Tag Archives: identity

A Change of Identity

10 Thursday May 2018

Posted by in bipolar, caregivers, hope, mental illness, schizophrenia, stigma, Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

I applied for a blogging job (writing about schizophrenia), and the editor said I wasn’t a good fit. I waited months to hear from the company, and I held on to hope all of that time that I might finally have a part-time job. So, I cried when I received the e-mail rejecting me. I received a gift from my brother and his partner the same day in the mail that said, “We heart you” so, thankfully there was a band-aid for my wound.

Considering I wrote about happiness yesterday and trying to love the negative along with loving the positive, I tried to love the news about the blogging job (it took me a couple of days to get around to even considering loving this news).

For almost twenty years I hid the fact that I have a mental illness. I hid my diagnosis from family (my husband’s) as well as friends. I didn’t tell people about my illness because I was ashamed of it. Then, three years ago, I posted an essay on Facebook and opened up to the whole world. That opening up, revealing my diagnosis, has not been a bad experience. I have met wonderful people, and feel that I have grown into a role as an advocate/voice for people with schizophrenia and other brain illnesses.

Hiding an illness takes a lot of energy and the shame and embarrassment behind the decision to hide it wears on a person, too. Coming out in as bold a fashion as I did (starting a blog, writing dozens of articles and essay and publishing a book) puts the focus squarely on the identity of illness. I was saying loudly, clearly, and to everyone that would listen, that I have schizophrenia.

While I was shouting to the world that I have schizophrenia I was also trying to convince and tell people that I am a wife, sister, daughter, friend, aunt, writer, student, etc. but I don’t think that message was nearly as loud or nearly as obvious.

Well, not getting the job as a blogger who writes exclusively about schizophrenia pushed me a way I have not been pushed before. From now on, I am going to introduce myself to the world as a writer first and somewhere down the line as someone with schizophrenia (if that even comes up). I am no longer going to center my identity around someone who has schizophrenia.

If I had landed the job blogging twice a week about schizophrenia, I would have to be thinking about my illness all the time, researching, writing and constantly trying to find ideas to write about. I am currently taking a class for writing non-fiction (something I regularly do), and I am not writing about schizophrenia. I am writing about my life as a kid, growing up, my family, mistakes I made, etc. In fact, every assignment but one has been about my life before I even knew I had a mental illness.

So, am I happy now? Do I love the negative along with the positive? I don’t know if I love the negative, but if you read this blog, you can see I certainly have reason to be hopeful and even thankful I didn’t get the blogging job.

There might be something to this theory about happiness after all.

What is Advocacy?

12 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by in mental illness, schizophrenia, stigma, Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Almost everyone I have come into contact with that has access to the internet and has a mental illness (with current research, I am not sure how much longer that label will be around) calls themselves an advocate. I frequently call myself an advocate as well but will do so less and less.

Calling yourself an advocate makes it appear to people, not that you have the experience of one person, but that you are an expert or authority on one of those illnesses. Most of the advocates that I have met don’t even bother to keep up with laws, trends, research, etc. that have to do with the illness where they are viewed or seen as an expert or authority.

I will give you an example of advocacy that I think harms the larger community of people living with a brain illness. The disability community has long preferred people first language to refer to people with an illness so, a person would say, I have diabetes, not, I am diabetic, or I have cancer, not I am cancer, or I have schizophrenia, not, I am schizophrenic. Using this word may seem like a small issue to someone who is an “advocate,” and they may decide they don’t care about that issue at all and scream from every platform they can find, “I am schizophrenic! I am schizophrenic! I am schizophrenic!”

It is great that they don’t think this is a big deal. But view it like vaccinations. Many of us don’t get vaccinations to prevent ourselves from getting an illness we get vaccinations to prevent giving the illness to someone who is far more vulnerable than us. It is the cost, the dues, the responsibility of living in a community. We take care of the most vulnerable among us.

I will say that for many people being called a schizophrenic is harmful. People who call other people that are making that the key source of their identity, not allowing them to first be, writer, teacher, fireman, lawyer, wife, husband, son, father, mother, sister, brother, etc. We all have so many identities that we would prefer to be known for rather than the one that is seen as broken, or ill.

I think it is a matter of privilege that people can say the word schizophrenic doesn’t bother them. It means that being dehumanized and identified as an illness has no bearing on their lives and their happiness and their success. I challenge the people who think this way. I think “advocates” who think this way are unwilling to admit that there is a huge divide in the mental health community.

There are those with the privilege of having clear enough thoughts and the means to write on the internet every day, and there are those, living in the streets, in prison, those at risk of being shot by police, and those without access to treatment. Those people can’t afford to be demeaned anymore than they already are. Seeing them as a brother, mother, father, sister, is critical to their survival and seeing them as someone who is schizophrenic is harmful because let’s face it, people still believe people with schizophrenia are less than, not quite human, and in some cases capable of monstrosities.

In my world, until all the mentally ill are cared for, and treated with dignity, then none of us are free to claim that some issues that demean others are of no harm. It is our responsibility to stand up, and if we are going to call ourselves advocates, let’s get to it – people are dying.

How Do You Identify?

25 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by in bipolar, hope, mental illness, schizophrenia, stigma, Uncategorized

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How do you identify?

