Musings on Mental Health Activism

In a perfect world, all people would have a basic understanding of mental illness and respect that it is very real and painful. In a perfect world, if someone disclosed their mental health status and said that it affected their decisions and life, other people would respect that without requiring evidence, gory details, or an exact explanation of how serious it really was (are you sure it wasn’t all in your head?)

Alas, this is not the world we live in. Disclosing mental health status often comes with a round of questioning and well intentioned but utterly unhelpful suggestions (have you tried exercising?) that can quickly put one on the defensive. I personally have felt pressure when writing about my mental health to engage in the “just how bad was it?” defensiveness, pre-emptively listing out symptoms and consequences to illustrate that no really, this needed to be taken seriously.

Nearly every article I read about mental illness feels the need to either specify that depression is a serious illness (if it’s a scientific or research based piece) or take a large chunk of its time to describe the internal experience (if it’s on the subjective side). There’s certainly nothing wrong with that impulse, and subjective descriptions of mental illness are incredibly important to increasing awareness and understanding, but almost never do I see someone write about an experience they had that was influenced by their mental illness without focusing heavily on symptoms and vivid, graphic descriptions.

This makes sense to some extent, but it seems odd to me that we cannot have mental illness be an influence in our lives without going the extra distance to explain the exact details. In the world as it stands, there is not enough understanding of mental illness to mention it as a factor without making your statement/article/conversation about mental illness.

Here’s where I get hung up.

As someone who wants to increase understanding and awareness of mental illness and mental health issues, as someone who is aware of these dynamics and the ways in which stigma against mental illness contributes to the requirement that mentally ill people prove how hard things are for them every.single.time, do I proceed by molding myself into the Good Depressed Person and patiently describing over and over (in the level of detail required by my listener to really understand) what it’s like in my head? Or is there something radical in simply letting myself say “I am depressed and that led to x, y, or z” without backtracking, explaining, or questioning myself?

There may be space for both of these options in the world of mental health activism. It’s easy to see how speaking openly about the internal experience of mental illness is part of activism. It very clearly increases awareness and understanding, and can help others respect the seriousness of a mental illness, as well as the fact that it is not a choice or a lifestyle. There are downsides though. I worry that making personal stories a constant factor in every discussion of mental illness sets an unhealthy precedent that people’s stories are required to be public. I worry that we’re painting a picture of mental illness that feeds into certain romantic notions of things like anorexia, while playing into the voyeuristic pleasure some people get in hearing about disturbing and graphic symptoms. I see this especially in discussions of self harm when the questions immediately turn to how deep, how often, where, pics.

It might be that having both tactics is the best choice so that we can continue to educate others about mental illness in a serious way while also recognizing that sometimes it isn’t the only or overwhelming factor in an individual’s life. Sometimes it’s just a part of life, like a twingy ankle or allergies. It gets in the way, but it doesn’t destroy.

Again, ideally, this could be a great way to move forward in activism. The problem comes with the lived experience of trying to mention your mental illness without defending it. People push. People overlook it. People argue and debate and yell after you’ve said you’re triggered. People invoke all the stereotypes of mental illness that you’ve been working so hard to fight against (lazy, taking the easy way out, not trying hard enough). These things, even if you know that they are unwarranted and are ignoring a very real factor (mental illness) hurt.

I don’t think anyone is obligated to always educate others when they talk or write about their mental health. You’re allowed to say “this thing triggered me, which relates to the rest of what I’m talking about in ways x, y, and z” without having to explain how your triggers came to be, what triggering looks like for you, and exactly how real and serious the experience was. I just don’t know how to let people do that while protecting them from the less informed folks who will take that as an opportunity to berate them for not liking triggery thing, or for not being able to cope with a situation, or whatever the case may be. And I don’t know how to recognize that people 100% have the right not to explain themselves while also knowing that these incidents might not help the larger aims of mental health activism.

