Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Empowering realizations
It's unbelievably difficult for me to post this essay. I've spent my entire adult life trying to improve the way people view depressives and the like, making it clear that their illnesses are PHYSICAL, that their suffering is REAL, and that they deserve the same sympathy and support as those with ailments of any other sort; over and over I've hammered home the points that they didn't ask for it, don't want it, would do anything to be rid of it, and are NOT "just trying to get attention" by talking about it any more than a cancer patient is "just trying to get attention" when THEY talk about what they're going through.
Human nature is diverse, though, and it's silly to think that EVERY member of as gigantic a group as the mental health community would act the same way, or be perfectly virtuous and noble, or have the same deep needs. I've been doing peer counseling online for people with depression and other so-called "mental illnesses" for years, but I've just now grasped that there are folks who don't fit the description I've always used for mental health patients; I'm just now realizing what someone with a lesser emotional stake in that community would have probably long since derived from the available facts:
A large % of those who seek out "people to talk to" online DON'T WANT TO GET BETTER.
Let me be clear that I'm NOT talking about: the standard denial most people go through before they accept that they have a chemical imbalance in the brain that can't be eliminated by force of will, or that they may have to deal with it for the rest of their lives... or how all too many people still hang back from letting anyone in their real lives know they have a problem for fear of the stigma of mental illness and/or the refusal of those who should be supporting them to believe that there's a valid problem... or folks with valid concerns about the side effects of meds, which can be worse in some cases than the symptoms they're treating... or those who seek out advice on how to proceed and encouragement to get the process towards health going... or folks who need to vent OCCASIONALLY to a stranger who knows what they're going through because no one in their life has a clue... or people who don't know what's going on or what their options are and are reduced to asking strangers... or even about those who get fooled into believing that eating more carrots, eliminating dairy, or dancing naked by the light of the moon will cure them and so don't think they need to seek medical treatment because they're convinced that they're curing themselves (although they can be uniquely frustrating when they don't get better but stubbornly stick to the fantasy that they don't have a medical problem that needs medical treatment and instead seek out new quack remedies).
I'm talking about people who know exactly what's wrong with them and what it takes to fix it, who instead of getting treatment, or doing ANYTHING geared towards improving their health or reducing their symptoms, have chosen to use their illness as a tool to get attention and sympathy from their loved ones, liked ones and barest acquaintances until none of those folks can stand to listen to them anymore, much less give support. When they realize they've burned out everyone they know, they come online looking for total strangers to have one-way exchanges with; they weep and wail on and on, and the strangers are supposed to say "poor baby" and leave it at that... no urging them to take actual ACTION about their illness and the problems it's causing is allowed.
It doesn't seem like anyone could possibly be willing to provide that service, does it? Amazingly, cyberspace is chock-full of groups, clubs, forums, discussion newsletters and other ways that bunches of people interact with each other that have members who willingly provide an endless stream of poor-baby's in postings, through emails, in chat and even on the PHONE... I remember that one newsletter group I was in had phone volunteers that the admins were constantly having to remind people were available for emergency calls ONLY, and weren't to be harassed with constant calls from people who just wanted to wah-wah-wah to an audience for hours a day, and I do mean HOURS. Why do some folks pour their emotional energy down the bottomless pit of those who want sympathy rather than mental health? Because it feels good to help someone, or to believe you're helping, and it makes people feel better to be able to see themselves as in a position to give help and not just get it... and because people don't see that in some cases they're NOT helping, but instead are enabling sick people to not get the medical attention they need.
Let me hasten to add here that *I* have NEVER been among those who chanted "poor baby" rather than giving concrete advice; however, with my email addy still available at some of the mental health forums I used to participate on, I kept having to deal with people who were HOPING to get poor-baby-ed, and I'd done this email advice thing for so long that it never occurred to me to stop and think about what was going on... until a few days ago.
