Radical Mental Self-Acceptance?
| July 23, 2012 | Posted by Issa under Radical Self-Acceptance |
In part of a response to a comment on These are the Fat FAQs, I wrote:
What matters…is that my whole culture strongly encourages us to hate ourselves. Capitalism is about creating the problem of self-hate and then selling us the fake, non-working solutions. That is the most important thing for me to fight. [Nothing is] as important as accepting myself, my body, my mind, and the selves of the people around me.
As I typed that and then published it, I felt wrong about it because it’s bullshit.
I don’t mean the body acceptance part; I’ve got that part down. I am on my side when it comes to my body. I love my body, and I stick up for it.
But my brain is a different story. I am a person with depression. And anxiety. And a sometimes really amazing amount of just stress, seemingly out of proportion to my situation. I blame this stuff on my brain. There’s something wrong with my wiring, I tell myself. Something in there is off-balance, out of whack, broken.
I think of my brain and myself as broken.
But as I typed those words the other day, I started thinking along a different track. What if thinking of myself as something that needs fixing is itself the core of the problem? What if my diagnosis is a pre-packaged problem-and-solution offered up by my ill culture, rather than something gone wrong with me?
Would it be possible to take the radical self-acceptance I’ve found for my body and strive for that with my mental states as well?
This is a huge question for me that I’m not really ready to tackle with any force, yet. I feel really defensive about it. Of course I need fixing! Acceptance just means staying miserable! (I say to myself.)
I am taking an antidepressant. I plan to continue doing that. But the wheels in my mind are turning…
Absolutely fascinating.
I don’t suffer (or should I even be using that word?) from depression or anxiety, but I have often contemplated how different I am from everyone else, and wondered “there must be something wrong with me… there are more of them than there are of me”. But I am filled with a weirdly HUGE sense of self, and that THIS is right and despite the fact everyone hates me and my opinions and my ways at times, I don’t, and I like me just fine the way I am. I love me this way, in fact. The fact remains, though, I don’t have a lot of friends, I tend to push people away with my big mouth and strong opinons and even my nearest and dearest think there is “something wrong with me”. My sister once said she thought I was autistic. I don’t believe I am, not for a second. I even did the online quiz. LOL But the fact that other people ‘diagnose’ me as having something wrong with mewhen I don’t believe I do raises some interesting questions indeed.
I do think of myself as suffering from depression. When I thought about my word choice, I didn’t use that word in this post, but I usually think of it that way. I’m wondering to what extent my suffering comes from the particular symptoms of depression and how much suffering is related to the desire to change and the frustration that I can’t. I don’t know.
I’m wondering about this tendency to see differences in people as “something wrong with” them. Why can’t you just be a person with a big mouth? Why must it have a label, a diagnosis, and therefore a solution?
I really think if you love yourself, then you take care of yourself. I experienced postpartum depression after I had Noah, and there simply was no loving myself. Not on my own, anyway. There was no amount of self-acceptance that would have overcome the chemical imbalances I experienced in those months. I needed help, and it was fine that I needed help, just like it’s fine that you need help, IMO.
I have been reading your fat acceptance stuff and have been hesitant to chime in, because my view IS different from yours. I am a fat person, and I waver between being OK with it and hating it. But what I am striving for is to do the things that make me feel good, and some of those things are eating less processed foods and exercising. I use a calorie counting tool because I believe there is an optimal amount of calories I should eat in a day in order for my body to feel its best — and it is most definitely NOT some crazily small amount that barely gives me the energy to get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes I eat more, sometimes I eat less. It doesn’t control me, but it gives me a range for enabling myself to feel my best. I also don’t restrict myself from eating things that I want; if I want cheesecake, then I am going to have cheesecake! But knowing my body, if I ate cheesecake every day, I wouldn’t feel all that great, so I don’t eat it every day.
What I am learning to accept is that my body will do what it’s going to do. I may be one of those people who eats well, exercises and stays 200+ pounds. And if that’s the case, I’m OK with it. But there are things I can do (and they may be different for you and for everyone else in the world) that will make my body feel its best, no matter what size pants I wear or what my body fat % is.
