Tag: mental health

#oneaday Day 868: Enforced Merriment

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The Queen has been on the throne for 60 years. Yay The Queen.

In Britain, despite the fact that we spend roughly 98% of our time being completely oblivious to the continued existence of the royal family (apart from those few members who regularly appear in OK Magazine and have subsequently developed obnoxious and probably quite disrespectful nicknames), it is actually the law that anything vaguely celebration-worthy that involves said group of royals must be celebrated with a Street Party, with non-participants being taken to the Tower of London to be pecked to death by ravens.

As such, there was a Street Party today on our street. I was coming back from my evening of board game and curry depravity and I had work to do, so I really wasn’t feeling it anyway, but then my social anxiety kicked in and I was reminded of why I hate this sort of thing quite so much.

I loathe, despise and detest enforced merriment — the feeling that you “should” be somewhere and that you “should” be having more fun than you actually are. Enforcement could be unspoken (a simple feeling that you “should show your face”) or explicit (someone outright saying “oh come on, come and see these people!” in such a way that to say “well, no actually, the very prospect fills me with a crippling sense of outright panic” would make you look like A Right Bastard rather than someone suffering from an actual problem). The effects are the same though — a feeling of dread, the thought “I don’t want to do this” rattling around your head and, while the socialisation is actually going on, a constant and intense desire to find an excuse to leave or, in extreme cases, to simply bolt as quickly as possible.

The reason I don’t want to be in that situation is generally nothing personal to the people I’m supposed to be socialising with — our neighbours seem like a perfectly nice little family, for example — but it is simply part of the whole social phobia. I feel pressured to put myself in that situation, and then once I’m in there, there isn’t an easy escape route to get out of it, which makes me panic.

I think the main problem I have with occasions like this is the fact that they centre around small talk, which is something I can’t do very well. I tend to think about things a lot before I say them — to a fault, sometimes — and small talk just doesn’t work if you’re contemplating and considering every single thing that you say. “Should I mention the weather?” I think. “Or does that make me sound like the most clichéd twat ever? Should I crack a joke? What if it falls flat? That’s the worst feeling in the world. Everyone’s looking at me. Say something.”

Oddly enough if I’m in a professional situation where I have a reason to be interacting with strangers, I’m absolutely fine. If I’m running an event, or meeting and greeting customers, or standing up on stage and presenting to lots of people, I have no problem whatsoever in talking, making jokes, being charismatic and charming the pants off people. (Not literally. To my knowledge, anyway.) But take away that sense of context and purpose and I’m fucked. I feel panicked, and all I really want to do is run away and do something — anything — rather than talk to these people I feel I have nothing in common with. I build up resentment, and then I feel guilty about resenting these people for simply being more social than I am, and the whole vicious cycle goes around and around and around until I find some convenient excuse to extract myself and leave, never to return. (Today, I had work to do, so I was able to go and hide for a bit while I did that.)

This particular aspect of social phobia/social anxiety/shyness/whatever you want to call it is why I never really got on with the concept of “going out” for the sake of going out, or going “on the pull”, or indeed in speaking to anyone I didn’t already know somehow. I count the few occasions that I have successfully managed to initiate and carry on a non-essential or non-professional conversation with a stranger as huge personal victories — justifiably so, in some cases, as some have led to long-term friendships, such as my utterly nerve-wracking first words to my now-friend Cat while trapped in a lift (well, not “trapped” as such… we were both riding it, and it was in full working order) with her on my first day of a pre-term music course at university.

I won’t lie, this particular phobia is a real pain to deal with at times, and I really wish I could be free of it. That won’t happen without hard work over a long period, however, and I’m sometimes not sure I’m ready to confront this particular problem head on.

#oneaday, Day 34: #whatstigma?

Comedienne Rebecca Front posted the following tweet yesterday, and was somewhat surprised at the level of response it got:

It was a bold move, particularly for a public figure, but in doing so she inspired a veritable plethora of people to “come out of the closet”, as it were, and admit that they had suffered mental health issues, be they depression, anxiety, panic attacks, OCD or any number of others.

Front’s aim with the original tweet was to encourage people to talk openly about the things they felt without feeling a stigma attached to it—hence the hashtag. And it was genuinely touching to see the number of people who latched on to this topic, confessing how they suffered from numerous “hidden” ailments in their mind whilst going about what otherwise seemed to be perfectly “normal” lives.

In fact, Front conjectured that some form of mental illness affected almost everyone. That may appear to be an exaggeration, but the number of people responding to her original tweet, coupled with the fact that #whatstigma became the top non-promoted trending topic in the UK for a good few hours yesterday, made it clear that there were plenty of people out there who do suffer from these things and perhaps haven’t had the opportunity to talk about them, or don’t feel comfortable talking about them.

It’s no surprise, really, that there’s a perceived stigma surrounding mental illness, however. Back in last May, Janet Street-Porter made some ill-advised comments suggesting that depression was being used as a fashion accessory—that people were just saying they were suffering because it was the “in” ailment to have.

There may well be some people who deliberately exaggerate their feelings of “being down” into “depression”—if there are, then they really should find better things to do with their lives. But these people aside, people do genuinely suffer. And it’s not just a case of “snapping out of it”, of “cheering up”, of saying “chin up” enough times. It doesn’t just go away; it sticks around, for years sometimes. Like anything, there are peaks and troughs; the peaks can feel like you’ve escaped it, finally, that you’re in the clear, that you can get on with enjoying your life. But then a trough comes along, plunges you deep into the darkness and the long climb back out begins again.

I’ve felt this way—I still do. And I know many, many other people—some in person, some via the Internet—who also do. I didn’t recognise my depression for what it was until I spent some time with someone who explained it to me at university. I recognised the feelings she described and knew that I’d felt them myself, too. It wasn’t just a case of feeling “a bit sad”. It was a variety of factors piling up in such a way that made it very difficult to deal with life’s trials, whatever they might be.

And I hate it. The feeling of helplessness that comes with it; of having days when you just don’t want to get out of bed; of times when nothing can stop you from feeling regrets, anger, fear, shame; of wondering if it’ll ever end. For some people, it becomes just something about you—something you deal with. For others, it’s an acute condition which can be treated. But for most people, there are underlying causes that need to be dealt with rather than attacked with “quick fixes”.

In my case, these underlying causes are well-documented, and I’m doing what I can to fix them. This makes me feel a little better most of the time—knowing that I’m making the effort to do something about these underlying causes is good motivation to keep doing what I do. But there are still days when I find myself wondering if it’s worth it, if anything is ever going to come of all these efforts that I’m making.

I won’t know unless I keep trying, I guess.

My feelings on this made clear, now, here’s the shameless plugging. In May, I’ll be running the BUPA 10K with a couple of very lovely friends I’ve met via the One A Day Project. All three of us will be running in aid of the mental health charity “Mind”. I’d certainly appreciate it a great deal if you can spare a bit of virtual loose change to fling my way via my fundraising page. Every little bit will help people to get the help they need to overcome these difficulties.

Thanks for reading this; thanks for your help; and thanks for your support.