Hi @Historylover , @MDT , @Jynx , @petrichor , @Appleblossom , @Lucycannon , @wellwellwellnez ! 😊
Thank you all so much for getting involved here! I go away for a little while and by the time I come back, there's so much to respond to that I need to find a decent window of time to do it justice! 😊
@MDT wrote:
"Fix the life problem and you fix the grief. I can't say it any plainer then that."
Yes agreed. So long as we are able to articulate EXACTLY what the life problem is. Once we know it, we can act. I believe in acting too quickly, we can worsen it. Seek to understand why there is an issue then go to the root cause of it.
Quite right. But it's not just about personally understanding what your problem is (for many, that's the easy part), it's about being able to communicate those needs effectively to the people who you need to help you.
There are so many pitfalls to that, and even after trudging through this mess of over 20 years, I am still no closer to figuring out how to do that. I'm even further back then when I started.
You basically need a translation guide to be able to communicate with people with a radically differant mindset, radically differant values & radically priorities - and unfortunately, no such translation guides exist, to my knowledge. You also need to know how to navigate the details, that if known to your "helpers" would immediately upset them and completely turn them off from giving you the help you need. e.g. How do you ask your fundamentally religious family to help relocate you to a town with a robust gay community, because your having difficulty finding a boyfriend where you live now?
IMHO, one of the biggest invisable handicaps in this area is the concept of "that goes without saying"; the assumption that all people must hold some basic, underlying truth to be indisputable, and therefore that all subsequent reasoning and dialog will be based upon that truth.
It's so basic that you don't even believe it needs clarifying, so you don't even bother to mention it. Then, after a very long time, something twigs you to the fact that the people around you hold a completely differant mindset on this highly foundational principal. Likewise, they probably aren't even bothering to communicate with you their "things that go without saying", as they haven't even stopped to think that these things might need to be explicitly spelled out for you.
And even when one or the other side twigs - where do you go from there? How do you prove that the sky is blue to a bunch of people who insist it isn't? The "things that go without saying" are usually so basic, it's impossible to build a rationale to support them, because they simply are self-evidant.
Which leads me in to another pitfall: when "helpers" want to exploit your situation to alter your life to suit their own designs. How do you lock yourself in to a situation, so that the only places other people can send you are the places you want to go? That's an important considderation when it comes to reaching out for help; because so often you are trapped with people who want things from you and are ticked off that you aren't delivering. So, when you turn to them for help, what really happens is that they see that vulnerability as an opportunity for them to correct the things they don't like about your life. So you really need to know, beforehand, how to cripple their ability to exploit you, so that the only possible effect they are able to have upon your life is to help you get exactly what you want.
But how do you do that?
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Moving beyond @MDT 's comments, reading through this thread reminded me of another issue that I think needs to be addressed.
There is a fair bit of talk going on these days about grief produced by real-life problems.
But, unfortunately, almost all of this seems to be getting swallowed up in the ongoing debate/discussion about "the trauma-based concept of mental illness" and the "biomedical-based concept of mental illness". And while discussing the "the trauma-based concept of mental illness" is certainly very valid and important, having this subject monopolizing the importance of real-life problems is still problematic, because at the end of the day, we are still just talking about mental illness, and are completely ignoring cases that have nothing whatsoever to do with "mental illness".
By way of example, let's considder three similar scenarios that (I hope) show the distinctions in what I'm talking about. Please forgive my over-simplifying and/or inaccuracies in portraying these issues; I am merely trying to illustrate a point.
1. (Biomedical Mental Illness) Someone who has lived a peaceful, uneventful life develops schizophrenia and suddenly becomes gripped with anxiety and terror, because they (incorrectly) believe that there are people all around them who are trying to kiII them. Nothing has "happened" to the person to make them believe these inaccuracies, their brain has suddenly just been beset by an illness.
2. (Trauma-based Mental Illness) A veteran who has seen some really brutal combat comes home and is discharged into civilian life. As he walks around his peaceful little Australian home town, he is perpetually on edge, (incorrectly) sensing that terrorists are hiding in his blind-spots, preparing to ambush him. Nothing physical has happened to his brain; it is still a perfectly healthy instrument. But he has become so used to remaining ever-alert for an impending attack, and so well-schooled on the dire consequences of letting your guard down in a warzone, that he simply can't turn off his wariness of impending danger, even when he is in an extremely safe environment.