This is the forever balancing act of oppressed groups that want to make things better. In order to gain the rights and treatment you know that you should have, you often need to play by the damaging rules of society as it is, putting you in a place to get hurt and perpetuating those same rules. How radical can we be in acting as if the world had already accepted us? While it might be idealistic and forward thinking to expect everyone to know about mental illness, does it actually do anyone any good when it comes to securing rights and reducing stigma?

There are no clear answers here about the “right” way to approach discussions about mental health or activism, but I wish we knew better how to help improve the world around us without making ourselves so vulnerable.

Why I Ship Spuffy

One of the oldest debates in fandom is Spuffy vs. Bangel. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer immediately and then report back. Done? Ok, good. Now I realize that this debate hasn’t really been active in quite a while, but it’s one that’s close to my heart and one of my friends recently told me that he doesn’t think Buffy and Spike should be together. I immediately told him we could never speak again until he changes his mind, and in the spirit of that I will now definitively tell you why Spuffy is the best ship ever (ok maybe not, but I do think there are some truly beautiful things about their relationship).

Now I am the first to admit that in season 6 their relationship is abusive. Wholly abusive. Spike does not in any way understand consent (he badgers her until she has sex with him many times, will physically restrain her when she tries to leave his presence, and regularly ignores her requests). Buffy on the other hand just uses him and then proceeds to insult him, berate him, yell at him, beat him up, and generally act emotionally abusive (“you’re not a man. You’re a thing”).

But Spike is right when he points out that they understand each other: both of them are broken people who don’t understand how they fit into the universe and are attempting to fulfill roles that will never be quite right for them. Buffy will never be the perfect, motivated, “good” Slayer that she was before she died. Spike will never be the big bad that he was before he got his chip. Both of them are struggling with feeling pointless, and both of them see themselves in the other. Spike has always had a talent for truth telling (see season 3, Love Walk, when he tells Buffy and Angel that they will never be friends) and he is the only of Buffy’s lovers that doesn’t idealize her in some way: he sees her dark bits and he loves those bits. He loves her complexity and her struggle because it makes her human, it makes her relatable, it makes her stronger: he sees that she has to choose over and over to continue in a life that isolates her, and she does it because it is right. He doesn’t try to sugarcoat that fact for her, he simply reminds her that it makes her an amazing human being.

Beyond their recognition of similarities in each other, one of the more amazing things about Spike is that he actually improves himself because of Buffy: he goes to get his soul. Some people might interpret this as the ultimate nice guy move (I got my soul back for you, now date me!), but if you look at his face after he realizes that he nearly raped her, he is fully disgusted by his own actions and wants to change. His motivation is more that he doesn’t want to hurt her anymore. There are few examples of relationships in media in which one party recognizes that they have behaved badly towards the other and then chooses of their own volition to make serious changes to their self and their life in order to be better and do better. I am amazed at the strength of Spike’s love that it allows him to do this. Not even Willow could. When Tara left her over magic using, Willow kept on going. But Spike, the moment he realizes how seriously his lack of soul is fucking up his relationship with Buffy, makes a change.

Once season 7 rolls around, things are very different between Buffy and Spike, not only because Spike has a soul, but because both of them have healed somewhat as people. Any relationship between two individuals who are deeply depressed will be fucked up. So while season 6 is part of their history, I don’t see that relationship as the best representation of what they can be together, because it isn’t the best representation of either of them as people. So let’s look a bit at season 7, shall we?

Once it hits this season, Spike has fully recognized Buffy as an autonomous person. Angel, Parker, Riley (especially Riley), all try to manipulate Buffy’s actions in some fashion. They want her to love them or not to love them or to be less strong or fulfill her destiny. Spike does none of these things. He backs her up, he challenges her when he disagrees with her, but he truly recognizes that she can exist fully without him and that he does not need to get her to behave in any particular way. Buffy in return begins to see Spike as someone deserving of compassion, someone with a complex history whose heart has been broken over and over and who simply needs love (see: “Can we rest now?”). While she doesn’t know if she can love him, she is content to be with him in a wholly present fashion that is incredibly healing for Spike. From the looks of it, no one else in his life has ever done that (certainly not Cecily and Dru was never really what you’d call present).

