Don't Punish The Strength You See Just Because You Don't See The Rest
Let's talk a minute about mental health, chronic illness, people's struggles, and ableism
Let's talk a minute about mental health, chronic illness, people's struggles, and ableism**
Yesterday, I wrote a pretty vulnerable post about the very bad experience I had in therapy. I've been trying to secure a therapist for several years, and this is just the latest in a long line of bad experiences. When I posted, many people commented with their own stories, which made me feel good. It made me feel less alone, and it made me feel good knowing people felt safe to share their stories. And it also goes to show that my story is a far more common one than people realize because we don't talk about it. I talked about my understanding of the situation, why it upset me, and the insight that I gleaned from it.
And then somebody commented "doesn't sound like you need a therapist". They then clarified that it sounds like I have myself pretty put together (**see bottom!!)
Now, I have a pretty decent following and there are an incredible amount of people who seem to value what I have to say and who like my advice. And that makes me feel very honored. Yes, I've had extensive therapy to get to where I am. The only reason I'm as put together as I am is because I've been very mindful of it and I had the privilege of having very extensive therapy with a counselor who was pretty well perfect for me, and understanding psychology and human behavior already comes easily to me (my college courses on those topics when I was originally a Psych major helped, too. 😉)
But that doesn't mean that I don't still have things that I need to process and heal from. That's not how mental health works, and that's not how therapy works. Added to which, there have been a lot of traumatic things in my life that I still need to deal with since I last had access to reliable therapy.
As I said to this person, the only person qualified to determine whether or not I need a therapist would be MY therapist- after careful assessment.
It's a very hurtful thing to be that dismissive after I was just vulnerable and open about my frustration in trying to secure a good therapist, and it's a very harmful assumption to make that just because somebody seems put together, that they don't need therapy. For one, you only see the parts of myself that I show online, just like everyone else with a social media account. Even within close friends and family members, we never know everything that's going on behind the scenes, so one should never make the assumption that someone else could not benefit from therapy. We don't live in their head, and we don't know what their mental health goals are.
What I find even more bizarre is that I am pretty open about the fact that I do still struggle with a lot that I need to process. I've spoken for years about my struggles trying to secure therapy.
But there is a fuckton of ableism in the assumption that just because I appear to have everything put together, that I do. Do not punish us for the strength that we've had no choice but to gain, and for handling it well. It's that kind of thinking that does more harm in the medical and mental health community than anything else
The assumption that we can just handle it and we don't need help. Now, I'm in the mental health space to be able to read a comment like that, not internalize it, and not be diminished by it. I'm simply irritated and using it as a way to speak about a much larger issue.
All of this is equally true for people who suffer from chronic illness. We learn coping mechanisms. We learn ways to try to make our lives easier.
Except one of the biggest things we learn is how to mask the pain and keep going. We have to mask the pain because people get tired of seeing it. People get tired of hearing about it.
You never know what someone else is going through. Don't be the last thing that they can't handle… and don't punish us just because you see our strength, but not the rest
**please do not engage with that comment. i'm handling it and my intent behind this post isn't to have y'all dogpile the person that commented, but to point out the ableism and impact of statements like that**