Suddenly Stigma

The subject of stigma is dealt with often by people in recovery from mental health conditions and addiction/alcoholism. One of the bars to recovery is stigma; stigma keeps people from asking for help, or even admitting and accepting that they have a condition that needs attention. People can become afraid of the 'mental illness' label or the addict label to the point that they try to shove the condition under the rug. Mental illness and addiction don't go away, however, simply by ignoring the conditions. Eventually symptoms of the conditions arise, quite against the will of the person living with the condition.

When I entered into recovery from all my conditions four years ago, I wasn't concerned with who knew about my conditions - they had consumed me, so there was no pretense that I was not affected by alcoholism and major depressive disorder. Then I began working in the fields of addiction and mental health, so it still didn't matter; in fact, recovery became my identity (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). There was a problem with this, however, that I didn't realize until recently - I didn't have empathy with others who struggled with stigma. I wasn't experiencing stigma enough to really be able to relate and help others who were experiencing stigma.

That all changed once I got a job in the GP (general population). Suddenly I found myself surrounded by people who may or may not be sympathetic to my situation. Suddenly I found myself covering up and actually lying about my life when someone I work with was asking me questions about me. Suddenly I found myself being affected by stigma - it was causing me to behave in a manner contrary to my principles, which are about openness, honesty and authenticity. Suddenly I became empathetic with others who struggle with the same thing, and suddenly I felt a lot of admiration for those who are able to come out of the closet, so to speak, and damn the consequences. 

I need to point out here that the stigma I'm experiencing so far is self-induced. I didn't walk into my new job and find people who don't understand mental illness and addiction - my stigma comes from my own fear and my own projections onto others about how they're going to think about me. So in a way, I can't empathize with those who have been discriminated against one way or another for having a mental health condition or an addiction; I can only empathize with those of us who walk around in fear about being discovered.

I've already gotten a dose of closed-mindedness from one person with whom I closely work regarding alcoholism - this person, through their voluntary sharing, has let me know they think alcoholism and addiction are a choice that can easily be managed by willpower whenever the person chooses to do so. This person has also shared with me much of their family history. Actually, they've volunteered a whole bunch of information that I think I could do without hearing. 

Contrary to what I do in this blog, I don't walk around freely  advertising my experience and thoughts regarding spirituality, mental health, and alcoholism. I would like to be open enough in real life to be a resource for those who may be affected by their own or someone else's mental health condition or addiction. I was fairly open in last GP job, and I was able to offer resources to my co-workers and create some bonding.

I've got a couple of choices. Since most folks at work don't advertise their conditions (almost everybody has something), I can choose to not talk about my mental health and substance use conditions and, when asked, say "I don't feel comfortable talking about this." The other choice would be, when asked, to be truthful about my experience, and let others feel about me the way they feel about me.

I'll choose the latter, for a couple of reasons: one, I can't go on lying about myself and expect to stay in recovery. Authenticity, though sometimes uncomfortable, is essential to my well-being. Two, stigma is battled by changing one mind at a time. My example of recovery coupled with my honesty can show someone that people with mental health conditions and/or substance use disorders do recover. As a bonus, I may be able to help someone else in a similar situation. 

Eradicating stigma must start, I believe, with those of us who have been affected by a mental health condition, either from living with it or having an affected loved one. Part of my purpose, I suppose, is to help eradicate stigma (and not add to it) - otherwise, my experience in the trenches is for naught.

I will definitely be writing more about this as I am now committed to 'coming out' if and when the opportunity arises. I'll let you know what happens!

Namasté,

Ken

Mental Health Awareness

I met someone today who was seeking some help for their young adult child who is going through the challenges of a mental health condition. I asked how long their child had been experiencing this, and the answer was a few years. I gave the parent some hope, (along with a lot of supportive information) because the earlier a mental health condition is recognized and treated in someone's life, the better the chances are for solid recovery and a life not devastated by mental illness.

I don't even know if back in 1962, when I was born, post-partum depression was even recognized as an actual mental disorder. Probably not. Even if it was, I'm sure that it wasn't proper for nice ladies from the South to get post-partum depression. So my mother had something else - an undefined neurological disorder - that wasn't treated well. And as I was growing up, I wasn't aware that feeling useless and having no energy and thinking of death often and wishing I could go to sleep and not wake up were actually symptoms of a disorder. I thought it was just me. I was just a defect that shouldn't have been born.

