I'm having a bad week.
It doesn't matter why. If someone with a mental illness ever tells you he's anxious or depressed, don't ask, "Why?" There may or may not be a reason, and if there is one it might sound petty. That's the mark of anxiety and depression as mental illnesses: the response is disproportionate to the stimulus. It's reasonable for me to be upset about what's been happening-- it's an ugly situation. But should I be having trouble sleeping, eating, working? Should my stomach be twisting into a knot every time I remember it after managing to forget about it for a few minutes? Should it be this hard to enjoy anything?
No. And there's a feedback loop problem here: the belief that I should be able to handle this better is just another thing for the depression to feed on. This situation is much worse for other people, and feeling shitty for not focusing on them is yet another thing for it to feed on. There are psychological as well as psychiatric reasons I'm having the kind of trouble I am, and guilt over those is one more thing for it to feed on. I'm intellectually aware of steps I could take to address those psychological problems, and shame at being too scared to take them is... you get the idea.
I said in the other post that I didn't think I needed more medication. That may have been over-optimistic. When I first went on meds a couple years ago I thought the boost they gave would be enough. I was able to transfer into a position that would have been unthinkable with my earlier level of social anxiety. But since then I've plateaued. So many basic things- filling out an online job application, putting together a resume, picking up a pizza, calling a doctor's office-- seem impossible, for the direct social interaction they involve or for maybe possibly leading to one. I can still do my job because the social skills involved have become rote, but otherwise I might as well be back where I was two years ago.
Whether the meds have slowly reduced in effectiveness (it happens) or whether I've always been at this level and am just now noticing, I think I need to try something else. I'm not actually on anything for depression, because the anxiety meds seemed to cover it. (Anxiety and depression are often linked, but they're not quite the same thing. Before this week, I was mostly dealing with spells of depression. Now they're working in concert.) It's a mistake to think medications can solve all your problems, but it's also a mistake to artificially cut off the possibility that they might.
I write these things in the hope of helping other people, but I also do it because it's therapeutic for me. I feel better having purged some of this. But I don't think that's going to help for long. Chronic illness of any kind defies narrative progression and catharsis. There's no permanent solution delivered just in time for a final laugh line before the credits roll. I've been this low before, I'll probably be this low again. Anything that might hold it back for a while is worth trying.
Monday, July 24, 2017
Saturday, July 15, 2017
On Being Too Smart for Your Own Good (I)
I'm pretty smart.
(Well, a certain kind of smart. The way we talk about intelligence is horribly limiting. We've taken a concept that ought to cover every aspect of how people deploy their skills to navigate the challenges of daily life, and we've reduced it to test scores and socio-economic markers. IQ scores correlate to academic and professional success, we're told, so they must be measuring something real, as if success itself is an unquestionable and objective metric. The circularity of psychometrics, like that of any theological system, has a certain beauty. But that's a topic for another time. For now, just know that I mean what we usually call "book smart.")
I don't say that to brag, because I don't see that there's anything to brag about. It's not something I achieved through hard work; it's something I was born with. I might as well brag about having green eyes or being 5'8''. My brain works in a certain way that's useful for taking in, retaining, and synthesizing information. Whatever. The idea that intelligence in the abstract is a sign of personal worth is a reflection of the idea that our minds are entirely under our control, and that in turn contributes to the stigmatization of mental illness. And mental illness is what we're really talking about here.
I got good grades in high school, so from time to time I heard what a lot of high-achieving kids hear from their classmates: "I wish I was as smart as Brendan." I've never known what to say to that. It's an implicit compliment, and even though I'm desperate for the approval of others I have no idea how to handle direct expressions of it. But if someone said it in my Latin teacher's classroom, she had an answer: "No, you don't really want that."
She was a character. Very smart, eccentric, opinionated, an intellectual snob. The kind of teacher that gets in trouble, sometimes deservedly so, for being too familiar with students, treating them more like contemporaries than charges. Which is why I know that she tried to kill herself shortly before the start of my senior year. A few years later, still in her mid-50s, she died. According to her obituary it was "unexpectedly" and "at home." I don't know, and I suppose that's just as well.
Let's be clear: there are plenty of people who are very smart and very happy. I'm not saying, "Woe is me, I have a 138 IQ." That's about as convincing as "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful" or "Money doesn't buy happiness." What I'm getting at-- what I think my Latin teacher meant-- is that a quick mind is not always a wonderful thing to have. The brain that lets me multiply two-digit numbers in my head and read 50 or 60 pages in an hour is also the brain that kept me awake until midnight last night, endlessly circling around a very mild social conflict even though I'd been up since 4:00 AM and just wanted to get some fucking sleep.