Misty, You say that your viewpoint on fat acceptance is different from mine, but then you go on to almost perfectly describe Health At Every Size. I personally wouldn’t want to count calories, because that would make me feel obsessive and “formula-based” about my food, and HAES promotes a more “intuition-based” approach. But eating what you want, not eating things or amounts that don’t make you feel great, cutting out processed foods if they don’t make you feel good, exercising when that feels good… All of these things are awesome! Especially when they are pursued not for a certain physical look but for how you really FEEL in your body.
About post-partum depression, and any other instance of someone else’s mental health concerns: I would never, ever suggest that someone else shouldn’t seek treatment. I have yelled at people in the past for suggesting that I didn’t need treatment. And something like post-partum depression, which is a deviation from your norm, is definitely out of the realm of what I’m thinking of with my own situation. My depression isn’t episodic (or whatever the right word is). It is something that I basically always have. One of the things I’m thinking about is how would I tell the difference between “This is a mental illness” and “This is my personality”? I really don’t know. It’s tricky and a whole new train of thought for me. I really hope I don’t make it sound like I think anyone shouldn’t seek treatment if they want to.
I think the part of your blog I love the best are the posts on radical self-acceptance.
My mom is HIGHLY quirky… she has some personality traits that are downright annoying and she feels no need to change. Ever since I can remember, she’s been totally at ease with her quirks, doesn’t apologize for them, and further, defends them when she has to. For example, she often says the wrong thing at the wrong time, embarrasses herself and others, has terrible table manners at restaurants and LOVES to draw attention to the table. I’ll sometimes cringe, and she once told me that she’d rather have people laugh AT her than not laugh at all. She doesn’t mind being the clown, she doesn’t mind being the butt of jokes. She’s not stupid… she knows it’s going on, she just takes it in stride.
I know it’s slightly off topic from accepting mental illness as not being ‘broken’ but it’s along the same lines of radical self acceptance. Accepting the things about you people might hate or ridicule because that’s your true nature.
I’m always inspired by people who do this, and I think it’s hugely important. Even when she’s embarrassing me. LOL
I have been struggling with this myself lately. But even my thoughts about accepting my anxiety and depression are framed in a way about how maybe I will be less anxious and depressed if I can accept that I am, which seems awfully close to trying to be okay with my weight in the hopes that I will lose weight.
Haha, yes! I went through that with fat acceptance. I’ve known several people who adopted a Health At Every Size approach to food and fitness, and then they lost weight. So when I started on my fat acceptance journey, there was that secret wish in the back of my mind that I could be all acceptance-y and ALSO not fat. Oops! I know lots of people who DIDN’T lose weight with HAES and some that GAINED, too, but it was really tempting to hold onto those losers.
I have the same thought happening now, too. Like, maybe I could accept my mental state, and then I will be happy! I’m sure it doesn’t work that way! Maybe there’s some other kind of emotional state that is possible, though, like peace. I could have my same moods, ups and downs, and be at peace with the process, even though I don’t always feel “good”? I don’t know.
The thing that has really stirred this up in me is struggling with my daughter’s mood. She has always been very negatively focused, and any moment where she has to be still (like in the car) has a high likelyhood that we will end up talking about things that make her sad. Sometimes this starts because she is upset about a specific thing, but most of the time it just seems like she needs to think about everything that has ever been sad in her life and cycles through things.
For the longest time I was alternating between trying to empathize and help her work through her emotions, and kind of forcing happiness on her. Then a wise friend asked me why I needed her to be happy, maybe she is just a sad person, and is that necessarily wrong?
Since this behavior is one of the things that she seems to have in common with me, a lightbulb went off. Sometimes I DO need to be sad, and concentrate on my sadness for a little bit, or the whole day will be horrible. I frequently do just wake up feeling down, and that hasn’t been something drugs have really changed for me, although cognitive therapy did help me learn to acknowledge and deal with those emotions.
That’s really interesting about your daughter wanting to talk about sad things. I nannied for a child once who wanted me to sing him sad songs at naptime. He would cry and talk about how the song made him sad, but he also seemed to enjoy it or want it in some way. It’s so hard not to think of sadness as an incorrect emotion, something to be resolved.
Cognitive behavioral therapy is something I am wanting to explore with my new therapist. I have only heard good things from people who have used it.