I got an email from a woman with an elaborate story about all her sufferings who wanted "someone to talk to"; when I asked her what meds she was taking to try to alleviate her agony, she responded with a semi-coherent ramble about how her illness was caused by society rather than having a physical cause, and that she'd found a doctor who didn't try to medicate her. Grasping instantly that she just wanted someone she could email complaints to, I told her that I wouldn't be able to help her, because I reserved my time and emotional energy for those who were actively pursuing getting well; she responded with a series of belligerent, vulgar emails, followed by an unintentionally hilarious one which was supposed to be from the director of an odd mental health/legal hybrid organization who was taking me to task for declining to help her... with HER 3rd-grade level spelling and grammar and from HER email addy. I reported her to Hotmail for violating their Terms of Use (they don't permit foul language to be sent with their service), and they deactivated her account within a few hours, which settled HER hash... but, for the 1st time, I didn't just shrug and chalk it up to experience, I started THINKING... and:
I realized that the overwhelming majority of people who wrote to me did NOT want help in getting better, but just wanted poor-baby's.
I realized that dealing with them was a total waste of my time.
I realized that it was an overall waste of my time and effort to keep allowing the "mental health emails" to come to me, and keep having to deal with them, just because I was giving valid assistance to 1 person in 50.
And so, after all my years of being available to the online mental health community, I QUIT.
I composed an email to send to each place that still had my addy available, and found myself writing far more than "please remove me"; I finally, FINALLY, had a surge of understanding about the hundreds of people I'd seen who wrote page after page of complaints about their terrible lives but not only didn't want guidance but aggressively resisted practical advice of any kind about getting treatment... I saw that they clung to their illnesses with white-knuckle grips because they NEED to be sick. They love their illnesses and circle their entire lives and senses of self around them; without them, they'd have nothing... and they wouldn't know who or what they were without their labels of "depressive" or "bipolar" or whatever. They ALSO use their illnesses as handy excuses for why no one likes them and their lives are disaster areas; if they weren't sick, they'd either have to concede to being failures or learn to take care of themselves, hold down jobs, make and keep friends, handle romantic partners and just plain get along... and they believe, in most cases correctly, that they can't do any of those things. They don't want to admit to themselves, or have others perceive, the cold hard truth, that they're, to be blunt, not offering much that other people are eager to have, and not functioning fully as adults, so they need their illnesses to blame it all on; thanks to "being sick," they don't even have to TRY, they can just wallow in their misery... and type it all out for the infinite audience online.
It sounds pretty harsh laid out like that, but it reflects what these folks say about themselves; they have no jobs or are doing grim low-paid work amid co-workers who aren't nice to them, they have no romantic partners or have ones that are cruel to them, they have no friends, or used to have friends until their mental health deteriorated, or they sort of have friends that won't listen to their complaints anymore and have largely withdrawn from them... not a single one of this subset of depressives/etc EVER said they had a good job, good friends or a loving partner. Yes, this is because of their illness, not because they're "bad people," but once they've refused treatment of that illness they need to be held responsible for how their lives are put together; if they CHOOSE to stay sick knowing that they'll suffer the symptoms AND be held back from full and joyous participation in human society, why should they get any sympathy for that?
Why? Because there are some online communities that are, pardon the crude term, emotional circle jerks where sick people encourage and enable each other to stay sick, passing around the poor-baby's and assuring each other that the right thing to do is stay away from the doctors and therapists who'd help them and keep hoping for a miracle instead... and there are also plenty of people who toss out a poor-baby when confronted with a sob story because they don't know what else to say, not understanding that they're feeding the sick person's desire to stay sick by rewarding them with sympathetic words.
sigh
I've been tied into the mental health community to some degree or another from the moment I 1st got online; it seems... unnatural, somehow, to be severing my last connections, but it's gotta be done-there are a million better ways to use the energy and time I want to devote to helping others than wading through the masses of people who don't want to get well looking for the ones who do. The good part is that it's empowering to understand what's been going on all this time and why, and to be able to use that understanding to remove a stressful and time-consuming activity from my life with a clear conscience.
Enough about me; does anything I've described sound like someone you know... or maybe even YOU?
