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Incommunicability

In document Why Can’t You Just Do It? (pagina 32-40)

3. Why Can’t You Just Do It?

3.2 Incommunicability

“I think of it as social, but I feel it as being individual.”

The difficulties in talking about mental health issues are rooted in different beliefs. Certainly, as it is considered, and in part it is, a very personal issue, is not something to be brought up in daily conversations. This contributes to creating a taboo around it which makes suffering invisible, even though it is common and shared. Every person I’ve talked to complained about the loneliness of not feeling comfortable in sharing personal experiences of anxiety or depression, yet they all experienced it at a very small distance from each other, and not in such different ways. The topic in itself is perceived as boring or heavy and is barely part of discourses among students. It is also true that for someone living a depressive or anxious moment, explaining why and how they feel immobilized to someone who is extraneous to that feeling is incredibly frustrating and difficult, causing a constant perception of being misunderstood. I felt a general relief from the interviewees in talking without having to explain.

3.2.1 Loneliness and Misunderstanding

The fear underlying the reticence to express one's relationship with anxiety or depression stems from the feeling that one cannot be understood. There is a strong perceived mismatch between how this anxiety is communicated and how it is received instead.

“It's like people with chronic pain, right? We don't know that they feel it.

And despite of that, they wake up every day and they walk and they run but they're in pain, you know? [...] They can do that and not be seen in this world. You know, like, people are gonna look at them differently because we don't see the actual pain, but they feel it. And that's how I feel with

anxiety. You know, like, there are people in my life that are never going to understand.”

Firsthand experience seems to be the precondition for any kind of empathic understanding/reflection by others.

“But it's quite hard to communicate everything that's going on because I realize quite quickly that people get annoyed… not annoyed but maybe lost a bit in what I am saying because they don't really experience that, they don't really know what it actually means for me. They try and want to understand but sometimes I also see that they haven't experienced that, so it is very hard for them to feel what I feel.”

Friends or relatives or acquaintances who do not go through similar experiences of mental distress are not seen as valid interlocutors, despite emotional closeness, years of friendship, or shared experiences. Rather, often what holds them back from trying to share their experiences is the fear of being boring or annoying, and ultimately incapable, in failing to keep up in a way that is satisfactory to themselves and for the requirements of the steps of life. The emotional\mental sphere is not considered as a valid place where reasons for “failing” can come from.

“Sometimes when I talk to my friends, I kind of am looking for excuses sometimes to explain my behavior. Although I have like my behavior has a different reasons: that I feel sad, or that I feel frustrated has a different, well, background or reason, but I'm not telling it my friends because I don't want to be perceived as weak or as, as failing, or as you know that I just am struggling now. Because I feel my friends. Like at least the friends that I am close with at the moment. They are far further in process than I am. And I feel like when I tell them, I've struggled, I'm still struggling, I'm still not really happy or satisfied with my study, I kind of feel I'm annoying them as well, you know, so I'm just keeping it for myself as well. So, yeah, it's easier to talk about success, it's harder to talk about failure in the end.”

Certainly the aspect of comparison, if it was present in the process of choosing who one wants to become, weighs even more heavily at the moment when the desire not to feel alone

collides with misunderstanding, and perhaps the "success" of those around us. Seeing oneself surrounded by people "on track," increases the sense of loneliness, even when a recognition of the social matrix and magnitude of the phenomenon is present.

“I think of it as social, but I feel of it as being individual, you know, because there's, there's more and more people who talk about it, but not really people close to me, you know, so I see things on social media, people talk about it, and that that's very helpful. It also gives me a feeling like, you know, I am not alone in this, but at the same time, when I see people close to me, just, you know, thriving… Well, yeah, that makes those very individual.”

Social media, or the media discourse in general, seem to have had some positive impact in the self-perception of mental health. As a consequence of the isolation that the pandemic has imposed on everyone, mental health discourse has increased and become more accessible. At the dissemination level, being able to receive examples of similar struggles, especially from strangers, has helped identify symptoms and attitudes at risk where before there was only malaise.

“And with another friend that I have since ages we talked about anxiety this winter and we had never talked about this in 10 year. Also probably because the online discourse is so present right now that you realize what you have now, that you didn't know you had for such a long time.”

This aspect of the role that social media content had in dismantling prejudices and in allowing people to share, will be analyzed more in detail in the last chapter of this research.

What emerges from these reflections on the possibility of confronting others about one's discomfort is a tendency toward silence and relative loneliness in dealing with it. This stems from the feeling of not being able to be understood, derived from the constant comparison with those who are more "ahead" in the path of self-optimization, those who have collected more "experiences" (Bal, E.Grassiani, E. and Kirk K. 2014).