Today I know differently, and I know how important it is for a person experiencing mental health challenges to know that it's ok to have something. I am not my illness. You are not your illness. Parents are not the primary cause of mental illness. Having a mental illness does not make a person any less of a human being. It is a brain disorder. I have a friend who had a congenital heart defect, which caused a heart murmur, which, over time, damaged his aorta to the point where he needed open heart surgery to repair the aorta and replace the faulty valve. He has always been one of the kindest, most decent human beings I know, and having a heart defect does not diminish his worth as a person at all. Yet the general view of people with brain disorders is that they are less than.

May is Mental Health Awareness month. Mental health awareness is important in order to counteract the myths and stigma surrounding mental illness. Understanding of what mental illness is (and is not) is necessary in order to properly treat it and diminish the devastation caused by mental illness - devastation that not only touches the life of the sufferer, but also the sufferer's families, and society as a whole. When mental health conditions are properly diagnosed and treated, good outcomes, like with my friend with the new heart valve, can happen.

Here are some mental health facts:

The more we know about mental health conditions, the more we'll be able to treat them properly; when treated properly, mental health conditions do not have to end in suicide, death, jail time, homelessness, unemployment, loneliness, misery, and despair. When treated with medicine, therapy, love, respect, understanding, compassion, and support, mental health conditions result in stronger people who, through their recovery, can live happy and productive lives.

I know. I am living it, and I know others living it as well.

I invite you to take some time to educate yourself or your family about mental health conditions so that more people have the opportunity to live healthy lives. If you have any questions regarding mental health issues, please visit NAMI, or, if you're in the Waukesha, WI, USA area, NAMI Waukesha.

Namasté

Ken

Stigma Revisited

First impressions can be lasting. They don't have to be, but, sometimes they are. I continue to discover the cognitive distortions (thinking errors) in which I engage that need to be corrected, or adjusted. Usually the problem with a cognitive distortion, as the term implies, is that there is some element of truth in every thought - it's just that I've distorted it, for whatever reason. I think that most often cognitive distortions are assumptions and suppositions that are applied too broadly, or sometimes too permanently.

I have heard that alcoholism is a disease of perception, and I know that major depressive disorder is as well. For me, I can take a grain of truth and create a beach of misery. A great deal of my recovery involves discovering my distortions, accepting that I have them and operate by them, and practicing moving my thinking toward something more workable in my life. It's a lot of work for me. A half-century of bad thinking habits doesn't get turned around in one day, just because I realize my thinking sucks. I had to have a lot of help in the beginning, and sometimes still need help to see where my thinking is tripping me up - creating less-than-desirable results in my life.

So what does all this have to do with stigma? As I've mentioned once or twice before, the default for the human brain is auto-pilot. It's a mechanism designed to protect us, so that we don't have to consciously repeat our thinking every time we see a snake <DANGER!>. It's a good mechanism, very protective, but it's not always true. We may get scared by things that look like a snake - a gnarled stick, for instance. We might decide that anything with scales is bad for us, and transfer our fear of snakes onto harmless fish. According to the first thing that came up when I Googled it, stigma is "a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person." I can stigmatize myself, and have often done so, and I can stigmatize others.

I attended a class a few days ago, and learned some more about the human brain, which, big surprise, really interests me. The brain is a hugely complex organ, even more complex than what I had previously thought. It seems a miracle to me that we don't have more breakdowns. But what struck me is this: Our two most noticeable organs our body has are our skin (yes, the skin is an organ) and our brain. The skin, because it's our clothing - it's what people see about us - and our brain, because the workings of our brain show up in our speech and behavior. So, if to the beholder, someone's skin looks different than our own, or their behavior is different than we expect, the beholder's little reptilian brain can go into yellow or even red alert. If we see somebody who appears or behaves outside of our 'normal' range, we take notice. It happens naturally.

There are lots of types of stigma, but here, I'll focus on appearances and behavior. Many years ago, my very first real job was at a sheltered workshop for developmentally disabled adults. Now, many people with a developmental disability (what used to be called mental retardation) have physical appearances outside the norm. Let's pick on folks born with Down Syndrome, a disorder caused by a chromosomal mutation before birth. People who live with down syndrome are often mildly to moderately developmentally delayed. Physically, "A few of the common physical traits of Down syndrome are low muscle tone, small stature, an upward slant to the eyes, and a single deep crease across the center of the palm – although each person with Down syndrome is a unique individual and may possess these characteristics to different degrees, or not at all. (https://www.ndss.org/about-down-syndrome/down-syndrome) [emphasis added]. The very first thought someone might have when they encounter a person with Down Syndrome is, "They're different." Stigma starts when the person who has that thought never bothers to think past that first thought. Stigma continues on when the person attaches a judgment to their first thought - "they're different, so they're bad (or dangerous, or stupid, or evil, etc)." The disgrace of being born with Down Syndrome. That's stigma - attaching a negative judgment to someone, most often for something over which they have no control.

