Post No.: 0522
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Sometimes, people can treat those with depression and suicide ideation in ways that’ll exacerbate their condition and situation – with assumptions, nagging, blames and/or judgemental sneering – as if they have chosen the state of their life and feelings when they seem stuck in their relationships or careers, have money problems, don’t seem like they’re working, they lack vitality or because they might be abusing substances due to attempting to self-medicate their depressive thoughts and problems away.
Someone who seems lacking in energy and motivation and chronically sleeps a lot is not necessarily a wastrel – they may be feeling tired and feel like they need the sleep precisely because they’re depressed. They may feel the need to sleep in late because they find it hard to get to sleep in the first place and once they do manage to get some sleep they then find it hard to get up. Unless they’ve been out late partying a lot or something similar then if they feel like they need to sleep, it’s because their body or mind is simply saying they need to. Sleeping in might not be the best thing for their depression but their body or mind simply urges them to, just like somebody may feel the urge for calorie-dense comfort foods after a stressful day at work.
A depressed person may feel lonely yet not want to be around other people because they think they’re a burden on others and/or they think they’re going to be stigmatised if they talk about their internal feelings to others. Others may then erroneously read them as someone who is aloof as a result, hence the judgemental (hypocritically antisocial) sneering, etc. against them. This pushes the depressed person even further away from the social support they need, and thus creates a vicious cycle of the sufferer not talking about their feelings to anyone, and others making harsh assumptions about them because they don’t understand what’s going on inside of them – and possibly don’t care to truly understand because they’ve made their judgemental dispositional rather than situational character assumptions about them already.
Even if a depressed person bravely manages to talk or tentatively hint about their internal mental state with someone, some people who’ve never experienced depression before will dismiss and talk back as if they understand the depressed person’s internal state better than those who have(!) Better awareness, education and general empathy for people with depression is resulting in fewer people disregarding the condition altogether as ‘excuses’ – but a few people remain ignorant.
It’s typical that it’s the least educated who most tend to stereotype groups and be most suspicious of, judgemental of, and fearful of, those who appear different, whether regarding the mentally ill or the merely different in any way to the current and immediately-surrounding ‘social norm’ according to their own narrow ingroups and personal knowledge. Well-trained doctors, who have the education and regular exposure to those with ailments, don’t treat the mentally or physically abnormal like that at all, precisely because of their knowledge and experience. It’s the under-educated who often jump to conclusions, such as calling someone a drunken idiot, when a decent medical professional will first enquire if the person being judged might have something like ataxia, cerebral palsy, auto-brewery syndrome or something else? Alcohol addiction is a medical problem itself. A ‘weird’ person might have autism, schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder? And so forth.
So some people may not mean to, but they can actually be a part of the problem itself. They may make it even harder for a sufferer to reveal their mental state to others, or to even realise that they potentially have a mental health problem if they don’t realise it, because other people are making it seem like it’s a choice and telling them to ignore their symptoms or ‘excuses’, or other misguided or naïve advice, which will ultimately affect their desire to seek proper help and get better. It’s like people telling you to ignore that growing and irritating, irregular mole on your skin because it’s ‘nothing’.
This is why everybody must learn more about mental health issues if they don’t understand why some people are the way they (currently) are, and to develop some genuine educated empathy and compassion for those who don’t conform to social expectations. Some people realise that when their own life is better, their mental state, attitudes and behaviours are better too, hence a lot of it is down to circumstances rather than fixed traits.
If you have any kind of mental health problem and are trying to share what’s going on in your mind with someone else, like a friend or family member, for the very first time, then you’ll understand that it’s usually not done lightly because you’re laying bare your vulnerabilities. Post No.: 0409 by Furrywisepuppy looked at some less-than-ideal responses people can give, even when based on good intentions as some of them might be. In some cases, people do genuinely know what they’re talking about and do understand what you’re on about – yet they’re still too quick to try to give advice or a ‘solution’ without probing for more details about your individual circumstances. They fail to just genuinely listen. It can then feel like there’s no point in carrying on talking to them (or anyone else, which means that one will suffer in silence forever from then on) because they’re not going to really listen.