3.2.2 Taboo and Shame

As we have just seen, self-disclosure is a difficult practice as it is feared that it will be perceived as a complaint. This is largely referable to a widespread stigma regarding mental suffering, which is labeled as a whim and never fully legitimized. This stigma, even if it is not actually validated by the close people with whom one would like to open up, is internalized to such an extent that one perceives oneself as boring or burdensome.

“I keep things for myself so I don't feel uncomfortable telling them something boring, I'm not even sure it would actually help so much... I just don't like to complain. it's probably not the right way of doing things.”

This obstacle of self-limitation in expressing one's difficulties is precisely the most obvious symptom of what Fisher calls the privatization of stress. Although the "common ground" is there to be seen, and it is often recognized, it fails to override the division of self from supposedly uninvolved others. The emotional experience is perceived as extremely personal and too overloaded to be expressed and shared.

“Well, I think maybe over time, more and more people will speak up. Yeah.

It's just when you're in the middle of it, it's just... very difficult to see that common ground and to just speak about it neutrally. You know, it's so loaded with emotion. Yeah, maybe sometimes I worry that I won't even be able to speak about it without crying. You know? Obviously, why would it be bad to cry about it in front of other people, but you know, you don't want to do that. I don't want to do this.”

One senses, in addition to the recognition of the taboo surrounding mental health, the hope that this will normalize over time. It seems to me that the heaviness of not feeling comfortable talking about one's mental health is an across-the-board feeling, and this secrecy amplifies the sense of loneliness.

“It's also a taboo about mental health in the end, because if you're having a cold, or if you're having the flu, you like more easily to tell that, you know, just say, oh, ‘I've got the flu’, and talking about anxiety is more like a topic that feels very private and very, you know, not something that you would reveal to anyone.”

Obviously, the degree of ease in trusting the state of one's mental health also depends on the degree of awareness and the type of journey one has taken or is taking. The most challenging time with respect to communicability tends to be the beginning, when what is being questioned is only one's own value and not the general reticence that exists in accepting frailty as an integral part of life.

“So now I'm at a point in my life where I am ok saying that I have it.

especially to the people around me. [...] Now I make sure that I tell my friends, all my friends in my life know I have GAD [nrd. General Anxiety Disorder], especially the ones I'm gonna share a space with, I make sure I tell them. Now I'm not ashamed of it. I met a friend who told me to make anxiety my best friend instead of my enemy. Now I talk about it much more openly. I'm trying not to be ashamed of it. It happened.”

The path to self-acceptance is bumpy and uneven, but inevitably sharing is a fundamental step whose value is never questioned. In fact, these same interviews were welcomed as a good opportunity for encounter, for intersubjective resonance, an occasion where the assumptions and context deactivated at base the risk of burdening someone with boring and sad stuff, leaving the channel for listening and communication open.

“When I got to know about your topic... it resonated because I feel like I get into depression and anxiety a lot myself, so I thought, ‘oh I would love to take part into research and have a chance to talk about it’, because I usually don't talk about it with anybody because it's kind of a boring and sad topic, and I love to talk to people, so I was like ‘oh my god this is such a good opportunity to be able to be talk with people who can relate to it’, so yeah I think it's interesting when people experience kind of similar things.”

Even though the subject feels very intimate in the social world, once a "safe-ground" is found, the conversations around the topic run smoothly, and a perceived "we" easily emerges.

The key problem with the privatization of stress, is that it prevents the formation of a collective consciousness, and makes the use of the plural seem inappropriate. In the two group-sessions I was able to organize however, singular and plural pronouns alternated in the narration of one's experiences. There is an idea of "we", of a collective dimension, of recognizing oneself in the experience of others, which, however, fails to overcome the taboo.

“And even having these discussions of, like… I'm just meeting someone who, who feels the same way I feel, you know, like, and it sucks, it sucks that it takes this long, because I'm pretty sure there's other people that have it, but we don't talk about it. Like I remember when I got diagnosed. I didn't tell anyone for a long time, because I was ashamed of it.”

The paradox highlighted by the participants, and made glaringly obvious by the group sessions, lies in the gap between actual physical proximity, and the feeling of loneliness that anxiety and depression carry. Indeed, it was immediate to note that we were in fact a group, certainly very small compared to the totality of students at the university, but traversing the same spaces, perhaps even at the same time, each with his or her own sense of non-membership and loneliness.