If you you're a depressive, anxiety sufferer, etc, aren't getting medical treatment even though you feel awful, and find yourself complaining endlessly to whoever will listen, be aware that you're making people miserable, and they'll mostly draw away from you in self-defense eventually if they haven't already. It IS possible to have a good life even with a fairly heavy burden of "mental illness," even if you don't get treatment; there ARE people who do it... and they do it by NOT constantly bombarding others with their pain, and by NOT making it the focus and center of their lives. If you can't keep from complaining even when you try, it's time to accept that you're in enough pain to seek medical treatment; it doesn't matter if you were given meds 5 years ago and they didn't help you, or helped for a while and then stopped, there are lots of other meds you can take (you have NOT taken them all), and even if they have to try several different meds combos before finding the one that works, it's better to feel good in a few weeks or months than NEVER, right?
If you're on the receiving end of constant complaints from someone who's depressed (or whatever) and refuses to get medical care, be aware that their behavior is inappropriate and you have the right to set some boundaries:
1) If you aren't close to them, you can say, "I'm sorry that you're unhappy, but I'm not comfortable discussing this sort of thing with someone I don't know well."
2) If they're a friend, you can say, "I'm happy to help you find a doctor, or a therapist, or anything else you need to help you get better, but I can't handle hearing about this all the time; it's not curing you, and it's making ME depressed. Can we pick one day a week where we'll talk about your health issues, and then focus on enjoying our other times together?"
3) If they're a loved one, you can say, "You're one of the people I care about most, you've seen me through some tough times and I'm happy to do the same for you, but tough times are supposed to END at some point; your depression/etc has gone on for X months/years with no end in sight, and it's taking over our relationship. We need to accept that this will be an ongoing thing, and just as I don't complain about my bad back/arthritis/migraines all the time, I need you to not talk about how bad YOU feel all the time, so that we can get back to having positive interactions that aren't so one-sided."
Yeah, it'll be tough to say that stuff; that's why so many people just head for the horizon when someone in their lives becomes depressed, because running away, although it feels cowardly, disloyal, or mean, is easier to bear emotionally than trying to deal meaningfully with someone who's hurting and clingy.
As I've said, it was really hard to write about this; what finally tipped the balance was knowing that most of you have seen postings of various kinds by people like the ones I've described, and it'd be easy for you to get the idea that this kind of person, the kind who seeks attention with their illness rather than trying to find a cure for it, is representative of depressives/etc as a whole, and it's NOT... most people with mental illnesses either get treatment or endure quietly. If someone like this, who holds back so as not to burden others, wants to talk to you about their problems some day, please DO lend a sympathetic ear... it's one of the kindest things you can do, and you won't regret it.
Human nature is diverse, though, and it's silly to think that EVERY member of as gigantic a group as the mental health community would act the same way, or be perfectly virtuous and noble, or have the same deep needs. I've been doing peer counseling online for people with depression and other so-called "mental illnesses" for years, but I've just now grasped that there are folks who don't fit the description I've always used for mental health patients; I'm just now realizing what someone with a lesser emotional stake in that community would have probably long since derived from the available facts:
A large % of those who seek out "people to talk to" online DON'T WANT TO GET BETTER.
Let me be clear that I'm NOT talking about: the standard denial most people go through before they accept that they have a chemical imbalance in the brain that can't be eliminated by force of will, or that they may have to deal with it for the rest of their lives... or how all too many people still hang back from letting anyone in their real lives know they have a problem for fear of the stigma of mental illness and/or the refusal of those who should be supporting them to believe that there's a valid problem... or folks with valid concerns about the side effects of meds, which can be worse in some cases than the symptoms they're treating... or those who seek out advice on how to proceed and encouragement to get the process towards health going... or folks who need to vent OCCASIONALLY to a stranger who knows what they're going through because no one in their life has a clue... or people who don't know what's going on or what their options are and are reduced to asking strangers... or even about those who get fooled into believing that eating more carrots, eliminating dairy, or dancing naked by the light of the moon will cure them and so don't think they need to seek medical treatment because they're convinced that they're curing themselves (although they can be uniquely frustrating when they don't get better but stubbornly stick to the fantasy that they don't have a medical problem that needs medical treatment and instead seek out new quack remedies).
