Tag Archives: Therapy

Society and the Folly of Mental Wellness

There are so many aspects to mental health, it’s hard to keep track of them all. I suppose it’s no different with physical health, and all the various ailments that can affect one’s body; the same is true of the mind. For example, I suffer from deep depressions and bouts of manic creativity, and if I go off my meds I lose all sense of … well, sense. My official diagnosis is bipolar type 2, but the longer I live with it, the more I wonder if it’s just a way to describe to the medical profession behaviors that otherwise are difficult to understand.

What exactly defines “well”, anyway? In the physical body, it might be determined as “free of disease”, which is laughable, since we’re all dying slowly anyway. Diseases – diagnosable, defined differences from the “normal” human body – just expedite the process. If I smoke, or drink, or eat sugar and fatty foods, am I physically well? These things lead to diseases – cancer, liver failure, diabetes or heart disease – that ultimately will kill us all. Am I well only until one of those diseases becomes evident? Cancerous cells pop up all the time, and are usually destroyed by the body’s immune system before being detectable; am I only diseased if I doctor diagnoses me? And if I never go to a doctor, am I therefore physically “well”?

The follies of wellness, I think, extend to the mind as well. This isn’t to say mental illness isn’t a real thing – it absolutely is. But the definition of what makes one “well” is at best ridiculous to consider, especially considering the social stigma against being “unwell”. We’re so bombarded across media and society with messages of stuff that will make us happy, that I think we can start to confuse happiness with wellness.

If someone who experiences auditory hallucinations, and day-to-day seems to be a completely different person, never goes to a psychiatrist, they may never be diagnosed with schizophrenia. Does that mean they don’t have it? And what if they are just as happy as someone who doesn’t have those symptoms? Are they therefore unwell at all?

It’s interesting to me to consider – especially as someone who is so often “unwell” – where the line is between well and unwell, and I think the distinction is in what society determines to be acceptable behavior. And as I write about social acceptance, I realize that my own definition of “well” may be skewed. You see, when I’m severely depressed, I become unable to function. I lie in bed all day, sleeping and wishing for an end to everything I experience.

But what do I mean by “function”? After all, I’m still existing, and to an extent I’m coping with my disease to the best of my ability to do so. If I had a stomach virus, I’d be doing exhibiting exactly the same behavior. My ability to “function” is really determined by my ability to function within the context of wider society. If I go out to a supermarket and collapse in a corner, or walk down the street with tears streaming down my face, howling incoherently at the sky, I’d probably be considered mentally “unwell”. (Who are we kidding – I’d probably be locked away.) But if I do those things in the privacy of my own home, where nobody sees it and nobody knows, is it then acceptable?

This, I believe, is the true folly of mental wellness. The idea that we have to behave a certain way in public, in society – that we have to behaviorally conform to society’s standards of “normal” – is itself one of the biggest problems with coping with mental illness. The worst part of it is that society’s “normal” is an idea that we must strive for happiness, that happiness is somehow a state of being, and if we achieve it, we have somehow succeeded in life, and are mentally “well”.

Happiness is a fleeting moment of emotion. It’s no different than sadness, or anger, or excitement. It doesn’t last – it isn’t supposed to. If we were happy all the time, we’d stop recognizing it as anything good. I think you can be mentally ill and still be happy – and you can be perfectly well, and still be sad and depressed.

The work that needs to be done is to normalize the behaviors of the mentally “unwell”; to recognize that crying in public is not shameful, and that being unable to smile for days on end isn’t a sign to avoid social contact altogether. Society’s perception of mental illness is strongly negative, because it’s hard to sell sadness. Nobody wants to admit that sometimes it’s okay to feel bad, and that negative emotions are just as valid as positive ones.

So with all that being said, you might wonder – why do I take medication for my bipolar at all, then? Why not just force society to accept me at my worst, as well as at my best? Why do I care about my behavior enough to want to change it with chemicals in my brain?

The answer is probably more complicated than it might seem, and I’ll admit that a part of it may be to do with social conditioning. I’ve been led to believe that an overwhelming abundance of negative emotions is a bad thing, and that I shouldn’t feel that way. That I needed to change how I act, and I can’t change how I act if I don’t change how I feel. But deeper than that, there’s probably a sense of insecurity – that I want people to like me. And I’ve learned that people don’t like the way I behave when I’m unmedicated. In particular, the people I care about – my wife, my child – don’t like me when I’m unmedicated. When I’m less depressed, less angry, less volatile, they like me better.

But more importantly, I like me better. There came a point – a few years ago, actually – where I realized that I didn’t like myself. I didn’t like who I was, and the way I was acting. It just felt … awful. I wanted to change who I was, to an extent, and I wanted to change how I acted, and having struggled to do so on my own for decades, I realized I needed help. And most importantly, I realized that I was emotionally damaging people I really cared about, and that felt worse than anything. I didn’t want to feel that way anymore – despite often enjoying being depressed.

I think that this is the ultimate litmus test of mental wellness: how do you feel about yourself? Forget society, and its expectations; forget what people tell you about what you “should” feel, or be; are you content with yourself? If you are – truly, truly are – then you are probably just as “well” as anyone else. But if you’re not, then I encourage you to seek support. It’s incredibly difficult to change yourself on your own, and there are people in the world whose job it is to help.

So in summary – don’t seek happiness; seek self-contentment. Don’t change yourself to suit society; change yourself to suit yourself. Don’t seek to remove depression from your life; seek to remove the damage it causes to the people you love.

After all, happiness is fleeting – but so is sadness. Life is about riding the rollercoaster all the way around, not just stopping at the top. And most of all, when that change seems impossible – when it feels like all hope is gone – reach out for help. We’re never alone in the struggle of life.

You’re not alone.

What Should I Do With My Life?

