Time to Talk, mental health and guilt-trippy Facebook posts

Now, this is a nice confluence of events. Over the last few weeks I've noticed a proliferation of guilt-trippy facebook posts that run something like this:

- Mention of mental health awareness
- Mention of being there for people, having chocolate etc
- Guilt trip - I bet X% of people won't post this

These posts have left me torn. I am pleased that people are mentioning the words 'mental health' without getting all weird about it. And the offer of chocolate, real or virtual, is rather nice. But then I read the guilt trip and my heart sinks. As though our moral worth is dependent on whether we copy and paste a facebook status. And all the lovely, open-hearted words in the rest of the post vanish into thin air. I've wanted to post a riposte, but other events have rather taken over in the last week or so.

And then today is Time to Talk day, spearheaded by the Time to Change campaign. A perfect opportunity to talk about mental health awareness and really being there for people who are suffering and struggling.

And in an even more interesting confluence of events, I read this today: http://www.frominsultstorespect.com/2015/03/14/from-psychiatric-name-calling-to-plain-humane-english/. It resonated pretty strongly with me, although I know I don't have a lot of experience to draw from. What I do know is that I have a really ambivalent attitude to seeing my own suffering as 'mental illness.' On the one hand, a label like 'depression' was really useful, at various points. It meant that people treated my erratic behaviour with a bit more kindness than perhaps they might otherwise have done. I think it helped me a bit to move away from the persistent 'you are weak, pull yourself together, snap out of it' stream of thoughts that plagued me. It helped me not to feel quite so much that it was a moral failing on my part. It had practical benefits too - a bit more time to finish my Master's dissertation, in particular.

On the other hand, I never really bought the 'brain chemistry' explanation for what I was feeling. I knew that my emotional responses were all over the place, and there was no apparent reason for me to feel so disproportionately empty, and angry, and bleak, and wanting to disappear. And yet, it did have meaning. My episodes of depression - especially the two more recent ones - have been followed by breakthroughs and new insights. Through plumbing the depths of my own suffering, I realised how much of it was caused not by my brain chemistry but by my lack of kindness towards myself and by some deeply ingrained false beliefs about who I was and who I felt I should be. It took a lot of hard self-examination, supported by very kind friends, teachers and therapists, to have those breakthroughs. It was painful, and I often didn't have the energy for much else. Not to mention that it was expensive. And perhaps if I'd believed in the brain chemistry explanation I wouldn't have gone down that road. I might have tried other, more medical means, to 'fix' myself. I might even have believed that I wasn't fixable.

I'm still not sure what really caused my depression, or how to think about mental illness in general, not just mine. There are more conversations to be had here, I am sure.

But there's also a more immediate conversation to be had. One of the reasons I'm so passionate about Time to Talk day is because I tried and failed to hide what was going on for me and it made it worse. I felt more isolated and more desperate. And when I shared it, I realised that people did understand, and they didn't think less of me, and, to my enduring shock, they love me still. And so it matters to me that you, reading this post, have somewhere that you feel safe to share your suffering as and when you need it - whether you call it mental illness or not. And if I'm that person, then that's an honour and a privilege and I will honour it as best I can.

One soul (reprise)

Scattered thoughts from a weekend in which the President of the USA banned all citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US, even if they had green cards.

By one stroke of the pen, families have been separated. Jobs, homes, marriages, university places can be stripped away in a moment. There are real lives, people like you and me, being affected by this policy. My heart cannot fathom how much pain they must be feeling, how much fear and terror and uncertainty there must be, and it hurts in empathy with them. 

'O mankind, we have created you male and female and made you nations and tribes that ye might know one another.' (Qur'an, 49:13 (excerpt))

There is so much pain. The pain of those whose lives have been ripped apart by this travel ban or who live in fear of such a rupture. And equally, the pain of those in the rust belt who can see only the loss of their jobs and livelihoods, who live in a grinding poverty that I can only imagine, and who understandably fear change and further loss. I read today a story of a white woman who grew up in Birmingham (UK, not Alabama) and saw her neighbourhood change to become somewhere that she felt unsafe. It made me uncomfortable in its racist overtones and yet there was real pain there. I can't ignore that.

I know two things:

1. This is an injustice and must be stopped.

2. I cannot allow this to make me hate or dehumanise anyone, no matter how deeply I disagree with them.

And yet how desperately hard it is to hold on to both of these things. And yet the Qur'an is so blindingly clear. 'Be aware of your Lord, who created you from a single soul.' (4:1 (excerpt)). If I believe that, I must find a way to act for justice, yet without hatred. 

I find myself aware of my privilege, too. I have a British passport. I speak English with an accent that does not give away my ethnic or religious background. I am well educated, middle class and well off. I look white, mostly dress white, and pass as white, for all that I identify as brown. I am not the target of hate on a daily basis. All of these are a privilege. How do I use that privilege to speak out against injustice, without patronising those who have direct experience of that injustice?

Standing against oppression

Without knowing chapter and verse, I have always believed that my faith entails standing against oppression and for justice. I was always told that the Qur'an condemned oppression (see, for example, 42:39-44), and the stories I loved of the Prophet and Imam Ali reinforced that lesson. But it goes deeper than that - it goes back to the 'one soul' premise. If I'm serious about that premise, then I cannot let injustice stand, even if it happens to distant others. And that's as true of police brutality to black Americans (#blacklivesmatter) as it is of this travel ban.

So I will be standing outside 10 Downing Street tomorrow. I can't think of anything else that I can legitimately do from here (please do send further recommendations). If I get time, I will be standing with a sign that quotes Matthew 25: I was a stranger, and ye took me in... Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25: 36, 40 (excerpts)). By all accounts, Theresa May is a committed Christian, so these words should have some resonance.

Only love will destroy hatred

In this world

Hate never yet dispelled hate.

Only love dispels hate.

This is the law,

Ancient and inexhaustible.

You too shall pass away.

Knowing this, how can you quarrel?

(The Dhammapada)

Reading this again, I know it to be true, in my own heart and experience. I can't explain it and it probably isn't rational but I have faith that if we can embody love, in all that we do, rest in the Source of love, however we might experience that (call him Allah or call him al-Rahman, to Him belong the most beautiful names), it does make a difference. I am called again to live with love, to love even those I don't like, to meet every stranger with love as best I can. I'll be doing a formal loving-kindness (metta) meditation every day this week, and calling Ya Rahman Ya Rahim whenever I have a spare moment, and I have to hope that that helps somehow, if only in soothing my troubled heart and making me more open to loving others.