Antidepressants can be very beneficial. I have used them myself in the past with good results. I also find it helpful to remember that depression and anxiety are real medical issues, NOT personal defects. They aren’t permanent and you don’t have to live with them day in and day out forever – I know it can be frustrating because there’s no one single magic solution that works for everyone, but there is something out there that will work to help you feel better, I promise.
For me it was a few months of antidepressants, a doctor who was a great listener and reassured me that I’m not crazy, and ending a toxic relationship.
I have made peace with the fact that I will always struggle with anxiety, but it’s easier now because I know it will eventually pass. I also think your blog has the potential to be therapeutic for you. Having an outlet to get your thoughts out in concrete form helps them not seem so insurmountable. Keep it up – it’s helping me and others too!
My feeling about accepting depression vs. accepting fat is whether either gets in the way of what you want to do or how you want to be–apart from societal bullshit. Fat clearly does not do that for you. Does depression? Or more accurately, depressive symptoms? If yes, perhaps radical mental self-acceptance isn’t something that will help you–yet. If no, then accepting the brain that grew in your skull seems like a good thing.
This is something I think about a lot, but don’t speak of often, because I wouldn’t want to sound like I know what is best for anyone but me, or even what is best for me outside of right now. I am formally diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, but mostly it is depression. I have been unmedicated and untreated, overmedicated, correctly medicated, and treated with counseling and lifestyle management only, in that order. I would have stuck with “correctly medicated” except that the medications stopped working and there aren’t really any others to try.
In the years since that happened, I have had the opportunity to learn a lot about acceptance. I have had to make a lot of changes in order to be able to live something of a life without spending all day every day in suicidal anguish, and I have made a great deal of progress in that. However, I still face some pretty dramatic limitations, like being unable to work outside of the home or to go out in public as much as I would like. If I attend to my well-being with wholesome food and good-feeling exercise (basically a HAES approach with a lot of body acceptance) and avoid stress and spend part of every day in prayer and meditation, I am happy and healthy and can be productive in my own way.
When I look closely at the things which trigger me, they line up well with our industrialized, compartmentalized, alienating culture’s attributes. I have come to conclude that people whose brains work like mine are sort of the canaries in the post-industrial coal mine and the things which will send me into a near-catatonic state are the same things that make most people in our culture feel dissatisfied and alienated. I am just more dramatically effected and because of that I can see more clearly what is affecting me.
In order to make sense of my life, with nearly all cultural markers of external value denied to me, I have had to really go inward and learn what my role is in the world and what makes me valuable. When I get a new wave of depression I try to treat it as a signal to stop, care for myself more, and learn what there may be to learn. And I have to go through the pain rather than trying to avoid it. For me, the common advice to avoid “wallowing in” pain was toxic, and only prolonged it. When the pain comes, if I drop everything else and lock myself away with it and practice prayer and meditation, I often learn something from it and move through it. Since I have been doing that, the episodes are shorter. I have no idea if that would work for anyone else, but it does for me. I spend a great deal of my time reading and researching, since there isn’t a lot else for me to do, and in my studies I have learned a lot more about shamans and mystics and the ways in which other cultures have valued people whose brains are made like mine. I have learned that a lot of the suffering is caused by the way we are not valued and taught not to value ourselves. As I work through that, I am finding that there is a whole other way to experience this.
I hope that some of that might have been helpful. Feel free to contact me if you like.
Brea, your comment is really beautiful and helpful to me and speaks to a lot of things that I wonder about. I really nodded my head at the part about you responding more deeply to things that are negatively affecting everyone in our culture. The question of “what makes me valuable” is also one that picks away at me when I’m in my lowest spots. I have previously participated in some of those external cultural value things but I’m doing less of them these days. I have doubts about that and about myself.
I love what you said about wallowing. That’s a practice that is near to my heart. We named our homestead The Wallow because I’ve always advocated for wallowing in your feelings rather than trying to push them away. You have to go through the pain rather than around it. Then we moved here and got pigs who love to wallow in the mud. That term is really meaningful to me.