I'm talking about people who know exactly what's wrong with them and what it takes to fix it, who instead of getting treatment, or doing ANYTHING geared towards improving their health or reducing their symptoms, have chosen to use their illness as a tool to get attention and sympathy from their loved ones, liked ones and barest acquaintances until none of those folks can stand to listen to them anymore, much less give support. When they realize they've burned out everyone they know, they come online looking for total strangers to have one-way exchanges with; they weep and wail on and on, and the strangers are supposed to say "poor baby" and leave it at that... no urging them to take actual ACTION about their illness and the problems it's causing is allowed.
It doesn't seem like anyone could possibly be willing to provide that service, does it? Amazingly, cyberspace is chock-full of groups, clubs, forums, discussion newsletters and other ways that bunches of people interact with each other that have members who willingly provide an endless stream of poor-baby's in postings, through emails, in chat and even on the PHONE... I remember that one newsletter group I was in had phone volunteers that the admins were constantly having to remind people were available for emergency calls ONLY, and weren't to be harassed with constant calls from people who just wanted to wah-wah-wah to an audience for hours a day, and I do mean HOURS. Why do some folks pour their emotional energy down the bottomless pit of those who want sympathy rather than mental health? Because it feels good to help someone, or to believe you're helping, and it makes people feel better to be able to see themselves as in a position to give help and not just get it... and because people don't see that in some cases they're NOT helping, but instead are enabling sick people to not get the medical attention they need.
Let me hasten to add here that *I* have NEVER been among those who chanted "poor baby" rather than giving concrete advice; however, with my email addy still available at some of the mental health forums I used to participate on, I kept having to deal with people who were HOPING to get poor-baby-ed, and I'd done this email advice thing for so long that it never occurred to me to stop and think about what was going on... until a few days ago.
I got an email from a woman with an elaborate story about all her sufferings who wanted "someone to talk to"; when I asked her what meds she was taking to try to alleviate her agony, she responded with a semi-coherent ramble about how her illness was caused by society rather than having a physical cause, and that she'd found a doctor who didn't try to medicate her. Grasping instantly that she just wanted someone she could email complaints to, I told her that I wouldn't be able to help her, because I reserved my time and emotional energy for those who were actively pursuing getting well; she responded with a series of belligerent, vulgar emails, followed by an unintentionally hilarious one which was supposed to be from the director of an odd mental health/legal hybrid organization who was taking me to task for declining to help her... with HER 3rd-grade level spelling and grammar and from HER email addy. I reported her to Hotmail for violating their Terms of Use (they don't permit foul language to be sent with their service), and they deactivated her account within a few hours, which settled HER hash... but, for the 1st time, I didn't just shrug and chalk it up to experience, I started THINKING... and:
I realized that the overwhelming majority of people who wrote to me did NOT want help in getting better, but just wanted poor-baby's.
I realized that dealing with them was a total waste of my time.
I realized that it was an overall waste of my time and effort to keep allowing the "mental health emails" to come to me, and keep having to deal with them, just because I was giving valid assistance to 1 person in 50.
And so, after all my years of being available to the online mental health community, I QUIT.
I composed an email to send to each place that still had my addy available, and found myself writing far more than "please remove me"; I finally, FINALLY, had a surge of understanding about the hundreds of people I'd seen who wrote page after page of complaints about their terrible lives but not only didn't want guidance but aggressively resisted practical advice of any kind about getting treatment... I saw that they clung to their illnesses with white-knuckle grips because they NEED to be sick. They love their illnesses and circle their entire lives and senses of self around them; without them, they'd have nothing... and they wouldn't know who or what they were without their labels of "depressive" or "bipolar" or whatever. They ALSO use their illnesses as handy excuses for why no one likes them and their lives are disaster areas; if they weren't sick, they'd either have to concede to being failures or learn to take care of themselves, hold down jobs, make and keep friends, handle romantic partners and just plain get along... and they believe, in most cases correctly, that they can't do any of those things. They don't want to admit to themselves, or have others perceive, the cold hard truth, that they're, to be blunt, not offering much that other people are eager to have, and not functioning fully as adults, so they need their illnesses to blame it all on; thanks to "being sick," they don't even have to TRY, they can just wallow in their misery... and type it all out for the infinite audience online.
