Opening the Bell Jar: How to Show Up for People with Mental Illness

Mental illness scares pretty much everyone who doesn’t personally live with it. When Sylvia Plath published The Bell Jar in 1963, she described her “madness” as like being stuck inside a bell jar, looking through glass at the outside world. Back in July of 2017, Chester Bennington, lead singer of Linkin Park committed suicide by hanging. As someone with Bipolar disorder, suicide has never been a foreign concept to me. I can’t personally even count the number of times I’ve attempted suicide- some of these attempts resulting in hospitalization, others not and everything from hanging myself with a rope to drinking Drano, Lysol and anti-freeze (not all at one time though because that would be crazy). One thing I have noticed as both a person living with mental illness and a social service provider for many years now is that most people are extremely uncomfortable talking about mental illness. Yeah, not super helpful. I believe this is not because they don’t care, but rather because most people don’t want us to feel embarrassment and stigmatization around our illness, so they don’t bring it up out of this fear of shaming us. Well, I already know I’m “nuts” (insert sarcastic chuckle here), and chances are that anyone who also lives with a mental illness has been called more names and denied more jobs and been shunned by more peer groups than you could ever imagine. We are a lot more resilient than folks realize so don’t flatter yourself into believing you can insult me in a way I havent already been insulted before. Bringing up a legitimate fact is not going to be the one thing that sends us over the edge. Believe me. I can’t explain to you the things that my Bipolar disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder and Complex PTSD have taken away from me. I know for a fact that if I didn’t have these disorders, my life would be infinitely different. That’s how much mental illness can impact the trajectory of someone’s life. Not just because we can be making choices from a very limited scope of options but more so because the world around us is highly skilled at closing doors in our faces out of a rather obvious discomfort for our “weirdness.”

When Bennington committed suicide, friends all around me were talking about how “sad” and what a “tragedy” this is- posting links to suicide hotlines on their social media. This is all well and good and comes -perhaps- from a good place, but it doesn’t help Chester Bennington and it doesn’t help anyone currently contemplating suicide. So what does? Well maybe the next time you interview someone for a job who seems “weird” or “withdrawn” you actually humanize that person instead of discounting them due to any inability to subscribe to the norms of social interaction. I know this is tough given job interviewers are primarily just looking for the biggest corporate, kiss ass, douche (even in the nonprofit world it’s no different, sadly). Maybe when your friend is struggling you actually check in with them instead of just acting like their struggles are their problem. To be frank, the reactions to Chester’s death infuriated me. Why? Because all you people without mental illness only give a fuck about a dead person who died directly from their own trauma and self hate WHEN IT CAN BENEFIT YOU! Yes, I said it. And yes, his death is indeed sad and people should be reminded of helpful resources, but when you’re doing this what you’re really doing is saying, “Don’t forget about me everyone!” I would have probably never been homeless, never been in so many abusive relationships and frankly I don’t think I would be as dirt fucking poor as I am today if I had not been recurrently traumatized as a child causing complex PTSD, then been born with genetic predispositions to certain mental illnesses which fully manifested after said trauma and abuse. If I sound like a cunt telling people to shove their condolences up their ass, its cause my mental illness combined with person after person turning their back and walking away from me have directly contributed to all of the obstacles I have had to climb through in my life. So it is personal for me. You can do something to help those with mental illness: but it’s not going to be about you and in fact, most of this work will never be acknowledged or recognized by anyone, ever. Alcoholics Anonymous says that one of the reasons meetings are important is because it can be a lot harder to ask for help if you aren’t already plugged into a system of social support. While I don’t agree with everything AA touts, I do certainly agree that this is why ongoing conversations are so critical with the important people in your life. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and the opposite of shame is vulnerability, as Brene Brown says. So talk about mental illness in public, whether you are living with it or not. Be vulnerable. Create inclusive workspaces where employees with mental illness know that their employer supports their wellbeing and where they can feel safe from discrimination if things are getting bad and they need to disclose their illness to a superior or human resources. There is no support for mental illness because it’s still taboo to talk about. This is where the REAL work of helping folks contemplating suicide lies, not in re-tweeting a 1–800 number. Have the fucking balls to show up for the people in your life who are struggling. I guarantee we all have at least one. If you are living with a mental illness, like me, then have the balls to show up for yourself and refuse to be corralled into silence and shame.