“Mentally ill”. Now there’s a heavy label.
A part of me, the high-functioning counselor/writer/runner/Mom part of me, wants to forget that part of me, and exist as that picture you see of me on Facebook, the silly one of me and my husband dangling my daughter upside down. The “everything’s fine” me. The “I have a warrior high-feeling family who soars through their ups and downs” me.
But the truth is, I have had three, count em three, mental health diagnoses. I have depression, and I’m in recovery from alcoholism AND an eating disorder. All three of which have made me realize I have to tell the truth about who I am in order to survive. And even more importantly, I have to surround myself with other truth-tellers who don’t pretend everything’s fine and that feelings are for wussies.
So when you are striding along confidently in recovery, and all of a sudden you are hit with a political environment that reduces half our country to “snowflakes” because they care about their fellow man, how do you think that affects those of us with invisible illnesses?
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When I watched Donald Trump mock a developmentally disabled person, I felt sick. It was at that moment I could not understand how anyone could support this man. Someone who mocked those with less privilege than him. I don’t support him for a host of other reasons, but that stuck with me. As his supporters grew louder with choruses of “Aww, shut up you wussy snowflake, I hope you get cornered in a dark alley by a Muslim” (read: real comment to me on social media), I quickly realized I was living in a world that did not condone experiences outside of the patriarchal norm. And that patriarchal norm included not talking about feelings. Making feelings into a moral issue, when in fact they’re simply instinctual responses from our brain that guide us. Science. Who’d of thunk?
So I stopped asserting my opinions on certain social media boards. Who might see them, and utilize them to their own advantage? And I stopped going to family functions where I knew that patriarchal norm was supported. Because my mental health wasn’t going to get any better there. I even began to be more aware of the patriarchal structure that existed within self-help groups I attended, and decreased my attendance there. Because they made fun of “special snowflakes” at some of those meetings. And it reminded me of the conservative right. Those phrases made me feel stupid for having such strong feelings.
And I became more isolated.
And we all know how good isolation is for depression. And alcoholism.
I am very aware I cannot blame the severity of my mental illness on Trump. But I also believe you cannot underestimate the effect the current political climate may be having on yours. We are currently run by a very dysfunctional family, one made up of Trump and Spicer and Sessions and Conway, whose supporters believe everyone just needs to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps and be a real man/woman”. Tell that to the bipolar individual whose depression renders them catatonic. Tell that to the anxiety-ridden kid who can’t breathe in class.
One thing I know from being a counselor is that dysfunctional families will revolt against you if you drink lemonade instead of the kool-aid they drink. They will do anything, ANYTHING to hurt you, knock you down, or stop you from shattering the status quo that they’ve been surviving on for ages. A system will always try to flush out the truth-teller, even if that means retaining the current, hurtful, dysfunctional system.
Remind you of the current leaders in power any? Of Twitter rants that we’ve been seeing?
For better or worse, we’re all one big American family. And it’s really dysfunctional right now. There’s a bunch of people in power that think “since I could do it, you should be able to”, and simply put, that’s damn arrogant and ignorant. And it’s time for the truth-tellers to start shattering the unhealthy family patterns, but it’s really hard, because when we tell our truth, we get hurt. People make fun of us and affect our mental health. And we isolate further.
So that’s what it’s like being mentally ill in the Trump era.
It kind of sucks. It kind of feels like I should hunker down low and not trust anyone. Silenced. At the risk of being persecuted.
But, I was raised by a parent who repeatedly taught me to “Give em hell”. So here I am. Telling you that feelings are chemicals in our brain and that science backs it up. That it’s not just me but your neighbor too who’s been to a counselor before. That Trumpcare will not require Medicaid to cover addiction and mental health services. That the mentally ill isn’t just that alcoholic bum you see on the street, something you can shield your eyes from. It’s your brother, it’s your kid, and the quicker we start integrating emotions into health, the richer we will be as a society.
