Beginning to Listen

In light of the deaths of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade, which have shocked the public and turned the public conversation, I want to contribute a little something to bringing awareness to the issue by sharing the voices of people who are struggling with and triumphing over their mental state.

I will preface this by saying that I am far from being an expert. In fact, I admit that I am confused about mental health, mental conditions. I am cognizant that I will never fully know what it's like for people who suffer through depression. However, I do believe that we need to educate ourselves and to learn how best to support people who are suffering, and that process can only begin by listening to those who have intimate knowledge of mental illness.

This article called "What I need when I tell you I'm struggling with mental illness today" is straightforward about what we need to do to support people in our circle grappling with mental illness. 

Awful days will happen. Days where the suicidal thoughts are relentless — they happen. Those days, which sometimes turn into weeks, where I can’t get out of bed or shower or smile or remember to brush my teeth, they are expected. Bad days will happen and it’s often on these days that I receive more judgment than I do gentleness and understanding. On these days I need compassion, grace and understanding that I’m fighting something really hard — and maybe some ice cream. What I do not need is to be questioned about whether I took my medication, if I had too much to drink this past weekend or if I’ve been staying up too late. Unless you deeply and truly know what it’s like to wake up one day and have your own voice telling you to kill yourself, I don’t think you are allowed to pass judgment. 

With permission from the author, I would also like to share with you in full below, "What I learned from having bipolar" by Steffy Tad-y.

Two and a half years after being diagnosed, I am incredibly grateful to be at this point where I can say that its presence in my life has shown its gifts. Bipolar has given me so much, sometimes too much, but always enough to bring me into gratefulness that I’m alive, with a beating heart, and enough core muscles to breathe and belly-laugh sustainably.
We are all in different points in our journey and regardless of where we are, I want to take the chance to be here, vocal and confident, for my fellow Bipolies in a way that others have before me.
(The first doctor who diagnosed and carried me through also has Bipolar.)
But before sharing its gifts, I want to clarify that having Bipolar doesn’t mean having a moment-to-moment shift from being happy to being sad. It’s also not about being moody. (If you are curious to know more, I encourage you to look up the DSM-V symptoms of Bipolar, formerly known as Manic Depression.)
Depression isn’t synonymous with sadness, and mania doesn’t simply mean elation.
For Bipolar I to be Bipolar I, both depression and mania must exist — a.) in episodes (7 days or more for a full blown mania, 14 days or more for depression), and b.) must inhibit your ability to function in daily life.
The categories of DSM are also continuously revised and revisited, so a healthy dose of skepticism and flexibility is also important when perusing the DSM.
When in doubt, seek help from a professional. Wherever you are in the galaxy, I want you to know that there is absolutely no shame in going to a psychiatrist or psychologist. They are healers and carers who decided to commit their lives to helping people. Let them.
Usually, if you map out your life, you become sure of Bipolar when you see a recurring pattern of periodic highs and lows. If you were to ask me what my “low” looks like, it’s not a feeling of sadness, but an insistent, clobbering tiredness. (I know something’s up when I hear myself saying “really tired” for days and no matter how much I sleep, meditate, or practice yoga, the tiredness doesn’t go away. It feels like it can seep through your bones.)
Some more points to make:
It’s okay to ride a rollercoaster of feelings — to feel sad when your favourite ballplayer is injured, or to feel happy when you don’t have to sit through 2 hours of Manila traffic. It’s okay to feel both happy and sad, and it’s okay to cycle through them. You can trust yourself to ride it because every feeling eventually goes away. Everything is temporary.It is also okay to spend time to grieve, or re-grieve, when you’ve experienced a loss in your life. It is okay to cry it out, to ask for a hug, or to run through triggering loops in your head even if you already said a thousand times that you wouldn’t. We all need time. It is okay to create time and space for yourself when you need it. Your concerns are important, no matter how small you may feel they are to the world. (Because you are important to the world.)And on the subject of grief, one crucial and ongoing debate among scholars and researchers is at what point do we medicalize grief? A lot of people are onboard in saying that we ought to exercise caution in pathologizing our emotions. They are an inherent part of being human, and are raw materials for creating beautiful art, film, music, and poetry. Medicalizing, pathologizing, the role of emotions — I’ll leave that for another post.For today’s post —
Because of Bipolar, I learned how to be my own best friend.
I learned how to honestly check-in with myself — to know the difference between pain and discomfort, to know when to listen to my thoughts and when to ignore them, to know when I am caught in a internal narrative or when I am being fully present, to observe when I am constricting or expanding, to be aware when I am being tender or hard, to know when I am coming from a place of fear or whole-heartedness, and to not judge myself in the process.
Because of Bipolar, I learned to mouth praises for myself (no matter how challenging that can be). I learned to forgive myself for my mistakes (the process of which began with me having to pretend that the red pillow on my psychologist’s sofa is Steffi, and I have to say out loud to this red pillow turned Steffi, “I forgive you and I love you.”) Managing one’s mental illness can be interesting at times, and it trains you to confront the difficult things.
Because of Bipolar, I also learned how to be gentle with myself. Learning how to soothe yourself, how to be your own encourager and caretaker are important because for many of us, being thrown into the Bipolar life means seeing yourself in this diagnosis of malfunction in fine print. It takes awhile to fully believe that there is still something good and beautiful in you.
I know it’s difficult to be called names, to be the psycho in somebody’s story, the paranoid suicidal, or the crazy one.
But dear bipolar one, I promise that you are not damaged goods.
There is something beautiful, there is something good in you.
There is something beautiful, there is something good in you.
I promise, I promise.
Love,
Your bipolar sister, order of General Leia Organa

By no means are these two articles I shared representative of the hundreds of experiences of people who suffer from mental illness. There are different mental illnesses, symptoms, and treatments. There are as many ways of supporting someone who is suffering from mental illness as the people who suffer. But I think these two articles are good ways to start opening our minds and hearts, perhaps to talk with someone suffering from mental illness or just to be there when they need support.