In response to this (Issa’s) and Shannon’s comments:
I think it’s totally okay and can be pleasurable or beneficial to “wallow” in sadness (or anger). If you *want* to spend your day crying in a dark room, go for it. But that room shouldn’t be a prison. If you need to/would rather be doing something else and can’t, then you shouldn’t just accept it. It comes down to whether or not you’re able to live your life the way you want to.
I realize I’m dodging the deeper cultural influence question, because I don’t have an answer for that.
Yes, this. I would never tell someone else that they just needed to wallow in their shit more, especially when it comes to mental health. It’s really hard to talk about this from a personal perspective and not veer into sounding like I’m telling other people what might be good for them. Hell, what I think is good for me now might not be what’s good for me at another time, so I really don’t want to latch onto any ideas too hard.
It’s also strongly occurred to me the possibility that the only reason I’m able to contemplate this lofty acceptance idea is that I’m currently medicated! Irony? Hmm.
I’m with Marica. If your depression is such that it doesn’t allow you to live your life the way you want/need to, then it is something that you should try to change. Also, (in my experience) it seems that negative thinking or self-talk correlates with depression. That would make it difficult to accept yourself. It’s an interesting thought that if you *could* shut your mental critic up, would you then be “cured”?
“If your depression is such that it doesn’t allow you to live your life the way you want/need to, then it is something that you should try to change.”
I think what Issa is saying though, is that in radical self accpetance, if you were to replace the word “depression” in the above sentence with “fat” — well, you shouldn’t try and change being fat. Partly because you can’t (diets don’t work) so you have to work with what you have. Namely a fat body with reduced mobility or pain or whatever. You have to accept it and move on. Trying to change it when you likely can’t in an exercise in futility.
“Trying to change it when you likely can’t in an exercise in futility.”
I don’t understand this statement – do you have evidence that treatments don’t work? Yes, some people don’t respond well to treatment (whether chemical or therapy), but many do. Everyone has different issues caused by different things.
What if the mental issue were anorexia, schizophrenia, or Tourette’s? Should we accept these as personality quirks? For that matter, how about physical ailments (substitute the words acne/cancer/deafness)? If a treatment is not guaranteed to work, should you accept the problem as just a part of you? How radical do we go with the self-acceptance?
If the issue is treatable, and you’re not happy with how it affects your life, then TRY to fix it.
After thinking about it some, I take back what I said up there. Sort of. There’s thinking of yourself as a Depressed Person and there’s thinking “this is the way my brain works.” Neither precludes addressing troubling symptoms; neither precludes taking care of the brain you have. I’ve recently started taking a mood stabilizer after years of antidepressants. It’s working amazingly well, but my doctor doesn’t use the word “bipolar” to describe ME, just the direction of my treatment. If I WANTED, I could identify as being or having Bipolar II (I fit the the DMS entry to a T), but I don’t see any reason to. I just treat my brain like it needs to be treated–regular sleep, meds, etc. I wouldn’t go so far as calling that radical self acceptance, but it’s working.
You mention anorexia, schizophrenia, Tourette’s, acne, cancer, and deafness. I don’t know about Tourette’s, but all 5 of the others have people who choose not to treat them. Some people are not even bothered by their acne. Some people opt not to undergo cancer treatment in order to trade quality over quantity of life. Many anorexic people don’t consider themselves ill (the one on this list I’m least comfortable with). Some schizophrenic people eschew medical models of care. And some deaf people – Deaf people – view themselves as a cultural community who are not disabled.
I think this is a complex equation. What does treatable mean? What are the side effects (socially, physically, to how you see yourself)? Where does the feeling of “not happy with how it affects your life” arise? Could it be unrealistic expectations? Could it be culturally imposed? Could you be having a perfectly rational reaction to a fucked up situation? What does fixing it mean? Is it even possible? Is “it” a simple blip to be extracted or is “it” a core of one’s being? How would you know the difference? Who will decide the difference?
“all 5 of the others have people who choose not to treat them.”
That is why I chose these as examples, and because the available treatments don’t always work (like with depression).
I totally agree that this is very complex and your questions are good ones. I think each person has to figure it out and decide for ouself (proper usage?).
I love this conversation! I believe that the roots of my emotional wounds that fuel my depression and anxiety are the result of systems of patriarchy, capitalism, and a lack of community. I’m also in the process of understanding this.