It's not that uncontrollable brain functions are the entire problem. My brain would have nothing to tear into if I'd developed normal social skills and useful emotional responses to particular impulses, so that the slightest tremor in my relationship with literally anybody wouldn't be devastating. But then, developing those things would have been easier if my brain hadn't spent years producing a panic state at the mere thought of an unstructured interaction with another person or group of people. That is, the illness was reinforcing itself, and my world was getting smaller and smaller, until I was desperate enough to seek medical help.
Right now I'm on some mild anti-anxiety meds, without which I wouldn't be able to function in my current, customer-service heavy job. I need to move into a different line of work soon, but the thought of the mundane steps involved is so terrifying. More medication isn't the answer, I don't think. There's a risk of slowing my brain down too much, and taking away my best asset. I just have to be brave and learn things other people learned in their late teens.
It's important to understand mental illness as a subset of physical illness rather than a separate domain. But it's also important to acknowledge that management of any chronic illness, of the leg or the stomach or the brain, requires conscious effort. And with the brain, the most complex organ in the human body, the challenge can be staggering. Your mind runs in the grooves it developed to compensate for the illness, trapping you in a defensive posture that's now a hindrance instead of a help. It's so hard to change the way you think. Thoughts feel so instinctive that controlling them feels unimaginable. Every failure is an excuse to say, "It's impossible," and give up. But it's not impossible. It's not.
Next: another angle on intelligence vs. mental illness
(Well, a certain kind of smart. The way we talk about intelligence is horribly limiting. We've taken a concept that ought to cover every aspect of how people deploy their skills to navigate the challenges of daily life, and we've reduced it to test scores and socio-economic markers. IQ scores correlate to academic and professional success, we're told, so they must be measuring something real, as if success itself is an unquestionable and objective metric. The circularity of psychometrics, like that of any theological system, has a certain beauty. But that's a topic for another time. For now, just know that I mean what we usually call "book smart.")
I don't say that to brag, because I don't see that there's anything to brag about. It's not something I achieved through hard work; it's something I was born with. I might as well brag about having green eyes or being 5'8''. My brain works in a certain way that's useful for taking in, retaining, and synthesizing information. Whatever. The idea that intelligence in the abstract is a sign of personal worth is a reflection of the idea that our minds are entirely under our control, and that in turn contributes to the stigmatization of mental illness. And mental illness is what we're really talking about here.
I got good grades in high school, so from time to time I heard what a lot of high-achieving kids hear from their classmates: "I wish I was as smart as Brendan." I've never known what to say to that. It's an implicit compliment, and even though I'm desperate for the approval of others I have no idea how to handle direct expressions of it. But if someone said it in my Latin teacher's classroom, she had an answer: "No, you don't really want that."
She was a character. Very smart, eccentric, opinionated, an intellectual snob. The kind of teacher that gets in trouble, sometimes deservedly so, for being too familiar with students, treating them more like contemporaries than charges. Which is why I know that she tried to kill herself shortly before the start of my senior year. A few years later, still in her mid-50s, she died. According to her obituary it was "unexpectedly" and "at home." I don't know, and I suppose that's just as well.
Let's be clear: there are plenty of people who are very smart and very happy. I'm not saying, "Woe is me, I have a 138 IQ." That's about as convincing as "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful" or "Money doesn't buy happiness." What I'm getting at-- what I think my Latin teacher meant-- is that a quick mind is not always a wonderful thing to have. The brain that lets me multiply two-digit numbers in my head and read 50 or 60 pages in an hour is also the brain that kept me awake until midnight last night, endlessly circling around a very mild social conflict even though I'd been up since 4:00 AM and just wanted to get some fucking sleep.
It's not that uncontrollable brain functions are the entire problem. My brain would have nothing to tear into if I'd developed normal social skills and useful emotional responses to particular impulses, so that the slightest tremor in my relationship with literally anybody wouldn't be devastating. But then, developing those things would have been easier if my brain hadn't spent years producing a panic state at the mere thought of an unstructured interaction with another person or group of people. That is, the illness was reinforcing itself, and my world was getting smaller and smaller, until I was desperate enough to seek medical help.
Right now I'm on some mild anti-anxiety meds, without which I wouldn't be able to function in my current, customer-service heavy job. I need to move into a different line of work soon, but the thought of the mundane steps involved is so terrifying. More medication isn't the answer, I don't think. There's a risk of slowing my brain down too much, and taking away my best asset. I just have to be brave and learn things other people learned in their late teens.
It's important to understand mental illness as a subset of physical illness rather than a separate domain. But it's also important to acknowledge that management of any chronic illness, of the leg or the stomach or the brain, requires conscious effort. And with the brain, the most complex organ in the human body, the challenge can be staggering. Your mind runs in the grooves it developed to compensate for the illness, trapping you in a defensive posture that's now a hindrance instead of a help. It's so hard to change the way you think. Thoughts feel so instinctive that controlling them feels unimaginable. Every failure is an excuse to say, "It's impossible," and give up. But it's not impossible. It's not.
Next: another angle on intelligence vs. mental illness
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