When I was in my early twenties, before my diagnosis, I identified as a woman, as a social worker, as an aunt, sister, daughter, wife, liberal, etc.

I would say the three main groups that made up my identity were as a woman, wife, and social worker. My original diagnosis as someone with bipolar disorder, made my whole view of myself change. There was a shift inside of me. I had to make mental illness a part of who I was because I now had that label.

Was it the biggest part of who I was? Did it influence or outweigh the rest of my identity?  I didn’t know the answers to these questions. I think the way the medical establishment gives out a diagnosis and then expects you to come up with a way of reorganizing your identity to include the new label is often cruel.

I guess that is where psychotherapy comes in. I adjusted without therapy, though. I had a unethical experience with a therapist that led to my first episode of psychosis, and I certainly wasn’t going to go back and try that again. In fact, I haven’t been in psychotherapy since before my diagnosis (with the exception of a few sessions with a therapist while I was psychotic eight years ago).

If I had worked with a good and ethical therapist at the time of my diagnosis, I might not have lived for twenty years in silence ashamed of revealing my illness. I might have been able to see my diagnosis as it is, a disease like any other, and I may have developed the confidence and self-esteem necessary to live openly as someone with a mental illness.

Instead, I hobbled along with my husband in the dark for nearly twenty years, keeping my illness a secret from the majority of people in our lives. It is possible that I over-identified with being mentally ill and was ashamed of so much of myself.

I worry about people over-identifying with their illness – having their illness be the biggest part of how they define themselves – seeing their lives through a lens of a diagnosis instead of thousands of other wonderful things.

I try not to identify too much with my illness now. I try to identify with things like being a woman, being a partner, being a writer, being a student. I put all of these things before having schizophrenia.

I read blogs and articles written by people with a mental illness every day, and I see it all the time, the primary way that some people define themselves is as a mentally ill person. There is nothing wrong with living without shame, but to tie yourself up in your struggles first instead of your strengths can hinder your happiness. I am an old timer where mental illness is concerned, and I have learned a thing or two, and if I could give people a bit of advice to have the chance at the best life, I would say search and find those things that make you happy and identify with them first. Be a painter. Be a writer. Be a poet. Be a musician. Be an accountant. Be a mother. Be a father. Be a mechanic. Be a teacher. Be a friend. Be a partner.

Make a list of all the things you are and at the very end tack on the label, schizophrenia or bipolar, or anxiety disorder, or depressed.  Make your mental illness the very least of the ways you identify. You are so much more than a diagnosis, and you have to prove it to yourself before anyone else will believe you.

Putting Social Media In Its Place

03 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Uncategorized, writing

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I am “friends” with over a thousand writers (close to two thousand) on Facebook. Most of them write well-written posts that can keep me reading on and off all day. Many of them also write very loving and kind little snippets of poetic prose. I also see many loving and kind quotes used on Facebook by people who don’t identify as writers. These types of posts receive many likes, shares and comments.

The other side of that is the comment sections of articles posted online. There tend to be so many people that are willing to say some of the most hateful things in the comments sections. Arguments, ignorance, and meanness also present themselves online when politics or any big social issues like immigration, equality, the presidential election, gun control, etc. are written about.

If I were to take social media at face value, I would say we are living in paradise and hell at the same time. On one side, people are all loving and kind, and on the other side, people are hateful and cruel.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, though. I think the people who write beautiful messages about being kind and loving probably find it difficult always to be kind and loving to annoying drivers, people who cut in line at the grocery store, and possibly even their partners or children. And those people who say hateful and cruel things about whole groups of people or leave nasty comments on articles about people being “ugly” or “stupid” or whatever else they can think up are probably not saying things like that to their coworkers, partners or strangers in the street. It is possible they even love someone and treat that person with tenderness and respect.

I spend a lot of time in the online world, and I am starting to think in the New Year of cutting back my participation in social media. I don’t think I get an accurate view of people when I am judging them by words they post online. Someone can write the most beautiful words and be a selfish, self-centered, or inconsiderate person. Just because someone can put beautiful thoughts into words or post beautiful quotes doesn’t mean their heart is in the same place. The same goes for those haters. It is possible they are young kids who think they are funny. It is possible they are in a difficult living situation that has them frustrated to the point of acting out. It is possible they just lost their job, feel like they are friendless or have declining health and are bitter about it.

I have put a lot of time and energy into social media over the past five years. It has influenced the way I see many people and society as a whole. Social media is just too easy – too easy to be loving, too easy to be kind, too easy to be hateful, too easy to be a bully. Real life is much harder but so much more important. If I go into the hospital none of my social media “friends” are going to show up in my room and sit with me when I need it the most. My face-to-face friends would, though. My face-to-face friends are wonderfully imperfect and complicated. They have good moods and bad moods, and good days and bad days. They love, and they get angry. That is all something that can be hidden on social media to create an image someone wants to portray to the world.

I simply needed a reminder this cold January morning that the online world is full of what people want to show to the world, not necessarily the truth. I need to spend more time in 2016 looking people in the eye and having conversations with them that include body language and tone of voice. I need something more authentic than words on a screen. I need to be either renewed by the beauty of the human spirit or saddened by our meanness. I think I will find that life, real life, is somewhere in between and can’t be easily manipulated by the desire to create a character on a screen.