do so from fear.

When someone is spiraling and they lash out at those trying to help, I will remember what it feels like to have my coping  mechanisms yanked out from under me, to be confronted with the sort of person that I’m being, to have people tell me that I’m not being a very good version of myself. I will remember how much that hurts.

When someone I love starts to hold on a bit too tight, I’ll remember the panicked feeling that there’s got to be some guarantee that will make your loved one safe, that they need to get better, that they can’t see how bad it is. I’ll remember all the words and scripts that flooded my mind when I saw someone hurting themself. I’ll remember how nothing I say seems like the right thing, but that I know I can’t just sit back and do nothing.

There are no good solutions to a mental health scare. But I’m making a commitment to try to do better by the people around me by having more patience.

Why I Hate the Phrase “Start a Family”

It’s not uncommon for a young couple to mention that they’re looking to “start a family” or for someone who is looking for a spouse to say that part of what they want is to be able to “have a family”. We all know what people mean when they say this: they mean that they want to have kids. As someone who has no interest whatsoever in having children, this phrase implies many things that seem unhelpful and backwards to me.

First, it limits what a family can be, and it almost always means heterosexual, monogamous, cis partners with children. It cuts out any other family structure, even those that may include children. Generally the implication is that if you are not biologically related to the children, you don’t have a family. Adoption is placed on a lower tier, poly families make NO SENSE AT ALL, and GLBT families are utterly excluded (despite the fact that they can and do have kids).

But what really rubs me the wrong way about this is the idea that children are what make a family. Families are the people who are closest to us, who support us, who care for us, who we include in our most intimate decisions. They are not defined exclusively by blood: you can marry into a family, adopt into a family, or even (if you so choose) include certain friends or partners as part of your family. Each different way that we bring people into our lives in an intimate way is important and valid. Every formation of family improves our lives by giving us a support system and people who care for us (I am not referring to abusive structures here, but rather just different ways of setting up healthy relationships). And without these adult, caring, supportive, interdependent relationships, we cannot be healthy people.

So why is it that children are what defines “starting a family”? Didn’t all of us start our families the moment we had an intimate relationship, a close friend, a good relationship with our parents or our siblings, or provided support and care for our extended family? What does it say about how we value adult to adult relationships if a family only counts when we have kids?

This devaluing of adult to adult relationships has some serious consequences. It means that adults are pressured not to take time to connect with their friends, their siblings, their spouse or partners, or their mentors. When adults don’t take the time to establish healthy family networks of all types, that means they don’t have support and care when they need it. They don’t have someone they can ask to babysit or help out if they’re called in to work last minute. They don’t have other role models and mentors for their kids. They don’t have people who can support them if they lose a job or need health care. They don’t have people who can talk to them and support their emotional and mental needs. It means we have adults who don’t learn how to do the appropriate self-care of having a support network and taking time to be with other adults.

It also devalues the lives, accomplishments, and relationships of those who can’t or choose not to have children. The implication when someone says “start a family” to mean having a child is that those who don’t have children will never have families. It once again sends the message (especially to women) that their lives will be empty and alone if they don’t have kids. It says that they can’t possibly be getting the same kind of fulfillment and joy out of the relationships that they do have because they don’t “have a family”. Who on earth would want to refrain from having children? They won’t have a family!

All of this plays into the pressure to build your family in a certain way. It plays into the idea that unless you’re married or blood related, your relationship isn’t as important (which disproportionately affects people who are already oppressed). And this means legal rights, like right of attorney and inheritance. It means that I would not be able to visit the person I’ve lived with for the last 2 years if she were in the hospital simply because she’s “just a friend”.

It also means that children who have abusive or cruel parents are pressured to continue to interact with them, honor them, and respect them simply because of biology. It artificially divides relationships into “important, family” and “not important, other” through biology and the parent/child relationship.

This may seem like an unimportant phrase that comes from another time when families were all built a certain way. But the phrase implies that families look one way and there is one time when you begin to build your family. That’s simply not true and the consequences are that people are left more divided and more alone than they need to be.

I’m not playing by those rules anymore. I started a family ages ago. I started when I decided I wanted to put in the work to have a good relationship with my parents. I started when I decided to reach out to my brother. I started when I chose to reach out to new people and tell them that I care for them and wanted them in my life. I have a family. I don’t need to start one.

My Friends

There are people in my life who challenge me. They make me aware of the things that I once thought and that still creep into my mind. I look at them and I see the lies float past and my only defense is to remind myself “this person is my friend. They are wonderful. I love them. Every person I think these thoughts of is a friend, wonderful, loved. Each person I think these thoughts of has the rich individual experience that I do.” These people teach me about the inner lives of difference.

 

I have a friend who’s severely overweight. I don’t see him often, and in my mind he loses weight. I bring him closer to what I view as normal, closer to everyone else I know. The other day a picture of him popped up on Facebook and I felt a flash-flood of disgust before the shame set in. This is my friend. How dare I change his body to fit my expectations? How dare I ask myself who he is to be Other? How dare I feel disgust at him, someone who feels and thinks and exists in all the complex ways that I do? How dare I reduce him to his body, to the intimate ways that he feels the world and fills the spaces around him, ignoring how his neurons fill that body and his mind is so intimately tied with its senses and he is his body?

 

This is one of my challenges.

 

I have a friend who is trans*. Most days I don’t think about his sexuality or his gender. Most days it doesn’t matter because he is my wonderful, sweet, perfect friend. But every now and then I find myself wondering, my mind probing at what he’s like, asking what his name used to be (I’M SO SORRY), and I know I’ve crossed the line when I remember that his body and what his body looks like is so much less than the whole of him. It is such a miniscule piece, one that is so unimportant to our relationship that I can’t fathom why I would wonder about it. He is so much more. His stories, his perspective, his experience: they transcend my questions about his genitalia (and let’s be honest, I really shouldn’t have those questions anyway).

 

This is one of my challenges.

 

There are so many of these people, people who are complex and interesting, people who are my token people. I wish they were not my token people. I wish I knew more of them (this is not helped by the fact that I am antisocial). I wish I could understand their lives in a deeper way, and my challenge is that I have only one and I must fight against making them a token in my life. They challenge me every time I recognize them as more  than an idea, more than their weight or their gender or their sex or their race. I know that they are more than that, and my training in this world has left me incapable of separating them from it. And so they challenge me.

 

I want to tell myself their stories. I want to be honest with myself when I see others like them and remind myself that they see the world each day through their own eyes, that they struggle and love and feel, that they wonder and feel hurt and imagine how I see them. I want to see them with full lives, with full minds, with full thoughts. And so my friends challenge me, and I thank them. They remind me that behind each pair of eyes, each face that I don’t understand, there are worlds I cannot imagine.