I’m so sick of all the talk. Tired of texts written by people who are dripping with their own, handed-down ailments, and all these others who try partially to understand themselves about other people’s juicy, exotic pains. Tired of professional texts about the characteristics of depression. The celebrities’ journey through life’s hard school. The freedom-depriving prison of social anxiety. Everyone’s constant feelings of not being good enough. And the “social” media’s lobotomizing penetration of the fragile, stagnant psyche of children and young people. The Internet’s paradoxically antisocial age. And the eternal fear, shame and anxiety about the future we all know is going to be more and more destroyed. A delicious, long and agonizing sandwich list crammed to the brim with ailments, unrest and deafening pessimism. Our depressions are common, so is our social anxiety. PTSD affects more people than you think. Alone, we are all restless, sleepless, in search of perfectionism, and full of various diagnoses. So are we done now? Have we managed to conjure up the image of the big, jagged, collective wound we are all bathing in well enough? No, absolutely not. The list is still long of topics we have not been able to cover. But isn’t there a piece of this cake that we’ve forgotten somewhere along the way? Who mourns his painful absence? Don’t get me wrong, it is absolutely a giant step forward that tough pioneers have dared to be open and describe what they experience to us. Ailments that affect both our collective and individual psyche. But while the loneliness figures continue to rise to the height of the Himalayas, and the diagnoses eagerly pour down on our children and young people like a targeted, all-encompassing downpour, there is one area of the conversation about mental illness that is constantly missing. Talk about all the rest of us. The conversation about those standing around. Those who are on the outer edges of the problem, indirectly affected, but probably very decisive for the problem’s outcome. Because when a young person comes forward about loneliness and exclusion in their environment, why don’t we talk more about what the environment can actually do to prevent it? Where is the talk about our collective responsibility? Have we become too “cool” to talk about friendship? Or do we simply think it’s just not that important? And when a mother experiences birth anxiety or postpartum depression, why don’t we discuss how we can stand up for her and give her the right kind of support where we can? Are we to assume that this is something we master well enough? I believe that many people become so insecure in such situations that they instead end up pulling away. But it doesn’t have to be that complicated either. Perhaps it is only the will to actually be there, in the pain, that really counts. A former victim of abuse, like myself, often ends up with various health problems. But there is one thing in particular that is repeated in most studies of the development of the victim’s illness: the ailments often become worse than they could have been because the environment around them fails. The lack of social support and care from the people around is crucial for the development of, for example, PTSD. This may even be more important than the type of abuse one actually experiences. Processing what happened is naturally much more difficult all alone. So we have to talk about how we can stand up for each other better. Sort of like being more curious and interested when someone seems bothered. Be there for them and give support rather than advice, and dare to actually carry some of the feelings with them that overflow from them. Wrap a ring around the sick, so they actually believe us when we say they can lean on our healthy backs. Isn’t it time we had that conversation? And believe me: I myself am delighted that we have come further in describing all kinds of inhumanities and injustices, which create a sea of psychological pain that affects more of us than one would think. But a crackling fire of unstoppable anger burns in me when it seems as if the solution to it all is to let problems be problems and the responsibility up to the individual. Because not everyone gets the help they need from the healthcare system. And if you are lucky enough to get it, you still manage poorly without any form of support from the pack around you. Because that’s not how we humans work. We need each other. Yes, it is so nice, so nice, that you, standing there outside the worn fence of your friend, have managed to get there that you recognize that it is possible to struggle mentally in various ways, or to be exposed to psychological violence. So good, then we no longer see our fellow humans as “crazy”, overreacting deviations. But the danger is still greater that we do not master the task of supporting each other well enough, when we never talk about how we will be able to help each other in situations that do not directly affect us. The alternative is to just leave it up to the affected person, which fits rather badly with the ideal of being so passionately “inclusive” and “taboo-fighting”, if you ask me. So: Can we start talking about how to be a good friend? Because I don’t think we all know how.
ttn-69
Silent about the herd – Statement
