For years I have considered myself a mental health advocate. It’s been my mission to defeat the stigma against mental illness, create avenues for those suffering to get the help they need, and, in turn, encourage individuals to reach out to their friends.
The impact of mental health advocacy has been indisputable. I am so proud to be a part of the generation that is actively making a change.
However, as someone who suffers from mental illness, the impact of this change hasn’t always been perfect. Faulty advocacy often leads to faulty impact. Mental health advocacy has created change that is slowly diminishing stigma around mental health and creating a space where conversations about the topic are welcome. Somehow, we have not, as a collective, been able to move on to the next steps.
People with mental illness still aren’t given access to the treatment they need, being given support in the correct way, or feeling fully seen.
“Self-care culture” is great for the neurotypical.
All of our destigmatization has done wonders for the day-to-day wellbeing of individuals. It’s now easier to take a mental health day, seek short-term therapy without judgment, or research anxiety coping techniques. While we still have a long way to go on these fronts, we’ve forgotten that you can’t “self-care” away chronic mental illness.
It seems so many neurotypical individuals either don’t realize or don’t understand this. Living with a chronic mental illness looks so different than having moments of self-doubt or nervousness. When I’m feeling an anxiety attack come on, that can’t always be talked away. In fact, talking can sometimes make an anxiety attack onset faster. So, please excuse me if I walk away or ask for space or don’t generally give you the response you were hoping for.
Being told words of encouragement like “it gets better” can sometimes feel demeaning because while circumstance may improve, I will always live with a chronic chemical imbalance and deeply rooted trauma. I can learn to cope, but I will never be cured.
The hardest part of having these conversations is that those who are offering help have the right intention, but don’t know how to help by no fault of their own. I recognize that fully. I also often know I’ve faced backlash when pointing out problems in the way they’re trying to support me.
I ask those people to check their privilege and recognize that getting angry at your mentally ill friend will not cure them. You can’t force someone to accept your help, especially when the help you are giving them is uneducated, ineffective, and repetitive.
While everyone experiences mental health issues, not everyone has the lived experience of coping with a chronic mental illness. It’s just like how someone may break a bone and get a glimpse into some of the struggles that someone with a physical disability may face (i.e. accessibility), but they may never know the full depth and scope of what it’s like to live with a physical disability. While you may experience fleeting feelings of anxiety or may struggle with a spat of depression after losing a loved one, you may not know the truth of living day to day with a mental illness, especially those caused by chemical imbalances.
Understanding that “self-care techniques” are not always the same as longterm coping and treatment is a great place to start because if one more person tells me (a writer) to try journaling to lower my stress…
We’ve created a culture where everyone feels like an expert on mental illness and takes offense when they can’t fix someone.
If you want to support those with mental illness, you need to get comfortable with inconclusive results. I’ve had plenty of friends get mad at me for not walking away from a conversation feeling better. You cannot expect my depression to go away from you talking to me for twenty minutes to tell me that you’re “here” for me. I need you to understand that when you ask “what’s wrong?” and I don’t give you an answer, it doesn’t mean I’m rejecting your help, it often just means that I don’t know.
Because for many people living with depression, there isn’t anything “wrong” or “triggering”. Sometimes the chemical imbalance just gets the best of us. There’s not always a situation that needs to be talked through. However, when a friend gets mad at me for “pushing them away”, it communicates to me that they have a “savior complex” and care more about being the one to fix me than they do about who I am.
This past weekend, I had endless resources available. Was I still having a really hard time? Yeah. Did the number of resources I have actually make things worse? Yeah.
It’s so important to check on someone, but maybe not all at once… and especially if you’re not that close with them. Having a sorority, RAs, my bosses, close friends, distant friends, and more all “reach out” at the same time can be overwhelming, disorienting, and suffocating. What’s worse is being made to feel like the villain when you reject their help.
An ally of those with mental illness should be able to recognize and accept when someone asks for and needs space. If one more person complains to me that I hurt them by not accepting their help or wanting to talk, I might explode.
Ask your friends how you can best support them and never assume that the way you would need help is the right way for them. Even everything I’ve said here is my own personal experience and is not every person living with a chronic mental illness’s truth.
See ya later,
xoxo alex
P.S. It's okay to not be okay. This means you need to accept that it's okay for me not to be okay because your panic that I'm not okay will cause me to panic and therefore question my own fundamental belief and coping mechanism of "it's okay to not be okay"... thanks.