So often folks are pre-judged base on the condition with which they live, not on their behavior. To get past the initial thought, one very often has to get to know someone - to sit down and talk with someone, and listen, and work at understanding. One has to look past the outer appearance, and past the brain, to see who is really in there. It takes time, it takes patience, it takes intention, it takes effort. Mother Teresa said she saw Jesus in everyone she met. In order for her to do that, she had to look. She had to put forth the effort, because most of the people she dealt with were sick and impoverished. 

I love people today that years ago I would have avoided. But the truth for me is that for years and years I only judged myself by my skin, my gender, and my brain. I felt ugly, I learned growing up that men were bad, so I was bad, and my brain surely didn't work right at all. It's no wonder I wanted to die. When I was given the opportunity to challenge my thinking and my beliefs, I began to see a Ken that I had never known. I began to see a multi-talented, kind, caring individual who really does have a pretty big heart, once all the calcium was chipped away. And I began to know that I am more than my looks, I'm more than my gender, and I'm more than my brain, and I began to become ok with all of me. I don't know if I started with me, or with other people, but I also began the scary and challenging work of getting to know others beyond their labels. And I stopped being so afraid of people. I began to see that, as we say in NAMI, we have more similarities than differences.

Here's the spiritual part of all of this - spirituality is about developing the ability to see and believe beyond appearances. It's about looking for the universal Truth that we are all children of a loving and benevolent Universe, and discovering that Truth in ourselves and others, and then living that Truth. We are all connected; that is why what I give out returns to me. So I seek to know you, the real you, underneath your human shell, because in getting to know you, I also get to know me, and I get to know God.

Namasté

Ken

Status Stigma

Anything can happen to anybody at any time.

I have been guilty of what I'm calling 'Status Stigma'. Very generally, it's putting other human beings on a pedestal and being surprised or disappointed when something very human happens to them. Sometimes I'm surprised when a well-known individual gets in trouble with the law, or a deep character flaw is revealed, or an addiction surfaces, or s/he dies from an addiction or a mental illness.  We like heroes, or, at least, I do, people we can look up to, admire - and it can be disappointing to me when their humanness shows up.

I think perhaps the greater crime for me is when I do it to people I know personally.  I nearly missed the opportunity to be helpful to someone who has years of long-term recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. This person came to me for assistance with some mental health issues. In my mind, I dismissed their issues as 'not serious', so I did not pay as much attention as I could have. Then I discovered that this person's life is currently seriously affected by a mental health condition. There can be a false sense of security surrounding people who have managed to stay away from alcohol and/or drugs for a long time - sort of like, 'they've got it licked.' Well, yes and no. If that person continues to use the tools that maintain their recovery, and ends up dying from something else, they won't succumb to alcoholism or addiction, but that might be the only thing that's 'licked'.

I feel I should know this: recovery in one area of our life does not guarantee problems won't crop up in other areas. I know people who have become cross-addicted - after a period of abstinence from their 'drug of choice', they may become addicted to another substance that hadn't posed a problem before. Or they may become addicted to a certain behavior. I know recovering alcoholics who have discovered they also need recovery from a gambling addiction or a sex addiction or a food addiction. And then there are those who develop another mental illness after years of recovery from alcoholism or addiction. I've known people who have been in long-term recovery from alcoholism who died by suicide. This I would call Self Status Stigma (or false pride). False pride will cause me and anyone else afflicted by it to avoid seeking help when help is needed. It happens to folks working recovery programs who are embarrassed when things happen. It happens to social workers, addictions counselors, doctors, nurses, ministers, rabbis, imams, gurus, teachers, police officers, fire fighters, soldiers - anybody. Anybody who is looked up to, or anybody who thinks they 'should know better.' Illnesses and human frailties do not discriminate. 

So, what's the solution? How do I avoid stigmatizing myself and others?

