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Jan. 28th, 2021 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormWrote a thing on fb. Copied here. This is a public face but still:
Ok, I can talk about mental health.
I'm an external processor: I talk to figure things out. I have been keeping a journal for almost two decades for some of this, but I also need to talk to actual people to work things out. Lately I've been trying to work out my gender stuff (while being closeted in a workplace where no one shares my gender, sexuality, relationship status, or even lack-of-parent status) and some things about community contribution, entitlement, rooting into a home, and finding good community. Plus I have some issues left over from a pretty bad parenting situation and some relationship harm I was involved in.
During the pandemic.
When I can't find a way forward everything just shuts down. I spent the summer doing chores, working, and watching shows in a dissociated daze: I wasn't present in my own mind, let alone my own body. I gardened for utility instead of fun. I stopped thinking about things I'd like to do in the future.
I had a wake-up call in the late summer where my fear mechanism just turned on. This is probably called anxiety, but my experience was-- you know when you just about fall and catch yourself and you get that jolt of heart-racing? I was getting that for hours at a time, and I still had no ability to do forward motion or change my life. I couldn't move to fix the things I was worried about, all I could do was go to work, do chores, and watch shows. While my heart was pounding.
I felt trapped in my life. That's unusual for me: normally I move forward into the next part of my life with anticipation.
I called my work help line for this sort of thing. It offered one-off phone sessions with counselors, or a total of four consecutive sessions with counselors. The former helped a couple times and helped less other times. I had to call back five or so times to access the longer set of 4 sessions, this felt almost impossible since I could hardly do anything other than go to work, watch shows, and do chores. I did it. It didn't help trememdously.
I called my doctor and got put on an antidepressant. Over several months it gave me access to myself again, not fully but better. I'm able to look forward to things some. I feel things some. I'm able to have mutually supportive conversations with my partners, which was decidedly missing before.
And one of my close supporters has been paying for some counseling with the counselor I've chosen. My work covers less than a handful of sessions. My previous job covered more, actually enough to maintain and sort through some of my issues, but that job is gone. If I were paying for this out of pocket it would have started at 12% of my take-home pay. That wasn't a sustainable amount, so I get by on what that supporter can manage. Every session with that counselor leaves me feeling capable, determined, hopeful, and seen. I can only access it because I have access to a rich-enough person who likes me. This is not in the least fair.
I'm 39. I've spent five years on waiting lists for counseling, back when I was making little enough money that I was allowed to be on them, and I never ended up receiving help. If you have a friend who is on this kind of waiting list and want to help them, offer to call once a month so your friend doesn't accidentally fall off the waiting list. It's hard for folks to be proactive about this when they're hurting or numb.
I've spent maybe on average an hour and a half a week from the time I was fifteen or so researching how mental health stuff works and looking for methods to help myself. I've learned breathing. I've learned thought tricks. I've tried workbooks. I've done the stuff. I still need help outside myself, especially when I'm in an environment that isn't supportive.
I also know a lot of people who are struggling. I know people who self-harm through their words, who repeat things to themselves that society or parents had no right to say to them. I know people who don't feel like they deserve to live, or to be loved, or to experience joy. And I know people who deal with fear by harming or controlling others and who perpetuate cycles of harm through generations this way. I know people who feel like they're unfixable and so they step away from life so they don't inflict themselves on anyone else. These people also need help outside themselves, regardless of their financial or employment status.
My mental health is better enough right now that I believe the future can be better than it is now. I believe people who have to integrate some of the especially stigmatized mental health conditions into their lives deserve so much financial and emotional support, so much less stigma, and they deserve a system that offers those things without having to fight so hard or having to find advocates with the energy and knowledge to fight for them.
I also believe that our society will only begin to improve when we are all able to access mental health care, not just in extreme duress, but as preventative maintenance just like we should be able to access regular dentist and doctor check-ups. People who don't know how to manage their fear and trauma and anger lash out and are a danger; those same people, when given the tools, are the source of compassion and support for others. That compassion and support is how a social safety net is made.
So please, advocate for mental health care to be included in insurance in your workplace. Advocate for it to be included in government health care. Advocate for your individual friends who need help: ask if you can make a phone call for them, help screen possible providers to find one suitable for their needs, read some bureaucratese and translate, walk them to an appointment, drop off dinner on a day when all their energy went towards making it through the afternoon, pay for their treatment if you can.
And when someone admits to you that they're struggling, listen. It's legitimately hard out here. Acknowledge that. And ask what you can do to help.
