Self care, romanticism and 'during' the illness - comments on Mental Health.

Recently, I talked quite extensively and very open about my mental health. That was possibly one of the hardest things I’ve endeavoured to do in my life and one which was received very warmly. A friend of mine reached out to me and said that I did not clearly address some issues. And that they felt I had not inculpated mental health issues. To be honest, I think that’s a fair point. I talked a lot about recovery because from where I’m sitting now, that’s easier to talk about. And I talked a lot of the lead up to what became a lot of my struggle but I never know how to talk about the struggle without it sound…wishy-washy.

You know what I mean.  “It’s all a journey”, “it gets better”. They’re all nice sounding phrases but I know people who take genuine offence at them. Because as nice as they’re sounding, if your endorphin levels have dropped and you can’t muster much energy to get up and do things, it’s bloody well hard to do anything else. I say I can never offer that much advice despite having been ‘there’ before. I don’t think of myself as qualified, I will simply try to see if I can see something similar in what I experienced and what a friend might being experiencing. But it’s really difficult sometimes to really know what to do because one feels that they should be better at it. But truth is, it’s not some float-y journey. It’s actually really hard.

I read a lot of things on the internet which bang on about ‘self-care tips’. And they usually say “get some chocolate, watch something nice”, etc. The messages themselves are nice enough but unfortunately, they tend to gloss over a lot of practical problems which arise with mental health. You tend to lose any patterns of hygiene you may have once have had and any desire to move your clothes out of the way on the floor. So maybe just grabbing some coco and sitting watching Orange is the New Black isn’t actually a way for you to progress. Sometimes it’s about doing the difficult thing – moving a couple of t-shirts so you don’t break your neck, clambering into the shower. That low point makes you lose any desire to function and it makes you lose any want to carry on. I think part of the illness is the inclusion of routine.

Even if it’s gentle things at first. You set a little task maybe, change your t-shirt today because you’ve been wearing the same pyjama top for 4 days consecutively. And here’s where, I think, the “mental health discussion” is actually finding problems. There’s one side which try to claim upon the beauty of people that has seemingly “Lost” throughout their ill period and the other side, which is harsh and cutthroat. We must understand that these are not the orthodox physical ill but instead, their mind is not necessarily responding to what seem normal human activities. And by simply bubble wrapping up people we are not actually helping. Whenever I break my leg, I’m told that the best way to recover is to get mobile as soon as possible.

That isn’t to say I should exist myself on crutches but make sure that I allow myself to get back to putting weight on it. Mental health cannot (nor should it) be treated exactly like physical health – for the quantifier of ‘mental’ makes it a much more subjective type of illness – but the analogy still holds some truth. You can’t make someone come out from the cave which they’ve built immediately but we shouldn’t be advocates of the cave to begin with. And it’s understood that people are struggling and are taking easier options but we need to have reality in this discussion. Without it, we will end up indulging emotional avoidance and people will be perpetually ill. Sometimes, my Mum would support me by making me get out of bed. That was hard, it was strenuous and I don’t always advise it (it worked for me but may not for you) but it was important that I had to begin a normalisation process.

Romanticism will not help nor will being overly harsh. Sensitivity is key to all these issues but I think sensitivity must go along with remembering what else is going on. Step by step.I think analogies and nice phrases are good at times but I guess one of the important factors of someone who has recovered is that it is particularly difficult to put yourself back in that place again. It's very difficult to remember what it was like because for a lot of it, you were very ill and you weren't entirely sure what was going on. You don't know if it was scary or bad but you perceive it to be as such now. And that is immensely important to discuss and to remember. 

I'm ending rather abruptly to allow space for discussion on this topic - I imagine it's one that can be discussed very lengthily by people more qualified to talk about this stuff than myself.

Charles Kennedy, 1959-2015.

I’m a Liberal Democrat.

I mean, that’s not all what I am but by literal definition I am a ‘Liberal’ and I am a ‘Democrat’. I believe in internal radicalism – where one may challenge the institution from the inside and change it from the inside. I believe, under a reformed electoral system, we will live in a fundamentally fairer and better represented society. I believe in Open government along with strong social justice tendencies. Through defeating the plights of economic injustice, I think we can find ourselves dismantling several social and cultural injustices around us. From what was said in the ‘launching video’ of the Liberal Democrat Party’s video in 1988, I subscribed to several of those ideas.

Trouble is, being a Liberal Democrat in the last five years hasn’t been easy. We’ve often felt betrayed, lied to, that we’ve been sold out by a bunch of Machiavellian scoundrels, to put it more…academically. Our former leader (and technically still current) Nick Clegg sold out the party’s principles for a part in the game. We turned back to our short but interesting history to the many figures who helped build the Party and wonder if they despair at the choice that Clegg makes? Does Roy Jenkins shake his head from somewhere? One man I know did despair to some degree, for he is the only member of the Party to have openly voted against the Coalition in 2010, has just passed away.

That man was Charles Kennedy.

I've been a member of this party, on and off, since I was 13/14. I followed the coverage as we entered Coalition, I saw how internally and externally we battled. To me, Kennedy is a towering figure from a hopeful yesteryear. The sort of man we wanted to lead now. And the sort of man we hoped we arrive in our future. When I, as a Quaker, learnt of his plight against the Iraq War my respect for him grew more and more. I think, even if you’re unfamiliar with Kennedy, we all want men and women like him in politics. Here he was, in all his humane glory. He suffered a very difficult illness while leading his party, a party which he had helped build over some two decades.

Despite his youth, Charles Kennedy still managed to connect with the people of his constituency thanks to his immense personal touch in his politics. He really set up the idea of “there is another option” for people in politics and for myself as a young person, he helped establish that there can be more than just the same old, same old Tory/Labour. Perhaps without me realising, he joins a list of people who have helped me find a political voice and indeed, helped me formulate views. To me he devised the idea of modern, “sensiblepolitik.” 

And for that I thank you – for you have left with me an immense political hope and to understand that issues are not always so black & white.