And then, in the process of wanting to learn more about his heritage, he met people from the tribe of Natives that his parents had been part of. And one of the things he learned there was that the tribe considered homosexuality as something special that should be honoured, because the people who were homosexual were special in that they had two souls- one male and one female- in one body.

He described this as a truly mind-blowing experience. Suddenly, there were people who regarded him not as less but as more. And it completely changed the way he viewed himself, because he realized that so much of the misery he ascribed to being homosexual was really caused not by his being gay, but by living in a culture where gay people were treated so badly.

I think this was a very thought provoking interview, and one of the core messages I took away from it applies to almost all forms of oppression and exclusion. It is very important to always ask ourselves: Is this a problem I have that is inherent to the way I am diffrent from the so-called “norm”, or is it a problem I have because people are treating me badly for not confirming to that norm? And if the second is true, then it is really society that has a problem and needs to change, not me.

In the end, I wound up personifying my “salesdemon” – he looks a bit like a cross between a very earnest young Mormon missionary and a vaccuum cleaner salesperson (blond curly hair, eager, puppylike disposition, and a suit which was about two sizes too large. His name is Charlie). This made him easier to ignore, strangely enough, and he stopped bothering me after a while. (I like to think I may have cost him a promotion.)

Part of me knows it’s all neurotransmitters and chemicals in the brain. But then again, so is sight, hearing and everything else which makes up the complexity of life. So I’ll keep thinking of Charlie trying for his commission when I get those little thoughts which say “don’t forget, you could always kill yourself” in the middle of things now and then, since it’s easier to just tell Charlie I’m not interested than it is to try and decode all the complex thought patterns which got me to where I am.

i think i must not have been sufficiently clear in the initial post, so thanks for prompting me to clarify. people experience what they experience and the only person who can speak to those experiences and how they felt or feel, how they affected and continue to effect the person is the person themselves. i would never presume to tell anyone that his or her experiences weren’t valid or weren’t what they experienced. i have absolutely no desire to feel you or anyone else that you do not experience what you experience and will always defer to your description of that experience. i also think that the person themself is the most appropriate person to determine what treatment or accommodations they require from society at large and the specific institutions with which they interact.

what i want to urge you to look at is how many of those problems you’ve had with society – which i’ve had also, and i believe a lot of people with mental disabilities have had – are caused by the societal interpretation of those experiences, rather than your personal experiences. society is what’s telling you that your experiences aren’t objectively verifiable or aren’t important enough to require modifications of rules or procedures. if we lived in a society that believed panic attacks were a sign of extreme intelligence and talent, people would be very excited to learn that i’d had a panic attack and would likely give me any accommodations i required because i’d be a person considered worthy of high respect. it’s that societal reaction to the underlying experience that i see as somewhat arbitrary, influenced much more my the societal values in general than the actual experience had by the individual.

i also think it’s important to respect the tools and frameworks within which people choose to understand and address their experiences. i am an avowed and fervent athiest, but one of my friends who has both anxiety and depression disorders has committed herself to a fundamentalist church as a way to feel better and finds participation in the church to have been immensely helpful for her. i’m certainly not going to tell her that she should stop going and stop getting that support and assistance because there is no god, which i consider to be a fundamental truth. similarly, i’m not going to tell you that you should conceive of your anxiety as ghostly possession if you don’t find that helpful to understanding and managing your symptoms – but i’m surely not going to tell that woman that she should NOT think of her anxiety that way when that allows her to think of it as a difficult experience but an honorable one that connects her to her grandmother, her tribe, and her heritage as a woman of power.

basically, i think everyone has the right to decide how to understand their own experiences. like you, i’m strongly tied to the western medical model and believe that faulty neurotransmitter connections are likely at the root of all this. but that medical model is far from complete (anyone know the biological mechanism by which lithium helps treat bipolar?). also, i find it enormously helpful to remember that the societal assumption that people with mental health problems can just get over them and don’t need accommodations in institutional structures is an artifact of our culture, not an inherent consequence of the underlying disorder itself.

to sum up: people should be considered the experts on their own experiences, but societal framings of and reactions to those experiences are not inherently correct and likely say more about the society than the disorder or the person who is disabled.

I think the author agrees with this distinction but didn’t make it particularly clear.

I’m done writing my novel now, I swear!

Like many people w/ psychological disabilities, the biggest problem that I have had with society (-at-large as well as individual people) is being told that my disabilities are not REAL. You know, the whole ‘it sounds like you just aren’t trying hard enough to be happy/ why should you receive academic accomodations for laziness?/ etc’ kind of bullshit. And this is AFTER all the progress we’ve made even in the last few decades in terms of having our disorders considered to be medical– considered to be OBJECTIVE. There’s been so much progress made just in the last few decades in getting the world to acknowledge that psych issues are REAL– are OBJECTIVELY existing issues. If the author believes hers to be subjective, or if the woman who told the ghost story believes hers to be subjective– whatever. Fine. Really! But do not tell me that my experiences with anxiety and mental illness in general are subjective when you do. not. know. what. I. have. experienced.

I’m not so naive as to think that every human psyche can be disentangled to the point where we can accurately identify what behaviors, thoughts, and emotions are pathological and which are simply part of someone’s unique personality. It varies form person to person, and PERSONALLY, I can attest that some of my own behaviors, thoughts, and emotions are pathological, i.e. the obsessive counting, the thoughts that drive it and the emotions it conjures up. Similarly, I can also attest that some of behaviors, thoughts, and emotions are part of my personality, i.e. being fastidious, thinking about how I can improve things, being very upset with failure. Even I don’t know which of those are influenced by the pathological, and it doesn’t matter, because it’s who I am whatever the influence. So I work to accept who I am and root out the pathologies that– though related to who I am– actually stop me from being that person.

My pathology is real and objective, just like a tumor or a broken bone. It is THERE, and it is not an illusion or a ghost. I don’t know about you, and I won’t speak for you, so please do not speak for me.

thanks for reading and thinking about this!

Thanks for stretching my brain.