Ok, I can talk about mental health.
I'm an external processor: I talk to figure things out. I have been keeping a journal for almost two decades for some of this, but I also need to talk to actual people to work things out. Lately I've been trying to work out my gender stuff (while being closeted in a workplace where no one shares my gender, sexuality, relationship status, or even lack-of-parent status) and some things about community contribution, entitlement, rooting into a home, and finding good community. Plus I have some issues left over from a pretty bad parenting situation and some relationship harm I was involved in.
During the pandemic.
When I can't find a way forward everything just shuts down. I spent the summer doing chores, working, and watching shows in a dissociated daze: I wasn't present in my own mind, let alone my own body. I gardened for utility instead of fun. I stopped thinking about things I'd like to do in the future.
I had a wake-up call in the late summer where my fear mechanism just turned on. This is probably called anxiety, but my experience was-- you know when you just about fall and catch yourself and you get that jolt of heart-racing? I was getting that for hours at a time, and I still had no ability to do forward motion or change my life. I couldn't move to fix the things I was worried about, all I could do was go to work, do chores, and watch shows. While my heart was pounding.
I felt trapped in my life. That's unusual for me: normally I move forward into the next part of my life with anticipation.
I called my work help line for this sort of thing. It offered one-off phone sessions with counselors, or a total of four consecutive sessions with counselors. The former helped a couple times and helped less other times. I had to call back five or so times to access the longer set of 4 sessions, this felt almost impossible since I could hardly do anything other than go to work, watch shows, and do chores. I did it. It didn't help trememdously.
I called my doctor and got put on an antidepressant. Over several months it gave me access to myself again, not fully but better. I'm able to look forward to things some. I feel things some. I'm able to have mutually supportive conversations with my partners, which was decidedly missing before.
And one of my close supporters has been paying for some counseling with the counselor I've chosen. My work covers less than a handful of sessions. My previous job covered more, actually enough to maintain and sort through some of my issues, but that job is gone. If I were paying for this out of pocket it would have started at 12% of my take-home pay. That wasn't a sustainable amount, so I get by on what that supporter can manage. Every session with that counselor leaves me feeling capable, determined, hopeful, and seen. I can only access it because I have access to a rich-enough person who likes me. This is not in the least fair.
I'm 39. I've spent five years on waiting lists for counseling, back when I was making little enough money that I was allowed to be on them, and I never ended up receiving help. If you have a friend who is on this kind of waiting list and want to help them, offer to call once a month so your friend doesn't accidentally fall off the waiting list. It's hard for folks to be proactive about this when they're hurting or numb.
I've spent maybe on average an hour and a half a week from the time I was fifteen or so researching how mental health stuff works and looking for methods to help myself. I've learned breathing. I've learned thought tricks. I've tried workbooks. I've done the stuff. I still need help outside myself, especially when I'm in an environment that isn't supportive.
I also know a lot of people who are struggling. I know people who self-harm through their words, who repeat things to themselves that society or parents had no right to say to them. I know people who don't feel like they deserve to live, or to be loved, or to experience joy. And I know people who deal with fear by harming or controlling others and who perpetuate cycles of harm through generations this way. I know people who feel like they're unfixable and so they step away from life so they don't inflict themselves on anyone else. These people also need help outside themselves, regardless of their financial or employment status.
My mental health is better enough right now that I believe the future can be better than it is now. I believe people who have to integrate some of the especially stigmatized mental health conditions into their lives deserve so much financial and emotional support, so much less stigma, and they deserve a system that offers those things without having to fight so hard or having to find advocates with the energy and knowledge to fight for them.
I also believe that our society will only begin to improve when we are all able to access mental health care, not just in extreme duress, but as preventative maintenance just like we should be able to access regular dentist and doctor check-ups. People who don't know how to manage their fear and trauma and anger lash out and are a danger; those same people, when given the tools, are the source of compassion and support for others. That compassion and support is how a social safety net is made.
So please, advocate for mental health care to be included in insurance in your workplace. Advocate for it to be included in government health care. Advocate for your individual friends who need help: ask if you can make a phone call for them, help screen possible providers to find one suitable for their needs, read some bureaucratese and translate, walk them to an appointment, drop off dinner on a day when all their energy went towards making it through the afternoon, pay for their treatment if you can.
And when someone admits to you that they're struggling, listen. It's legitimately hard out here. Acknowledge that. And ask what you can do to help.