The type of advice people tend to give to those stuck in a rut is frequently trite and naïvely blunt like, “You need to look after your health” or, “Just get a better job” or, “Eat less than you burn off”, which are about as banal or naïvely blunt as saying, “You ‘just’ need to stick the ball into the opponent’s net more” when a football team is experiencing a goal drought. (Utter genius – this coaching malarkey is easy-peasy(!)) Such advice may not be wrong per se, but they may end up thinking that their contribution to help the other person is done and they can therefore get back to focusing on themselves again. They naïvely oversimplify the issue and fail to empathise with the other person, their personal obstacles and how difficult it can be to change. Naïve advice is almost always centred purely on generic, assumed one-size-fits-all plans and ignores psychology or individual circumstances.
In many areas of life, many laypeople just love attempting to give direct advice even through they lack expertise on the subject in question – it’s like the old ‘kick the tyres’ technique when checking out a used car (mostly by men, but women too) when one doesn’t really know what one is doing or saying! Unless asked for, most people in this initial conversation aren’t looking for advice – they’re looking for someone to just listen, understand and be available. Listening and being available is usually far more important than giving any advice, even if one has expertise on the subject of mental health. (Well if one does have expertise on depression or anxiety then one would prioritise listening and being available first and foremost, unless someone is literally just about to take their own life.) Don’t overvalue advice and undervalue empathy.
In their defence, people may genuinely believe they are trying to help with their advice and they are well-meaning – thinking that giving any advice is better than just non-judgementally listening and thus allowing sufferers to ‘dwell’ on their negative emotions. Dwelling on one’s difficult emotions is indeed not good but there’s a huge difference between dwelling on or rehashing one’s difficult emotions or feelings alone and sharing them with others – a problem shared is a problem halved, so let them share it rather than silence their ‘negativity’. If you don’t listen to and accept their sadness or anxieties then they’ll feel like you don’t understand them, which in turn will make them feel psychologically (even more) alone. It doesn’t mean one should amplify their negative emotions but any attempts at lifting their mood should come later once they feel like you’re together on the same page as them first. You cannot lift their mood until you get on the same page first – metaphorically like you cannot airlift an injured person up to the helicopter until someone goes down onto the stricken boat where they are to attach them to the stretcher first. If you just try to beckon them to ‘come up’ to where you are without you (as the healthy person) going down to meet them where they are then they’re going to remain stranded.
Men in particular aren’t allowed to express their sensitive emotions and that’s a problem with a ‘macho’ culture. Keeping low emotions to oneself and ‘manning up’ is extremely harmful over time, and is a contributory factor for why suicide is currently the primary killer for men under 50 in the UK.
People don’t need or want uncompassionate or blunt responses, naïve advice or harmful comments like, “Snap out of it” during an episode when they’re feeling low – it could be the worst thing for them for it might push them over the edge, or at a minimum it might make them feel even more unable to express themselves to others about their true mental state. I’m sure that if I gave some blunt advice such as, “Don’t be a ****” to those who like to treat those with mental health concerns bluntly, I will likewise achieve nothing except disengagement too! (This is what a lot of social media comments are like though. It gives us the feeling of self-satisfaction that we’ve done our part to contribute to the solution of something when in reality we’ve done nothing or caused more division and misunderstanding.) Some claim to have empathy yet lack it when needed, or tell others not to judge them when they’re constantly judging others. Due to our biases, we need others to point out our biases.
One can easily forgive it if people say comments like, “Chin up” in an optimistic rather than a ‘stop wasting everyone’s time’ kind of way. One can say that it’s going to be alright – that the future is going to be okay. More effective help, however, is usually instrumental and practical, such as taking them out for a jog every now and again or helping them to find job leads, rather than mere words. And support must be ongoing and long-term rather than thinking that one conversation will have cured them and that’s it.
It’s understandable that we might panic about not knowing what to say or do when somebody suddenly wants to talk to us about their mental health. Those who have strong empathy might hate hearing about other people’s negative states and so want to immediately change the tone or subject precisely because of their empathy (they’ll mirror that negativity deeply and personally) but this presents a barrier to listening. People do normally mean well and want to help, hence the advice. Giving advice is kind of like an instinctive reaction due to the stress of really wanting to help someone out. But hopefully this post can give some insight so that you can be better prepared to understand that it’s more important to give your time and attention, which should mean that there’s nothing for you to stress about if someone has put their faith in you to speak about their vulnerable mental health. Even if they’re going to talk about suicide, they’re not going to do it while talking with you – they would otherwise be elsewhere to carry that out instead of here trying to talk with you. (The vast majority of suicides are committed in private – it’s not like in the movies.) In fact, as long as they’re talking and someone is truly listening, they’ll likely be fine.
Meow. So say, “Please let me understand you” and then listen when they’re ready to share…
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