There is a great deal of tenderness in their relationship in season 7. Each of them has moments of complete vulnerability during which they show the parts of them that hurt the most, and in return the other listens, holds them, and simply reminds them that they are worthy. Each of them has come through a great deal of loneliness (Spike in his human life and when Dru left him) and confusion, and this gives them far more understanding of what the other is going through. What’s beautiful about this is that it shows how deeply two broken people can love. While season 7 doesn’t contain any crazy sex or passionate kisses, I would argue that it has the most passionately loving scenes in the whole series. In the last episodes when Buffy stays in an abandoned house with Spike, he gives her a bit of a pep talk. It is honest, loving, intense, and emotional. It is perhaps the most passionate thing I’ve ever seen in my life. That mix of gentleness and deep passion for the other person is what makes their relationship work so well. They hold each other so carefully because they know what it is to be hurt.

Spuffy has always given me hope that even if we have a past of pain and cruelty and confusion, we can learn from those things the compassion to love imperfect people. It doesn’t pretend that either party is good. It recognizes each of their faults and allows them to exist as they are while still loving each other, and even to love each other because of their faults. I don’t like aphorisms about learning from your pain or how bad things make us stronger or better in some fashion. But if there is one relationship in all of media that would convince me that having hurt in your past can expand your ability to have compassion, to care deeply for someone, and to make yourself vulnerable, it would be this one. The quiet moments in which Buffy simply asks Spike to hold her show so clearly how two people can take care of each other in the worst of situations.

If you’re not convinced of the beauty of Spuffy at this point, you have no heart. And so I will leave you with the most touching speech I know of, from Spike to Buffy.

“You listen to me. I’ve been alive a bit longer than you, and dead a lot longer than that. I’ve seen things you couldn’t imagine, and done things I prefer you didn’t. I don’t exactly have a reputation for being a thinker. I follow my blood, which doesn’t exactly rush in the direction of my brain. So I make a lot of mistakes, a lot of wrong bloody calls.  And 100+ years, and there’s only one thing I’ve ever been sure of: you.  Hey, look at me. I’m not asking you for anything. When I say, “I love you,” it’s not because I want you or because I can’t have you. It has nothing to do with me.  I love what you are, what you do, how you try. I’ve seen your kindness and your strength. I’ve seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You’re a hell of a woman. You’re the one, Buffy.”

My Body Is My Self

I have a fiery hatred for Cartesian dualism. There are well documented problems with dualism, and modern neuroscience indicates a close relationship between the physical aspects of the brain and the subjective experiences of the mind. Being embodied can really suck sometimes (trust me, I have an eating disorder), but one of the important elements of being mentally healthy for me is accepting not only that I have a body but that in many ways I am my body.

I recently posed the question to a friend “if you were removed from your body and put into a robot, would you still be you?” I suggest no, as the ways that I can think of to define self nearly all rely on bodily experiences: our actions, our thoughts, our feelings, our values. These things are all highly dependent on what we sense and how we sense, and are affected by the ways that our bodies work. A well fed body acts, thinks, and feels differently than a hungry body. These experiences of being dependent on something that is changeable and fallible seem to be an essential part of being human.

Even when we think of the memories and narratives that we have, our bodies are essential to a sense of self. Memories are often sensory experiences, dependent on what we perceived and the emotions elicited in the moment. There’s evidence that smell is more connected to memory than other senses, which points towards the idea that our memories are colored by both our fallible and finite brains, and the ways that our body is capable of processing an experience. Even the stories that we tell about ourselves are highly influenced by our bodies, if only because our social position is affected by our weight and height and strength and gender presentation. It’s easy to imagine that our concept of selfhood is entirely abstract or mental, but most of our emotions are experienced physically, and things like stress or relaxation are very physical, embodied experiences.

All of this is to say that I’m firmly convinced that me, Olivia, is not simply my conscious experience, but my conscious experience as situated in this body, and that if I were to be transplanted there would be a pivotal change in my essential identity. I’m not entirely sure what this means as far as continuity of identity or whether or not we can really assert that we have an underlying self that continues to exist through all our experiences except insofar as we have memories and stories, but that’s not the focus for today.

