The Kids are Not Alright: A Note on Mental Illness

Have you ever been really sad? Have you ever felt not the basic “we’re out of ice cream” sad (though that is really bad) but feeling something like “I’m alone in an ocean at night and these waves suck and I don’t know how to find shore”?

Here’s a bit of the rhetorical rub. That was a trick question because the only two answers are YES and NO BUT I WILL.

Teachers do not often tell people this in K through 12, but life is full of hardship. Life is actually full of lots of tiny little opportunities to make choices and pull Action Bingo balls. Life also is always running background/passive Life Slot machines. Some Action Bingo or Life Slot pulls result in jubilation while others will punch you in the gut and knock out your teeth.

It might be DEATH. Or a BREAKUP. Or you got the job. Or a BETRAYAL. Or a fascinating and beautiful person who smiles at your jokes. Or a MEDICAL DIAGNOSIS. Or a real FAILURE. Or oh yeah, at the end of a crappy day, some jerk on a phone hits you and TOTALS YOUR CAR. Life is amazing and exciting and wonderful and yet, sometimes it just SUCKSSUCKSSUCKSSUCKS.

Anthropologists somehow know that human beings have evolved to be social creatures (#MysteriousScience). It is in our DNA that we biologically/physiologically turn to other humans, in theory, when we cannot cope with the extremely wonderful or the truly crushing.

And yet, for some reason, American society has bought this fake idea that we must all pretend to love consuming and obtaining our phones and cars and houses with a white-picket fence. Just keep smiling. You got this. Everything happens for a reason. Fake it till you make it. Turn that frown upside down. Fake fake fake.

Buried in one side of this false thinking is that if people don’t naturally love what society feeds them, if they don’t feel happy all the time, if they cannot cope with the hardships that happen, sometimes all at once, then there is something wrong with them. At their core. They couldn’t manage it right, this life business. They “made bad choices.” And if they cannot cope with struggles they should feel ashamed and and and… and there’s no good end to this idea.

I just am so ANGRY about it all.

I cannot express how frustrated I feel when I have to help some of my great students realize that life is sometimes just SHITTY, and it’s okay to say that. It is okay to experience emotions that are so strong people literally short out the processing skills in their brains. EMOTIONS SO STRONG they disassociate (a fabulous word that makes me think of disappearing to other worlds, but in reality it just means they escape from themselves for a time). It is okay to not be able to cope with life.

BUT THEN people must accept the next premise: if you cannot cope with life, no, WHEN you cannot cope with life, you must seek help from others. Choose people you trust and tell them the awful truth. Struggling people must be vulnerable and open up to their friends or acquaintances or connections or parents (if they can preface it with an explanation about what the conversation is for).

Now back to you, if you’re struggling. Don’t know anyone you’re willing to trust with your struggles? Don’t have anyone willing to sit and listen? (This by the way is NOT a reflection on you. Welcome back to the Life Slots, lonely people.)

Do you have health insurance? Buy a secret keeper. Get therapy. Don’t have health insurance? Take a quick little class at a community college like mine and take advantage of the free counseling that our campuses offer. Are you really struggling? Call the suicide hotline: 1-800-273-8255. You don’t have to have your feet hanging off of a bridge to be able to call them. You aren’t imposing. You are important and more than worth their time.

And if you want to save some time, get started by thinking and REFLECTING with a few questions like this:

*What exactly is troubling you? (Be specific.)

*What’s led you here?

*What do you want more of?

*What might the other side of this look like? (No really. Imagining better is POWERFUL. It helps create HOPE.)

Try to put some real steady time and effort into this whenever you can. Writing is powerful, and overcoming big feelings is hard work that takes time.

The Blogess, a woman named Jenny Lawson who writes about her own struggles with depression and anxiety, once said, “Depression Lies.” She means that depression makes people who are sad see through “depression glasses” basically so things seem different than they really are. Depression makes sad people see only more negative things.

Remember that image of being alone in the middle of a dark ocean (or something like that)? Imagine (or go to) any mall and look around. You’ll see people living their lives. Sometimes it makes sad folks feel left behind and even more alone. However, when you remember that depression lies, you might be able to realize that all of these people have struggled, are struggling, or will struggle with just about the same exact feelings you’re in.

The kids are not alright. But they will be. They could be, if they realize it’s normal to need and get help.