“I have never been able to talk about general anxiety disorder without having to feel guilty, without having to explain what it is, without, you know, like, just feeling so misunderstood or judged. And you gave me that space to just say, ‘Hey, I have it too’. And while I'm not the only one who feels this way, and even motivates me even more to like, just go and finish my thesis and realize, it's okay that I took longer, it's okay that I was procrastinating that I was doing all these other things. Because it's something I'm in constant fight with, you know, every day you, you're like, Is it going to be a good day? You know, like, when you're in that flow, when your anxiety just does not get in the way?”

This last excerpt introduces an important environmental factor, that of the university.

Especially the factor of procrastination, regarding assignments, is a pivot around which many anxiogenic and depressive factors revolve, which also requires special attention in this chapter on communicability.

The issue of shame is very relevant since it is the natural consequence of what Smail (2009) called magical voluntarism: if the responsibility for the malaise and the solution to it lies solely with the person experiencing it, in the event that this malaise is not resolved, a self-blaming mechanism is set up (Gill 2016) that manifests itself in the feeling of shame.

3.2.3 Academic Environment

In addition to the general feeling of relief that comes with confiding, there are occasions when, in order to explain a behavior, it would be almost necessary to make the reasons known. For example, when an anxious or depressive episode prevents the "normal"

performance of daily activities. If it is already difficult to be able to bring as an explanation one's mental state in social or otherwise informal contexts, it is even more so when the interlocutors are representatives of an institution with which one is relating.

“But I think like the structures, especially in the workplace, but also in universities, they don't really allow vulnerability that much. And that's why it's very hard probably to... I mean, obviously, you shouldn't talk to anyone about your issues. Mostly you should talk to friends and good relatives, family and stuff. But as you said, sometimes you are not, you can't really, you have to talk to some strangers or to professors, and they kind of have to know, sometimes maybe something about what is hindering you from the process of finishing an assignment or meeting a deadline. So yeah, I think I find it very hard to make the distinction between the public and private sphere.”

This very aspect of communication reveals the friction between private and collective perceptions. On the one hand, there is a desire to protect from the non-private sphere what are labeled as fragilities; on the other hand, it is precisely the non-private sphere, in these cases, that functions as a trigger to trigger an interlocking loop. Some prefer to maintain this separation even at the cost of bearing extra heaviness

“So yeah, I think that's what I struggle with at the moment as well, because I would like to talk about those issues sometimes with my teachers as well.

But then I realized, well, why should I? Because it's not, you know, it's not their business. But sometimes, my mental state is affecting my work, my assignments. So I feel ‘Should I just be silent about it?’ Well, it's not their business. It's my business. I have to take care of it.”

Others, however, by virtue of respecting and caring for their own frailties, are more convinced in bringing forward practical demands that make it easier to deal with university

“Okay, I feel a bit better, I've learned this and what do I want? I want to finish my bachelor's. Okay. So, how can you do it while still respecting your own limits? So that means communication with the teacher about how you struggle and like asking for extra time, you know, for deadlines.”

Opinions and feelings about this precise aspect of academic life, are ambivalent and often laden with the fear of failing to explain an "I can't" and coming across as lazy or self-indulgent. In front of those who have no experience with mental anguish, asking for more time, or more understanding, can seem like an excuse.

“I've made it a point not to tell my supervisor. My supervisor and I are actually very close and I made a point not to tell her that I have general anxiety disorder, because I don't want to use it as an excuse, because I really want to live my life without having to bring it up. And I know that's more of a personal thing, because maybe I shouldn't have to carry all that burden.”

The reasoning is articulated between an attempt at self-acceptance, consisting of knowing one's limits, revealing one's mental state by overcoming taboos, and finding safe spaces, and the refusal to determine oneself’s identity as a function of one's mental illness.

“Even if I were to, like get a diagnosis, like an official diagnosis, that was on paper, it would be very weird to actually go up to a professor and be like

‘This is why, you know, I couldn't submit this.’ I feel like, also people who see diagnosis, they also sort of look at it as a huge deal. I think I’d feel being judged over everything I do later, based on that one thing, you know, and that will also be something that would scare me from actually sharing anxiety with a professor or whatever. So, yeah, I think the only way you could overcome this is if it was more normalized to talk about these things and not see it as a big deal.”

The benefit that a communication without judgement in the academic environment would bring would be to be able to organize time differently. The need for this "additional" portion of time is difficult to justify without over-exposing oneself. This does not mean that there is not an ongoing discourse about mental health or that academic staff is not attentive enough.

But apparently there is a mismatch, and, notwithstanding the efforts from the University, the reticence in considering mental states as a good reason for delay is an issue.

In document Why Can’t You Just Do It? (pagina 32-40)