Although my presence here, online, and in the writing community is that of an author and writer, I know I can’t pretend that it isn’t much more than a side hobby (at least at the moment) – as much as I enjoy writing books, it isn’t a career (and isn’t likely to be one). At the end of the day, the books I write, and the time it takes me to write them, are somewhat prohibitive from allowing me to make a full-time living on that income alone. (Who am I kidding? I haven’t actually sold a copy of a book in months!)

The truth is, my everyday life is much more ordinary and mundane, and although I try to keep up the writing in my spare time, I have a job, career, and life outside of words on paper. In real life, I work for a large retail/tech company, and have done so for over fifteen years. I have a wife, a cat, and a teenage son, who will soon be leaving home to embark on his own journey into life, and whether it’s this realization, or just the compounding of fifteen years of retail, I’ve come to a point in my life where I’m starting to question what I do, and am able to do, with my time on this earth.

You see, despite forging a career in this retail environment, it actually started out as a part-time gig to help me through college, and simply blossomed from there. I’m fortunate enough to work for a company where personal development and career progression is highly valued, and after so long, I’ve come to realize that the satisfaction I get in my day-to-day work isn’t necessarily from delighting customers, or working with technology, but rather helping and seeing the personal growth and development of my peers. I’ve been fortunate enough to have several career experiences wherein I was able to teach, train and develop others, and I’ve learned that what truly gives me a sense of purpose, of raison-d-être, is that moment of epiphany in other soul – the knowledge that I helped someone realize something about themselves that they never knew before.

Alongside this, mental health has obviously been a huge part of my personal life, what with my own struggles with depression and bipolar disorder, and there have been times – fewer, perhaps, but still there nonetheless – when I’ve been able to connect with other person on a truly personal level, and help them through a very difficult time in their lives. And those moments … they make me feel like I have a reason to be here. A reason to exist.

And so when I think back on my life so far, I wonder if I’ve – if not wasted, then perhaps misused – my entire existence. At the moment, at work, I’ve recently been given the opportunity to enter into a leadership experience, where I can flex a little more of those development muscles with others, and I’m grateful for that, but … I can’t help wondering if my calling is elsewhere. And I can’t help wondering, also – I’ve been doing this for fifteen years; will I still get the same sense of satisfaction if I’m basically doing the same thing still in another fifteen years? Will I still want to do my job? Or will I be bored beyond tears, and at a point in my life where it’s really too late to turn back?

The more I think about it, the more I get the sense that there is something else I could be doing with my life, and although it’s perhaps too late to start fresh, it’s maybe just the right time to think about a change in careers entirely. And the only other thing that, at least at the moment, calls to me is the ability to help others, truly help them, with their personal and emotional problems. To be able to help others self-reflect, and get the self-awareness and self-realization they need to improve their own lives.

I think I want to become a therapist.

But this would require additional schooling, learning, training … a lot of stuff that I worry would take either too long to master at this stage in my life, or would become overwhelming to me to the point where I would just abandon it after leaving everything else behind.

And more than anything, I worry that, if I leave behind a good, known thing in my retail career for something I’ve never done before … would I regret it?

I suppose this is a question to those of you who know me best, of course, but also to anyone who’s had a drastic career change in the middle of their lives – what would you do? Should I play it safe and stay where I am, possibly for the rest of my life? Should I take the risk of something that seems fulfilling now, even if it turns out to be a mistake?

What should I do with my life?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

We’re Only Worth Who We Know

I’d never heard of Amie Harwick before today. I’d only vaguely paid attention to the name Drew Carey. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to identify them, or said what they were known for. A friend posted on Facebook this morning about her death, and it was odd because the headline spoke of her as the latter’s ex-fiancée. It was hard for me to understand why I should care about the ex-fiancée of a second-tier celebrity I barely knew.

I had to do some digging to discover that Amie Harwick is a therapist in Hollywood, primarily focused on sex and relationships. She had helped a great number of people with overcoming abuse and difficult mental health issues, and was apparently killed by a former boyfriend, Gareth Pursehouse, against whom she had had a restraining order.

It seems to have been a senseless, tragic death, but the fact is I only know about it because of a tangential connection to someone the media thinks people care about. If she hadn’t once been engaged to Drew Carey, it would have been a second-tier back page new article, or possibly just an obituary.

Of course, people die every day. People are murdered, commit suicide, die of old age … it’s literally part of the world, and part of life. It isn’t possible to be as upset about the death of a stranger as it is about the death of a loved one. But, when someone with a greater sphere of influence dies, there are naturally a wider range of people who are affected by it. Think of when Robin Williams died, or more recently, Kobe Bryant. Their families were presumably devastated, but so was the world.

It seems that the greatest celebrities in the world – those with the greatest influence over strangers they’ve never met – are entertainers. Perhaps it makes sense that we mourn our entertainers the most; after all, they provide us escape from the pain of the world around us. But when someone who truly did the world good, who made life better for other people through their dedication and work, it seems unfair that they aren’t mourned for their work, but rather for who they were in relation to others who were better known than they were.

What’s particularly upsetting is that most new outlets seem not to have even bothered to reference who she was; only who she knew. Her worth to the media was in her relationship to a comedian – an entertainer. Not even an active relationship – a past one.

It’s enough to make me wonder – who am I? Am I myself, a person of my own with my own virtues and values? Am I just a husband? Am I a father? What is it that defines me?

I can’t pretend to have answers to these questions – they’re going to be different for every individual, of course. But it just seems sad to me to only be known as an attachment to some other person, as if you were owned by them, a part of them, and not a whole person of your own. And this sadness only enhances the tragedy of death, because it devalues who the person was in life.

Amie Harwick was a therapist, a child, and adult, and a whole person of her own. She deserves to be mourned for her own death, and not someone else’s loss.