BEAUTIFUL TRAUMA
LOVE IN A TIME OF ILLNESS (PART. II) — Written by Andi Bazaar
This "Mental Health Awareness Week," I say it’s time to change the narrative around mental health and recognise the role that trauma and life circumstances have on our emotional wellbeing.
A) TRAUMA
There are crossroads in life where trauma and the desire to keep going in life intersect, it’s a busy intersection where on the outside everything seems to be whizzing past you almost crashing into you and yet on the inside there is a deafening and throbbing lull.
This lull is not peace, but a numbness that develops after feeling stuck between a rock and a hard place for so long. In this overwhelming pain it may feel like it takes too much effort to continue, you might ask yourself questions like:
- how much longer can i hang on?
- how am i supposed to keep carrying such a heavy load?
- when will this pain stop?
On your bad days, the questions may be less exploratory and more emphatic like:
- i hate my life
- nothing ever works out for me
- everything about me and my existence is terrible
Thoughts about not wanting to continue life during times of adversity can alternate between feeling strangely right and feeling very scary, many people get worried not just about experiencing thoughts of death but also what those thoughts mean:
"if i think about ending my life does this mean i'm crazy?"
- what would other thinks about me if they found out i had these thoughts?
- will these thoughts ever go away?
- what if i’m going to feel this way forever?
“If you’ve had these thoughts, know that you are not alone. There are people all over the world, including who are reading this chapter just like you who feel stuck with no way out.”
Studies shows that the lifetime prevalence rate for thinking about ending one’s life in the average population is about 18.5% and that those who have experienced trauma have an even higher likelihood of experiencing these feelings.
Jwan Höffler Conwall is incredibly brave for speaking out about the impact racial trauma has had on his mental health. Experiencing racismin any form, affects our mental health. It is completely unacceptable that anyone should face racism in any part of their lifeincluding at work.
Everyone in the any sector should be working together to change the culture, we should all be able to achieve our full potential without prejudice and discrimination.
B) MEMORY LOSS
I feel it's important to acknowledge the impact mental health can have on your memory.
I am often forgetful of things that happened not only years ago but also hours or days ago, it's not because I don't care or I'm selfish please don't ever think that.
It's often because I'm anxious, sometimes I hide that really well but anyone who knows me well enough can see straight through that facade. I'm not here to be ashamed or apologetic for my flakey state of mind though, I don't owe anyone that.
I'm here to document a moment of clarity because when I have something I think is important to say about Mental Health, it's better to put it out there for others to relate to rather than to let it disappear back into my subconscious again. So here it is!
My memory often fails me, I leave a ridiculous amount of reminders on my phone. I set alarms, sometimes I plaster my walls in post-it notes and occasionally I ask my friends and family to remind me of things I am terrified to forget when I'm especially foggy.
I forgot what people just said to me or the words that just left my own mouth, in the past people have weaponised this lapse in my recollection to tell me I said or didn't say something or that they did or didn't say something I'm sure they did or didn't.
I've come to learn that my memory usually fails me to protect me, fight or flight is a powerful mechanism and what it means is that remembering to buy stamps is bottom of the pile and being on high alert to over think or for an unlikely scenario to happen takes precedence.
It can't be controlled and coming to accept that was one of the best coping mechanisms for me, I hate to let people down but anyone who matters to me knows how difficult it can be for someone like me who has lived through trauma that caused me to get here in the first place.
I'm not here to detail that trauma but what I can tell you is that it can be physical and mental: gaslighting, control, stalking, manipulation etc. So many things that have resulted in my brain being a little scattered, overwhelmed and overstimulated at the best of times.
I guess that’s what I came to say and I hope it made sense to at least one person because I didn’t want to write something eloquent and profound, just something raw and relatable. “Mental health affects memory and you are not alone.”
C) PATRIARCHY AND MENTAL HEALTH
Let’s write a story on patriarchy and mental health, any form of oppression will have long lasting mental health impacts. “Patriarchy” has lasted for so long with many generations sharing and passing that trauma, let’s dive a little deeper into what it can entail.
Within families, patriarchy is very much alive. Many if not most families raise their children differently based on whether they are boys or girls, girls tend to be limited in what their: parents allow, from going out, to interacting with boys, or even discouraged from science.
These dynamics play out so early that young girls realize that something is wrong, even if can't fully understand the ramifications yet. They can see how their own brothers or boy peers at school are treated versus how they are treated and create a conflict within themselves.
While we are young, parents are the main form of socialization and the people we learn the world and environment from. Those early years are crucial for the development of our mental health, when girls are treated differently it affects their mental health early on.
“Self-esteem” suffers greatly and paves the way for self-esteem and self-efficacy to be greatly impacted into their adult life, even while they try to unlearn those ingrained behaviours taught by parents. Furthermore, childhood is a time of possibilities and exploration.
But for many girls, their parents limit them on what they can do. They tell them early in their childhood that their job is to get married and have kids, their creativity and spark may get stopped because they cannot explore that environment themselves. It was chosen for them.
Furthermore, as with any form of oppression the truth may not be believed even when there is evidence. Their word carries less weight than that of their brothers or other men in the family even when girls or women approach their parents after an assault they are not believed.
The system was made to defend boys whether it is within families or the justice system, getting justice is practically impossible. This is not just within our culture even in Canada for example only 11% of sexual assaults result in conviction "the lowest in any category."
Because of these deep rooted inequalities that start from birth, mental health will be impacted in a great way. By limiting possibilities of young girls, treating them differently from their brothers, etc will result in many mental health issues.
The biggest is internalizing that oppression, that results in helplessness and hopelessness that creates an intense form of depression. They don't resist anything because they may realize it is pointless, that combination can be very dangerous because it can lead to suicide.
Trauma from going through assaults and not being believed or supported by anyone in the family or system at large, they are forced to repress those emotions and without externalizing leads to an explosion of those emotions later in life.
Anxiety is also a big one, navigating a system that was not made for them and where their safety is threatened at all times will certainly lead to a lot of anxiety because that fight or flight reflex is activated at all times even at home where it is supposed to be safe.
These are just scratching the surface in terms of how patriarchy affects the mental health of little girls and women in their life, there is so much more. This is why we need to make mental health accessible for women for free in order to help with that internalized trauma.
We also need to remove patriarchy completely from our systems and families, allowing future generations of young girls to grow up without it unleashing their full potential not only career wise but also their full potential in happiness.
Thank you to Dr. Seth Gryffen for asking me to write about this very important story.
Credited:
- Journalist by Clayton Euridicé Schofield
- Photographed by José Schenkkan
- Model by Jwan Höffler Conwall
- Consulting by Dr. Seth Gryffen
