Listen, Open Up, Connect: A Mental Health Expert’s Advice On Living Through A Crisis

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19 Сен 2020, 12:18

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In her new book, Modern Madness: An Owner’s Manual, Terri Cheney, who lives with bipolar disorder, shares advice for dealing with anxiety and depression and helping loved ones through a crisis.

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What has helped you adjust to the limitations of living in a pandemic?

Medication, therapy, writing: Those are my big mooring lines that keep me tethered to the earth.

Writing has been incredibly cathartic and therapeutic. I don’t know how I’d live without writing. It just makes the world make sense for me. I feel like once I’ve written about something, I understand it, as opposed to just living through it. It’s certainly helped me heal.

An important thing for me has been being sober. [In the past] I didn’t realize that my psychiatric medications wouldn’t work unless I was sober. With alcohol [and medication] you’re giving your brain too many messages, and it couldn’t sort out what was what.

In your book you acknowledge that madness is «a word I know may be controversial, but that I frankly adore.» You also write that bipolar disorder has given you positive traits, like «creativity, empathy, and an outsider’s eye.» What would you say to someone who is skeptical that mental illness could be a good thing?

I meant to encompass anyone who feels like their perspective is divergent in some way. I write that «it assumes a spark of genius, a familiarity with things not quite of this commonplace world.» I think we’re all a little bit mad, you know — we just don’t own it.

The concept of the «owner’s manual» is not just because the book is broken down into sections like Troubleshooting and Warranties and User Precautions, but also [because] you own yourself and your journey, and own your madness, because it makes you beautiful. It makes you who you are.

I think people with mental illness, going back to even before they were diagnosed, [have] this sense of, «I’m different from the rest of the world.» I’m just saying I think that’s valuable. We need that kind of diversity; we need all the different perspectives. They all add something unique and exciting.

You write that when you’re depressed, it’s an accomplishment just to take a shower. How did you come to recognize that as an achievement, rather than as a simple task you should be able to do? How can other people identify what these achievements are in their lives?

It took many, many years for me to educate myself about my illness to the point where I recognized my symptoms and my triggers and was able to have some compassion for them.

The shower is the thing I hate most in the world because when I’m depressed, I just can’t move. I get what they call psychomotor retardation, which means I’m paralyzed almost: not just my will but my physical body. Just getting out of bed is such an effort that I sometimes just can’t do it. So I felt a lot of shame and anger at myself, frustration.

It took years to understand that, «Oh, that’s what’s happening.»[In] the same way I can tell myself, «Oh, it’s depression talking.» That really helps.

To put that kind of distance between me and the symptoms has been invaluable. It’s a matter of having compassion, more than anything — in addition to the right medication, of course.

I think there’s a learning curve to mental illness. You really need to learn what yours looks like. «What does it look like?» and «What can I do about it?» Those are the two questions that I hope Modern Madness will help people answer.

Some people have someone they love who refuses treatment for their mental illness. To help someone in denial, you recommend empathizing with that denial. What could that look like?

Ideally, it would be something they would share in an open conversation, but I doubt that’s going to happen very often with someone in denial because they just don’t want to talk about it. It shuts them down. I think most people who are in denial about needing help, do realize that they need help. But they’re afraid nothing can be done to help.

Realizing that you use denial, we all use denial, because we’re so afraid, it’s a totally different feeling than just frustration and anger at the person for not getting help. I think it’s just a subtle mind shift [to go from] «Why are you doing this to me,» to «I understand where you’re coming from. You know, I’m afraid of dying, or I’m afraid of making a will.» Things like that might be a way to empathize.

For people who don’t have the privileges of a white, educated middle-class professional, are there parts of the book that don’t apply to them or need to be adapted to fit their lives?

I tried especially hard in this book in particular, to be inclusive of all races and genders and all different kinds of illnesses. I made it an effort more so than in my first two books, which were all about me, to go beyond myself and look more at the mental health landscape.

People might not be able to understand when I talk, for example, about my psychopharmacologist. Not everybody is lucky enough to have a doctor who specifically manages their mental health medications. That is a real sign of privilege. My doctor is retiring, unfortunately, after 25 years of treating me. I’m having a great deal of trouble finding affordable treatments, so I can’t begin to fathom how hard people without my resources have it. I can only imagine.

The stigma I’ve encountered is probably so much less than the stigma that, say, a homeless person who has mental illness has encountered.

Are you talking about the story where a woman was pleading for someone to call her doctor as police hauled her away?

I was thinking of her, yes.

You write about a time you were confronted by a police officer who thought you were intoxicated. He let you go after you convinced him to call your psychiatrist, who explained that you collapsed from side effects of a medication. Did you realize the contrast in how each of you were treated in that moment?

I did realize it in the moment. I remember that vividly. I can take myself right back to that pharmacy and what she looked like and smelled like and sounded like. It was a very visceral experience of seeing what I might have turned into if it weren’t for the incredible care that I’ve gotten, what my life might have turned into, and it really shook me. It really, in some ways, broke my heart. I felt like we were sisters under the skin in a way.

I’ve seen a lot of socioeconomic barriers to access. It’s a total tragedy that insurance companies don’t pay for aftercare once you get out of the hospital. My [support] group that I ran was an attempt to address that. So many of us didn’t have the financial wherewithal to have private support groups that were run by professionals. It’s a big gaping hole in the mental health system.