It sounds pretty harsh laid out like that, but it reflects what these folks say about themselves; they have no jobs or are doing grim low-paid work amid co-workers who aren't nice to them, they have no romantic partners or have ones that are cruel to them, they have no friends, or used to have friends until their mental health deteriorated, or they sort of have friends that won't listen to their complaints anymore and have largely withdrawn from them... not a single one of this subset of depressives/etc EVER said they had a good job, good friends or a loving partner. Yes, this is because of their illness, not because they're "bad people," but once they've refused treatment of that illness they need to be held responsible for how their lives are put together; if they CHOOSE to stay sick knowing that they'll suffer the symptoms AND be held back from full and joyous participation in human society, why should they get any sympathy for that?
Why? Because there are some online communities that are, pardon the crude term, emotional circle jerks where sick people encourage and enable each other to stay sick, passing around the poor-baby's and assuring each other that the right thing to do is stay away from the doctors and therapists who'd help them and keep hoping for a miracle instead... and there are also plenty of people who toss out a poor-baby when confronted with a sob story because they don't know what else to say, not understanding that they're feeding the sick person's desire to stay sick by rewarding them with sympathetic words.
sigh
I've been tied into the mental health community to some degree or another from the moment I 1st got online; it seems... unnatural, somehow, to be severing my last connections, but it's gotta be done-there are a million better ways to use the energy and time I want to devote to helping others than wading through the masses of people who don't want to get well looking for the ones who do. The good part is that it's empowering to understand what's been going on all this time and why, and to be able to use that understanding to remove a stressful and time-consuming activity from my life with a clear conscience.
Enough about me; does anything I've described sound like someone you know... or maybe even YOU?
If you you're a depressive, anxiety sufferer, etc, aren't getting medical treatment even though you feel awful, and find yourself complaining endlessly to whoever will listen, be aware that you're making people miserable, and they'll mostly draw away from you in self-defense eventually if they haven't already. It IS possible to have a good life even with a fairly heavy burden of "mental illness," even if you don't get treatment; there ARE people who do it... and they do it by NOT constantly bombarding others with their pain, and by NOT making it the focus and center of their lives. If you can't keep from complaining even when you try, it's time to accept that you're in enough pain to seek medical treatment; it doesn't matter if you were given meds 5 years ago and they didn't help you, or helped for a while and then stopped, there are lots of other meds you can take (you have NOT taken them all), and even if they have to try several different meds combos before finding the one that works, it's better to feel good in a few weeks or months than NEVER, right?
If you're on the receiving end of constant complaints from someone who's depressed (or whatever) and refuses to get medical care, be aware that their behavior is inappropriate and you have the right to set some boundaries:
1) If you aren't close to them, you can say, "I'm sorry that you're unhappy, but I'm not comfortable discussing this sort of thing with someone I don't know well."
2) If they're a friend, you can say, "I'm happy to help you find a doctor, or a therapist, or anything else you need to help you get better, but I can't handle hearing about this all the time; it's not curing you, and it's making ME depressed. Can we pick one day a week where we'll talk about your health issues, and then focus on enjoying our other times together?"
3) If they're a loved one, you can say, "You're one of the people I care about most, you've seen me through some tough times and I'm happy to do the same for you, but tough times are supposed to END at some point; your depression/etc has gone on for X months/years with no end in sight, and it's taking over our relationship. We need to accept that this will be an ongoing thing, and just as I don't complain about my bad back/arthritis/migraines all the time, I need you to not talk about how bad YOU feel all the time, so that we can get back to having positive interactions that aren't so one-sided."
Yeah, it'll be tough to say that stuff; that's why so many people just head for the horizon when someone in their lives becomes depressed, because running away, although it feels cowardly, disloyal, or mean, is easier to bear emotionally than trying to deal meaningfully with someone who's hurting and clingy.
As I've said, it was really hard to write about this; what finally tipped the balance was knowing that most of you have seen postings of various kinds by people like the ones I've described, and it'd be easy for you to get the idea that this kind of person, the kind who seeks attention with their illness rather than trying to find a cure for it, is representative of depressives/etc as a whole, and it's NOT... most people with mental illnesses either get treatment or endure quietly. If someone like this, who holds back so as not to burden others, wants to talk to you about their problems some day, please DO lend a sympathetic ear... it's one of the kindest things you can do, and you won't regret it.
