Mental Health Is Boring
Mental health. What does it mean, to you? Would you even know what you’ve got until it’s gone? If your brain paved paradise and put up a parking lot? For those who have not lived with — or in the close presence of — poor mental health, its effects are amorphous and only understood through the filter of the media, the arts, and the broadly-scoped arena of “awareness campaigns.”
The news media tends to portray mental health issues as quantitative (typically economic) problems facing public health, as a touchstone for eliciting pathos, or as an alarmist catch-all to explain away other factors in horrific events that we struggle to grasp, such as mass shootings and other violent acts. Within the arts, the need to generate sales or public interest often leads to stark or heightened portrayals that put the mental health concern at the centre of the work, often to the exclusion of all else. And, whilst awareness campaigns perform a valuable function, the need to distil a complex issue to a brief tagline that can be replicated across a variety of contexts undermines proper education, though it might — and often does — prompt many to seek help, or seek to help.
To further complicate matters, people who have experience with one kind of mental health condition typically lack an equivalent level of understanding regarding others, in the same way that someone who has had a broken arm wouldn’t by default know what passing a kidney stone is like. This is why the umbrella “mental health” label does a disservice to us all.
Mental health in my childhood home looked untidy. That’s a desperate understatement, but there’s still now shame about those things over which I had no control. Mental health in my childhood looked like being picked up late, or forgotten altogether. It looked like my childhood. Only in retrospect am I able to recognise the many ways in which it was affected by poor mental health.
Not my own mental health, mind you. When I was younger, I was only subject to the standard tribulations of youth and adolescence. Hypersensitivities and apathies observing their own due course. No, I had a direct line to my brain and it largely behaved. We did great work together.
That’s not the case now. I won’t bore you with the details, because that’s what my mental health is — it’s boring. It’s a perpetual grinding against the surfaces of my self and my life. It’s an unwelcome interloper into my family’s home and day-to-day existence. How is it boring? Well, it manifests itself in nothing. An inability to do things, no matter how basic they might be. Picking up socks? Nope. Opening an email? Nope. Having fun? Not without a heap of guilt. Asking for help? No way. The worst effect for me is the ways in which it has recreated parts of my childhood that I would never choose.
From the outside, without understanding or experience, I am just fat, lazy, and the architect of my own failures. From the inside, I couldn’t agree more. There are no recriminations and abuses that could be hurled at me which I haven’t already directed at myself. With each unresolved problem that I am unable to conquer, my internal approval rating drops a bit more. That’s a desperate understatement, but there’s still now shame about those things over which I have no control.
The days are rare, but I recognise them now, when I feel at one with my mind. I say days, but often it’s more like hours, or some span of minutes. They bring me a rush of hope. It never lasts, of course, though one day it might. What I now know, however, is that when these clearings appear, it is crucially important that I seize them.
Last night, I cut some brambles. They no longer explore the other side of the wall, like spiky spies. I cleaned some dishes. 45 minutes wherein I felt capable of doing, instead of not doing, in a softer Hamlet soliloquy. Was there still a lot left to do? Yes. That’s the consequence of years of being unwell whilst needing to carry on with the unyielding demands of work and meeting the insatiable appetite of late capitalism. Will it ever all be done? Probably not. But I’m going to try to be as forgiving of myself as I am of others, and I will hope for more good days so that a larger portion of the untended lands can be restored. I used to laugh more. I liked that.
What I don’t like are the grifters who are mining mental health for their own gain. Having a broad conversation as a society, ensuring that those who are affected by mental health concerns find understanding and support, and expressing whatever one is comfortable sharing about their own experiences — these are all wonderful things. Yet as society has become more accepting of people’s admissions about their own mental health, there are those who have spotted a gap in the market. They have seen opportunity and sought to exploit it. The same kind of manipulations abound in other areas where people have passionate personal interests and a deep need to craft at least the feeling of belonging. It’s how online political fanaticism works.
How do you spot this? How do you support those you know and love? It boils down to the same thing. No person is reducible to the state of their mental health. Anyone who obsessively and exclusively talks about their own mental health should be regarded with scepticism. My mental health is boring. Yours is, too. It’s as boring as the socks I can’t seem to properly attend to. People need kindness, and they need love, and they need understanding. They need to be treated like a full, wholly-formed person.
Mental health. What does it mean, to you? Let’s talk about it. But not just it. Let’s talk about the rest of who we are, too.