Avoiding stigmatizing me is much easier, I think - I stay open and honest with the people who are close to me. I don't try to hide when difficulties arise for me. This (so far) keeps my difficulties to a minimum. I no longer have great big huge crises. Being honest and open with others helps me stay honest and open with me. It keeps me humble, and grateful. I'm far from perfect, yet on a daily basis I seem to be able to suit up and show up and be of useful service to others. I don't help others from a position of superiority - be it education, knowledge, or time in recovery. I help from a position of understanding and empathy. This attitude, I hope, will protect me from my ego getting to big to ask for help.

Avoiding stigmatizing others is more challenging. I still like to think there are people who have this life thing down pat. I still like to think that after a certain amount of time of doing things 'right', a certain immunity to 'bad stuff' develops. I do myself and others a disservice when I put anybody on a pedestal - we all come from the same Creator, and we are all connected. When I elevate someone, I create a sense of separation - they're 'better' than me - that does not, in Truth, exist, and this can cause me to be blind to their humanity. Right now, the solution to this sort of discrimination is for me to correct it when I catch it, and begin to understand that all of us have a human nature and a divine nature. 

Oddly enough, that is the point of this blog, if I recall - for me to begin to understand that I am a spiritual entity having a human experience, and it's all good.

So, I will continue to avoid denying you your humanity while recognizing your divinity. And in allowing you to be you, with all your attendant sufferings, perhaps I'll get a little bit better at allowing me to be me.

And I'll keep remembering, anything can happen to anybody at any time.

Namaste,

Ken

Stigma

This is a discussion board post I wrote for one of my classes. The question was how do I think society views mental illness?

As a whole, I do not believe that society views mental illness as a brain disorder. There is much stigma and lack of understanding surrounding mental illness. I like what my colleague says when speaking about mental illness: "It's ok to have a heart disorder - we call that heart disease - or a pancreas disorder - we call that diabetes; why is it not ok to have a brain disorder - mental illness?"

Mental illness as a medical disorder/disease is a relatively new concept for humankind. Centuries past, mental illness was often viewed as demonic possession, and treated as such, usually by exorcisms or 'laying on of hands', depending upon your religious flavor. These methods of treating mental illness have not shown great success. Therefore, to have a mental illness is to feel isolated and defective; the degree to which one who has mental illness feels this shame depends upon their gender and culture of origin. For instance, many more women are treated for depression than men; yet, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, "Men die by suicide 3.5x more often than women," and "White males accounted for 7 of 10 suicides in 2015." (https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/) Men are less likely to seek help for depression because, I suppose, it is not manly to feel chronic low self-esteem, experience a decreased inability to function and to enjoy life, suicidal thoughts, and feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness. Men are expected to 'man-up'.

We are all familiar with the person living with schizophrenia who roams the streets, mumbling to herself or shouting out at imaginary figures. Those folks, most of us will say, have a mental illness, or at the very least, they're 'crazy'. How many of us, however, think that there's anything that can be done? How many of us have friends or family who we know are in recovery from schizophrenia or schizo-affective disorder? These folks are roaming the streets too! With the advances in treatment of all mental disorders and mood disorders, many people who are affected by these disorders are able to live relatively normal lives. But because we don't see them much or hear from them, we're not necessarily aware that these people in recovery exist. We only become aware of mental illness when we see the guy on the street shouting, or hear of a murder/suicide or an office shooting on the news. This negative publicity and stigma inhibits people with lived experience of mental illness from sharing their experience.

A very important aspect of mental illness in the United States is that we still are more apt to treat mental illness with incarceration. Because the symptoms of mental illness are often disorderly (and occasionally violent) behavior, our society locks people with mental illness behind bars. I can vouch for the fact that jails and prisons are not conducive to mental health recovery, so as a society we are mis-treating mental illness. However, if the person whom we don't know how to deal with is safely out of sight, they are also safely out of mind.

Fortunately, the tide is turning, albeit slowly. More people are experiencing greater recovery from severe mental illness, and these people, me included, are open and honest about their experiences. It took me nearly half a century to acknowledge and accept all of my mental health issues, and I could not fully recover until I did. I now share my recovery with others through speaking, writing, facilitating support groups, and working 1:1 with my peers. If I did not share with you that I live with 2 mental illnesses, you would not know it; yet I manage my illnesses every day through medication, therapy, support, and practicing healthy life skills. The more people who are in recovery share their stories, the more mental illness will be treated successfully, and the less people will suffer and die. 

Namaste

Ken