Instead, I want to talk about sex.

Some people are totally down with casual sex, and this post is not for them. This post is about why (at least for me and probably some other people too) sex can seem so intimate and personal, why it seems so vulnerable, and why for some people it feels violating. One of the reasons that I am starting to consider labeling myself “sex-averse” is because of the highly intertwined nature of self and body. I trust very few people with the more intimate parts of myself. Sure, I’m open about the fact that I have an eating disorder, and I write about my experiences here, but in person there are many, many things I don’t talk about often. Many of these things are embodied experiences: sexual assault, self harm, purging. My experience of my body is one of pain, and more often than not it is a solitary experience because these things are shameful.

It is deeply embarrassing and terrifying to me to let that side of me be real, to actually be quiet and vulnerable in my body. My body is puke and blood and tears and snot. That is not the intimacy I want. I can grudgingly accept that those things are a part of me, but I don’t want to dwell on them or revel in them. It’s possible that at some point in the future my body will become something else to me: strength or grace. But those elements, those animal elements, the things that we cannot control will always be an essential part of having a body and of sharing that body.

For many other people, discomfort with sex is about judgment. It’s easy to write this off as the same kind of fear of judgment we have when we’re going to the beach and showing more skin than usual, or when we’re spending some serious one on one time with someone. I tend to think it’s more than that though, which is where questions of dualism come in. I’m sure some people are fairly capable of bifurcating self from body (although I also am fairly sure that this is somewhat illusory for the reasons presented above). But I think that some of us feel the “me”ness of our bodies more: we feel intimately that my body is not simply something that belongs to me or a bit of meat that carries me around, but is in fact an integral part of how I experience the world and what makes up my worldview.

I feel this quite thoroughly when I am in sexual situations, and that’s a major part of why they are so intimate to me. I am not simply sharing pleasure with someone or sharing my body with someone: I am sharing one of the most essential elements of self with another person, the part of me that is my only way of connecting to the world. This is perhaps why all physical contact is intimate to me in a way that speaking is or writing is not: it demands that I am present.

And because allowing another person to experience your body is so close to letting them experience you (just as having a serious, deep conversation is, or showing them something you care deeply about is), it becomes so much more rife with potential judgment than other situations, and when judgment occurs it is much more painful. It feels far more like a rejection of self than many other circumstances.

Perhaps all of this is overthinking things, but I think it’s too easy to write off our bodies as simple mechanisms that allow us to feel pleasure and pain, or get from point a to point b. There is so much more to them, so much that is terrifying and disgusting, but also that is intimate, vulnerable, and exciting. For the moment, the selfhood of my body makes me want to shy away from physical contact, but perhaps in the future it will make it more fulfilling. However it ends up interacting with my sexuality, I want to be aware of my body and its role in my self-identity before I gallivant off into the land of sex.

Safe Spaces: CONvergence

I am back from CONvergence and ready to post about all the fantastical things that happened there. Not really, I’d much rather just still be there, but as I don’t have that option I will console myself by reliving the weekend with a billion posts about the topics that caught my interest while I was there.

The first thing that I noticed while I was at Con, something that made me both very happy and very sad, was the high number of people I noticed who had self harm scars. Not only did they have self harm scars, but they were wearing clothing that openly showed their scars, and they seemed utterly unbothered by the fact that others could see. Perhaps even better was the fact that I never once saw or heard someone comment on scars or react negatively in any way.

To most, this might seem unimportant. Con is a place where everyone is utterly and completely themselves. I saw someone dressed as a cat walking on all fours and reacting to a “master’s” commands. I saw people in costumes, people with colorful hair of every known variety, people covered in tattoos, people who were on the extreme ends of fat and skinny, people with almost no clothes on, people walking on stilts…one of the most beautiful things about going to Con is that everyone there is presenting exactly as they want to be perceived.