3. (No Mental Illness) A soldier is trapped in a foxhole, in the middle of a warzone. Bullets are flying everywhere; bombs are going off all around him. He is terrified - because his life really is in immense danger. His mind isn't distorting or exaggerating anything; the problem is not "in his head", it's in his situation. He is genuinely in real danger, right here, right now; and needs immediate, real-world help to get out of this crisis.
I've seen some arguments get pretty intense when it comes to discussing "Biomedical Mental Illness" vs. "Trauma-based mental illness". But despite the often stark differances, at the end of the day, all those people are talking about are mental illnesses. Inaccuracies in the brain; defects in the reasoning process.
We are talking about people with some sort of misfire going on in their minds that are leading them to the totally inaccurate and unreasonable conclusions that the taliban have infiltrated their sleepy little Australian town, for the dedicated purpose of stalking this particular individual down and kiIIing them. At the end of the day, we are just talking about people with stuff going on in their heads; with problems that exist solely in peoples heads, and therefore, with solutions that must focus entirely upon peoples' heads.
But in allowing the conversation to be monopolized this way, we end up ignoring group #3; the soldiers who literally are trapped in the foxholes and need immediate real-world rescue.
When we talk about suffering solely in terms of "mental illness" - be it biomedical, or trauma-based - we blind ourselves to the reality of real-world crisises. The soldier who gets on his radio and reports how terrible the conditions are, will likely to only hear the response: "Uh huh... And why do you think you feel like that?" Back at base, there will probably be endless sophisticated dialog about why this guy feels so unhappy about being in the thick of combat - whether it is the loudness of the bombs detonating around him; dehydration from being out in the dessert sun too long, some sort of genetic defect that has given him a bad brain, or perhaps it's because mommy didn't buy him a GI Joe that Xmas he really wanted one.
They'll barely even acknowledge the possibility that, the problem has nothing whatsoever to do with the soldier's head - the problem is entirely in his situation. And that, therefore, the solution to his anguish can entirely be found in correcting his situation.
Because that's the real hazard here, when we ignore real-life problems as the sole factors in peoples' grief; when we get fixated on one form or another of "mental health". We waste time trying to understand the soldier's thoughts & feelings, and trying to alter the way his mind works, when in fact the one and only thing we ought to be saying to him is: "We're sending in the cavalry, son! We're coming in to get you out of that mess!"
And that fixation, I believe, is starting to become a significant problem with the future policies that are being proposed by the government in this realm. Because, while there is increasing acknowledgement about the importance of addressing real-life problems (specifically in the context of reducing "mental illness" and suicides), most new commitments to address real-life problems is packaged under the heading of "support for psychosocial issues".
As I believe I mentioned previously, the term "psychosocial" generally tends to require an actual mental illness to be applied to a situation. So, if you have severe bipolar, and are also homeless, you have a psychosocial problem. If you are deeply traumatized by abuse you endured in childhood, and you are also homeless, you have a psychosocial problem. But if you just happen to be homeless, and your brain works completely fine, you do not have a psychosocial problem; you just have a real-life problem.
So, under currant policy, the government is extremely interested in building homes for the bipolar and traumatized people, but not for the perfectly healthy homeless guy. Once again, the people being stalked by imaginary terrorists get all the sympathy and assistance, while the poor bugger actually stuck in the foxhole is just left to his horrendous fate.
I'm not belittling the importance of supporting the mentally ill, because that's so essential, and the interest we are showing now in giving them all the support they need is absolutely fantastic. We absolutely need to be doing all of this.
What I'm griping about is that non-mentally ill, yet nonetheless suffering people, are being left behind in this policy shift.
Real-life help ought to be adequately available to everyone who has a real-life problem. The question of whether or not they have a mental illness should have no bearing on their ability to get the help they need.
Emergency, police & ambulance (24 Hrs)
Connect with a lifeline crisis supporter (24 Hrs)
Suicide callback service (24 Hrs)
Kids helpline (24 Hrs)
13 YARN
