Friday, November 4, 2022

Who are you? Are you ill or just alive?

Based on what I see on social media, this article by therapist Hannah Baer, "Who decides if you’re mentally ill? Self-diagnosis is undermining therapy," seeks to start an important conversation. While arguing for the need for trained, educated, and experienced mental health professionals, she does not merely assert the authority of her profession.

Life is often hard. It's impossible to be what most people take to be "happy" all the time. What is meant by "happy" is feeling good, fulfilled, and satisfied, grateful, excited, cared for, etc. If you can't be happy in all or most of these ways, well trick-fuck yourself into being so by pithy memes. Things happen to us all day pretty much every day. Of necessity, we respond, react, absorb, roll with the punches (of so many metaphors!).

We have good days and bad days, good weeks and bad weeks, and moreover, a lot of mundane in-between. Negotiating the latter seems to be what many find so difficult. On the human front, there is a lot of loss. Virtual interaction is not the same as live interaction in many aspects. I'll park that observation there.



I grew up in a different time. A time during which there was not so much stimulus available. We need to recover the fruitfulness of boredom, which, at least since Heidegger, is an important existential category. Boredom is fruitful. One thing I've reflected on a lot over the past 2-3 years on just how much time I spent as a child and adolescent alone with "nothing" to do. Nothing, it has been noted, is not an empty category. On this view, doing nothing is certainly a possibility. I argue that it is necessary for our humanity, our identity, our self-understanding, and our grasp of "the world."

It seems that many people are looking for someone to either tell them who they are or to affirm different identities as they are tried on in a quest for the oh-so-elusive personal authenticity. "Look, I am this. I really am this!" While there is genuine authenticity, the defining characteristic of which is wonder and humility in the face of reality, there is no authentic self waiting to be discovered.

As a Christian, I have beliefs about what's wrong with us. Recognition that something is wrong with us, that the world is broken, is just part of the human condition, whether or not you have transcendent beliefs. Even from the perspective of the philosophy of religion, any religion that doesn't account for this existential human condition isn't likely to find many adherents.

Here is the issue Baer thoughtfully addresses:
Many young people I work with try to understand themselves (and often others) through the lens of mental illness. Typically they are focused on one diagnosis, but some, like Abby, are open to having several, many, or any. My co-workers notice it too. One colleague recently brought a question to our clinic’s staff meeting: “Has anyone else noticed a large number of students lately claiming to be on the autism spectrum, despite seeming to be… clearly not autistic based on clinical criteria?” Heads nodded. Why is it that so many young people are concerned that they are sick? And what is a mental health professional to do, in a culture where patients come in having already staked out their symptoms?
If autism is the one diagnosis for one's self (this is understandable because alienation is worse now than it's ever been, leaving many people ill-equipped to understand, let alone "deal with" life's exigencies), the one diagnosis for others seems to be narcissism. After all, if you're not deeply concerned about me, you must be pathologically self-absorbed! There is a lot more to be said about the truth and falsity of personal identity. I will limit myself to observing that any "true" personal identity summons a certain about resiliency. Our participation in reality, it seems to me, requires no little stubbornness.

Anyway, I thought the beginning of November would be a good time to revive our Friday traditio. After all, blogger is my "true" identity, c'est ne pas? "Trouble Is" by Jars of Clay, off their still notable album Who We Are Instead, seems a fitting song:

1 comment:

  1. Scott, perhaps I have some experience in all this, given my profession in the mental health field for 35+ years. You wrote that recognition that something is wrong with us, that the world is broken, is just part of the human condition. Agreed. How we then integrate that into the whole context of our life histories becomes extraordinarily important. Too many of us see our "brokenness" (whether self-defined or diagnosed by others) as an anomaly, a confusing reality, something of which to be rejected and abandoned, an un-integrated experience of who we are and to become. This lack of integration leads to a narcissistic life. Said differently, it leads to decreased intimacy with people, and with God.

    People want to be "fixed" of their brokenness. Understandable. But our faith teaches us, and the behavioral sciences agree, that most often our brokenness remains but can be redeemed and placed in the service of others. Alcoholics Anonymous clearly gets this. The Christian spiritual writers affirm it. God "buys back" (redeems) our wounds and uses them to bring about his plan. The saints are numerous who give such example.

    Just as we must know salvation history to understand this from a faith perspective, so too we must see our life histories as revelatory of our identities. Such understanding is unfortunately not well developed in so many of our contemporaries, especially youth.

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Triduum- Holy Thursday

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