And yet when I was preparing for the weekend, choosing my cosplays, getting dressed each morning, I was fully aware of the fact that I didn’t think it was totally ok to expose some of my scars. As an example, for the last two years I’ve had cosplays with short shorts (Femme!Hammer and Amy Pond):

In contrast, this year both of my costumes had full length pants involved (Coraline and Orange is the New Black Nicky). I made this choice purposefully because of new scars on my legs. In my mind, despite how safe Con is, nowhere was safe enough for self harm scars. I remembered vividly hearing one of my friends mention at a past Con being triggered by the sight of self harm scars on someone’s arm. I deeply did not want to be that trigger for someone else.

And I was certain that if I did show scars, there would be a comment or a look. The special ones. The ones that say “I have no idea how to react to this, I’m so uncomfortable” or “gross, that’s so fucked up”. What I forgot was that the community of people who actively seek out geeky nerdy activities has a huge percentage of people who have had major struggles in their lives. It draws in people who have been bullied or ostracized, people whose day to day lives hurt too much to stay there in their fun time, people who need an escape and unmitigated acceptance. If there was any place that I would find a group of people with similar experiences, people who have needed to use negative coping mechanisms, it would be here.

And so while these scars can be triggering, and there were a few iffy moments this weekend, I really appreciate how open people were with their bodies. There is such vulnerability in having your worst moments visible on your skin. It’s so easy to choose not to let others see them, even when it means you are less comfortable. But it is not only brave for yourself to show them, but also brave in that it normalizes the fact that many people have these struggles and continue their lives and survive and are amazing. It is a wonderful stigma reducer and community builder to have these small (or large) signs that show to others “I have hurt myself and I’m still here. You don’t have to be afraid of me, and you don’t have to be afraid of yourself”.

And it also creates an undercurrent of self acceptance. Not everyone has to feel comfortable showing all of their body, but when people appear to be wearing what they feel like wearing without worrying about judgment, it shows a lack of self judgment. It takes a great deal of self acceptance to openly wear scars, whether they are from self harm or not. People are hardly encouraged to expose their scars, and while we can never know someone’s exact motivation for being willing to show their scars, we can assume that they’ve managed to slough off some of the societal expectations that were harming them.

Being able to see that around you is wonderfully comforting. It tells you that you can do the same, that you’ll be welcomed, that there are others who have been there and understand even if you’re not quite there yet. It says to me that I’m in a space people are building to be safe for themselves, not in a space that is built in the image of patriarchy or racism or heteronormativity or beauty culture.

And so while Con does a million things to make their convention safe (and I absolutely love them for it), the thing that makes me feel safest at Con is the other people who are brave enough to feel safe.

Featured photo is this year’s cosplay.

 

How I got Through My Bad Day: A Chain Analysis

I was planning on writing today about recognizing your achievements when your each a goal (especially for those who are competitive and highly driven), but it’s been a bad day. I woke up to a super triggery comment, read a few articles I should have avoided, and my mood plummeted from there. Add in a lack of sleep, and the soreness from working out for the first time in nearly a year, and you’ve got a recipe for a bad day.

 

So instead of talking about what I was going to talk about, I’d like to talk about chain analyses and applying skills to stop a bad day before it happens. Sometimes it can be hard to notice when you’re on the path to a meltdown. You might know that you’re having a bad day, but you don’t quite know why or you don’t know what you can change. I’m going to try to go through a chain analysis of my own day to give you all a conception of what it might be like to think about what’s making you anxious, unhappy, depressed, or stressed out, and then go through the steps that I could have taken (and may still take) at different points during the day so I don’t engage in any target behaviors (this is DBT speak for doing Bad Things like restricting, purging, drinking, self-harm, suicidal ideation etc.).

 

I’m going to start by talking about emotional vulnerability. I’m surprised this isn’t something that we talk about more often because it’s intensely important when you’re having a bad day or are on the verge of letting your mental illness take over. Emotional vulnerabilities are those factors that make you more prone to feeling extreme emotions. The most basic forms of emotional vulnerability are things like lack of sleep, lack of food, lack of exercise, use of drugs or alcohol, etc. These things make us sensitive and keep us from regulating our emotions well. Right now, I haven’t eaten since last night, I didn’t get enough sleep last night, and I have been working out more than I’m used to, leaving my body tired and sore. I’ve also been dealing with some headaches and bad tension through my shoulders and neck that are really fairly painful. These things are making me far more emotionally vulnerable.

