Public Comment

The brightest individuals I've met have been very low-key and unassuming. I find those who have less egotism to be more accessible, and they have a better chance at hearing what I'm trying to tell them. As well, it is easier for me to receive a message, including a critical one, when it is delivered heart-to-heart rather than from towering superiority. 

Stigma consists of not being heard. When I was hospitalized for psychosis in 1984, I had an adverse reaction to medication that uncontrollably twisted the muscles in my lower body, such that I couldn't walk. Staff at Kaiser believed I was intentionally doing this, because EPS, or Extrapyramidal side effects, caused by antipsychotics (and not the illness) normally affect the upper body. The Kaiser people were mean and nasty to me when their damned medication made me unable to do what they wanted. 

Not being heard--People incorrectly assume who they think you are and how you function. When you are mentally ill, anything you say is taken with a grain of salt. You are not taken at your word; your words are assumed nonsense. This kind of thinking, done by treatment professionals, is grossly oversimplified, because much of the time, a mentally ill person has valid things to say. 

If you are mentally ill, you are expected to acknowledge that your mind doesn't work. If you are mentally ill, any kind of ambition of doing something significant is met with being ignored, with instant dismissal--or it is seen as a symptom of your illness. 

But there is another kind of not being heard that is probably worse. When we say we are in pain, and when our distress meets with a brick wall of dispassion, this seems like the counselors aren't even human. Cruelty often is not borne of malice. Often it comes from not giving a damn about how another person feels. Additionally, cruelty comes from categorizing a person as "one of them" rather than "one of us." 

I believe that counselors who work with mentally ill individuals in crisis must learn to have a level of dispassion, merely as a survival mechanism. This is in contrast the comradery that exists among fellow treatment practitioners. If you care and have empathy for everyone, and if you are among people who are falling apart, you could go down with them. Therefore, the concept of having a "boundary" was created. There has to be an invisible wall in which the counselor doesn't feel what the patient feels. Yet there are problems inherent in this. 

Disidentifying with a person or group of people opens the door for harming them. And mental health patients do get harmed in supposed care facilities. And this is a crime--because we, just like anyone, have feelings. Secondly but not least, mental health consumers due to the mistakes and/or malpractice of treatment professionals, in some cases may sustain permanent physical damage, whether this is physical brain damage or some other form of damage to the body. This happens. Yet it may go unacknowledged because of how the designated ill person, or "client" is perceived and dealt with. 

Disidentifying with ourselves is worse than someone else disidentifying with us because it means that we've lost the connection with ourselves--at that point, our mind and body will probably go down the toilet. Disidentifying or trying to disidentify could be seen as an opportunity to get some relief from pain. But it is counterproductive and leads the wrong way. 

We must always care about ourselves. This includes times that we must put our needs above those of another person. If you don't take your own side in a conflict, no one else will.