Ya’ll might be interested in this:
http://mindfulliberation.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/what-is-radical-mental-health/
and this: http://www.reddit.com/r/radicalmentalhealth/
Radical mental health. Thank you thank you thank you for that phrase. It’s awesome what opens up when you have the right thing to Google!
On that first page, one thing that stands out to me is the part about language. One of the places where mental acceptance falls short of my work with physical acceptance is in the language. It was really easy for me to embrace the word fat. It’s kind of a bitchy, snarky, in-your-face little word that’s fun to throw around. “Depression” seems more like “obese” in that it just lands there like a blob in the sentence. They are medical words, and therefore hard to identify with in a positive way. I need a new word for depression.
I don’t think very many of us live in a social setting that’s “natural” for humans, which would be a tribal situation of mutual interdependence, surrounded by extended family, unambiguous belonging and acceptance by the group, simple lifestyle, etc. Our lives are fragmented, compartmentalized, most of us move amongst strangers on a daily basis, and our lives are complicated by many aspects of society pulling us in all directions. Honestly, I have a hard time believing that most “mental illness” is due to something “wrong” or “broken” with an individual. We all adapt and cope within society to better or worse degrees, and there isn’t much understanding or support for those who just can’t make their brains warp to these unnatural living conditions we’ve come up with.
Yeah. I agree with you entirely. Unfortunately, we’re stuck here, and we just have to make do. It’s important not to blame ourselves too much for that.
What a great thread to stumble upon. I too suffer from anxiety and depression caused by post traumatic stress disorder. I’ve been told “if you accept it, you’ll get better” but no one seems to understand is how difficult of a concept that is to even fathom. What I’ve taken from this is that while I can’t accept and embrace the event that traumatized me(or possibly refuse to accept, I’m not sure at this point) what I can do is accept hat it had radically affected my lifestyle and how I view and react to the world. Sometimes I have great days with no bumps and lots of happiness and sometimes I have terrible days where I just feel so completely hopeless and terrified and I can accept that. It seems that since I’ve learned to acknowledge this I have been happier overall. And I completely agree about wallowing, i don’t believe it helps to bury your emotions and try to hide them, I recently read the statement “let it flow and let it go” and since I’ve started practicing this as a means to cope with my awful days I’m finding that while I do still have bad days, with bad moments, they Don’t last as long and I’m able to pull myself out of my pit much easier than I would have by trying to hold my emotions inside.
For me, to accept myself completely as I am is to become even more depressed, as it leaves me absolutely no reason to continue. I am the type of person who needs something to work towards. Currently, I’m severely lacking in motivation, find no joy in things that I used to love doing, and am having trouble thinking that this world is even worth the effort anymore. I constantly think myself into a self-defeating rut.
The thing is: I do actually like myself, and I have a husband and a little girl who love me and are totally worth living for. My rational mind KNOWS this. I have NOTHING to be unhappy about, and yet- I am miserable. The world disappoints me time and time again, and I have trouble dealing with that, and so close myself off from it… which is probably making things worse. My self-defense mechanism has become self-sabotaging.
Part of this is chemical, part of it is situational (life change from full-time workaholic to stay-at-home-mom). Much of it is the fact that the world DOES suck in many ways, but a huge part of it is how I react to that. I need to not “fix” myself, but tweak the way I view things and how I interact with it. No matter who you are, there is always room for improvement. Those who think they are perfect the way they are are often the most f’d up, IMO. I mean, sociopaths rarely if ever seek help, and boy do they need it more than any of us!
I know I’ve always been depressed, but never to this extent. Probably because I have too much time to think. I figure, at the very least I know what it feels like at the end of the tunnel… I’m just hoping I can get back there someday. Somehow.
jd, I’m really sorry you feel the way you do. I identify with much of your description. For me, previously, being depressed meant a lot of negative self-talk about that state – I suck, I’m broken, etc. My current experience of being depressed acknowledges myself as a person with a mental illness – a disabled person – and also a person seeking treatment. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend exploring medical treatment with a psychiatrist. “Accepting” yourself doesn’t have to mean ignoring your situation or not trying to treat it.