 

However in addition to these very obvious forms of emotional vulnerability there are other things: are you stressed out and busy? What’s going on in the back of your head that’s stressing you out? Are you having relationship troubles? Are you unemployed? What other things are hanging over you that surround the events of the individual day or event that you’re trying to understand? For me, this includes a number of things. I recently changed jobs and I’m not good with transitions. I had some new information about my family that was Big and Important and Scary dropped on me this weekend. A number of my friends have been having relationship troubles recently and I’ve been worried and anxious for them. I also haven’t been keeping up on my blogging so I’ve been feeling overwhelmed and busy. Each of these things adds to that cloud of vulnerability that’s surrounding me today.

 

These are helpful concepts because if you start to notice vulnerabilities you can try to head them off. I’m going to go get something tasty and filling very soon, not let myself work out today, and try to get to bed early. Sometimes you can’t fix the vulnerabilities, or you get triggered or upset before you notice them. When you’re doing a chain analysis, the next step is to figure out what some of the precipitating events were. These can help you notice or avoid these kinds of events in the future, or if you’re in the moment, figure out why they bothered you and how to process/deal with the emotions you’re having right now.

 

So today the precipitating events were a few things. The most noticeable of them was getting a comment on a blog post about veganism that said “having an eating disorder is no justification for forcibly impregnating cows and keeping pigs locked up in tiny pens etc. etc.” The topic of veganism is an intense trigger for me. I was writing about this in the post, and this person chose to ignore that and tell me that I was wrong and bad for trying to take care of my own health needs. I felt disrespected, and I felt as if another person was confirming to me that I am not worth the food that I put in my mouth.

 

In addition to this, I saw another blog post defending “Blurred Lines” that made me throw up a little bit in my mouth. So I could see that the precipitating events to having my mood spiral out of control were that I felt people were challenging my values and my self-worth. So now I have a good understanding of what the problem is. I’ve had this difficulty a number of times before and so I’ve learned some techniques to help with it. One of them is that I try not to click on links that I know will upset me, and so usually I can head it off at the pass, but sometimes one gets by me or my morbid curiosity gets the better of me, and I can’t exactly not get the comments that are emailed directly to my inbox. Whatever your precipitating event is, it’s good to understand what it did to you and why so you can either avoid it in the future or figure out how to best tailor your response.

 

So my response was to reevaluate my values. Check the facts. Remind myself why I do the things that I do. Remind myself why I felt that Blurred Lines was offensive. And then I tried to radically accept that some people have different values from mine. I did some self-soothing, because I felt attacked and raw and afraid (especially when someone said the line in “Blurred Lines” that goes “you know you want it” is not rapey, cause damn is that triggering and not ok at all). This consisted of seeing my boyfriend for lunch and drinking a chocolate shake. I tried some distraction by playing Lumosity and by focusing on work. But I also did some self-care by allowing myself to tackle the simplest tasks at work first so that I wouldn’t get overwhelmed. Because I had figured out all of the ways I was riled up, I could address each of them. Now that I’ve calmed down some I’m willing to look again at these emotions, understand what provoked them, and understand how my use of skills actually worked quite well.

 

If you do engage in a target behavior, your chain analysis might include ideas of what you could have done differently. That’s why I find them incredibly helpful. They give me a framework with which to reflect on my experience without ruminating and becoming overwhelmed. You can even draw it out all nice and pretty like with bubbles and arrows and things. If you want to really break it down you can delineate your reaction into thoughts, emotions, actions, and bodily reactions (so did you clench your hands etc.). This chain analysis method helped me head off the nasties before they got too nasty, but I’d love to hear other suggestions in comments. Tea, hot bath, nap, delicious food, mindfulness, self-soothing…whatever helps you!