The Voices In My Head

Written by Andi Bazaar | Sept 30, 2022

"mental health is a topic that everyone strays away from but seriously shouldn’t, everyone struggles at times. it shouldn’t be something we’re scared or ashamed of, we as a society have made mental health this thing that we have to keep hush hush..."

When in reality it is something we need to embrace and put in the conversation! always ask someone how they’re really doing, ask if they’re struggling and if they just want to sit down and talk about it.

You never know how much just a few minutes and a genuine conversation can change someones life. We need to start talking about mental health and it’s effects, we don’t need to stray away from it and regret that we did when the unimaginable happens. Be kind to people always.

1/5 Americans have a mental health condition, yet when I was in the darkest corners of my illness I would have never believed that statistic. I had never heard anyone discuss anxiety or depression because as a society we've decided we shouldn't talk about this because of this.

I think it is important for those of us who are ready to share our stories do so, I am ready. I've struggled with anxiety since I was 15, it hit quickly and forcefully and it stuck around.

From the second I opened my eyes in the morning until the late night moment when I finally fell asleep, horrible, repetitive thoughts circled my mind. They said "there's something wrong with you." — they said "why aren't you like everyone else," and often they said far worse.

I managed to hide it exceptionally well, I was a picture-perfect son, maintained a 4.0 GPA and led many extra-curricular groups. When I tried to tell my friends and family, I was told to stop complaining, I had the world in the palm of my hand "how could I be upset?"

I graduated with honors and a scholarship to ASU, when I'd get busy my anxiety would lessen so I threw myself into clubs and jobs and internships but when summer would roll around and my free time returned, the thoughts were back. I spiraled.

My anxiety slipped into depression. I loved my parents, my friends, my career but there were days where the darkness of my anxiety led me down a path where ending my life seemed like the only escape. I was ashamed to admit that to myself or anyone else which upped my anxiety.

When I was strong enough to share this with my mother, she was wonderful but understandably upset. She insisted I talk to someone but the thought of telling anyone but her was too much to bare, I thought a doctor would tell me I was crazy and lock me up in a mental institution.

"isn't that funny?" — I was so unaware of the prevalence of mental illness that I really thought I was the only one experiencing it, I thought that if I admitted that I was experiencing what 1/5 Americans experience that I would be institutionalized.

If you've made it this far, here's the good news. I got better! Eventually I allowed my mom to drag me to the one medical professional I trusted, at 19 years old I sat in my pediatrician's office — the one that delivered me and bawled my way through my "confession."

He said something I had never heard before: "You are normal, the way you're feeling is okay." — It's amazing how just hearing those words helped, they didn't fix everything but they helped. I made it through the next two years with tools to keep my anxiety in check.

I was doing well, I told my mom every time she asked and it was true about 60% of the time. Here's the truth that I finally accept: "there's a chemical imbalance in my brain even with all the tools in the world, I needed some more help."

At 21, I began taking medication for my disorder and you guys things got a lot better. I still have moments, sometimes weeks or months where my anxiety bubbles up but when it does, my brain now has an ability to address it in a way it never did before despite my efforts.

A few weeks after I began the medication, I started working at The Republic. I was living with my parents and I'll never forget my dad saying, "wow, it must be a great place to work. I've never seen you this happy."

The Republic is an awesome place to work, don't get me wrong but I've had a lot of awesome opportunities but something in my brain never allowed me to be as happy as I was that day.

As we arrive at the (current) end to my story (I know my disorder will likely surface many more times), I'll leave you with this. The way you feel is normal and there are millions who can tell you this, so reach out when you're ready. You don't have to suffer in silence.

To those who don't have a disorder, I have one favor to ask. Know that words matter.

When you say someone "commits" suicide, we hear, "they made the choice to die."
When you say "just calm down" it makes us feel like our anxiety is a choice.

These are not choices for us and know that you never know who is struggling.

An example:
My best friend did not know the extent of my disorder, I had told her I had anxiety but didn't go into detail. Years later she was telling me about her roommate. "he has anxiety, like real anxiety," he said.

The words cut through me like a knife, I know she didn't mean to hurt me and it would pain her to know she did but if she didn't know her best friend was struggling you have no way of knowing what's happening in the brain of a colleague at work or stranger on the street.

So be kind in your word choice and check, let's just be kind to one another in general.

I know not everyone is ready to share their battles with mental illness just yet, the very thought of sharing this publicly even a year ago would have sent me into a state of anxiety I wouldn't wish upon an enemy but if you are ready I encourage you to consider sharing.

Not only has writing this been extremely cathartic but I truly believe that if 15-year-old Steve had seen someone be this candid about mental illness, he wouldn't have waited so long to get the help he deserved.

Doctor Oliver gonna short talk about DSM’s pathologisation of dissent:

DSM-5 states that deviance or conflict that is primarily between the individual and their society is not a mental disorder but wait, what does it say next?

It says such deviance or conflict with social norms could still constitute a "mental disorder," if it stems from a "dysfunction" within you (i.e. some kind of emotional/cognitive/behavioural "impairment").

So let's suppose you’re impaired because you’re depressed amd that you're depressed because you’re in conflict with racist, sexist or ableist social norms that oppress you or medicalising norms that stigmatise you or with neoliberal norms that significantly curtail your opportunities.

In other words even though your "impairment" may be a natural response to being in partial conflict with social norms, you may still be classed as "mentally disordered" precisely because that struggle can hurt you (to the extent you satisfy the low bar for having a DSM disorder)

So, on the face of it what looks like a politically-progressive allowance for the pain of what may be rightful dissent may still trap you in a DSM's pathologising grasp after all.

As someone who has both mental and physical illnesses, I need mental health advocates to stop saying "we need to take mental health as serious as physical health."

What world are they living in where chronic physical health issues are taken seriously? Because it's not this one.

The idea that our physical health is taken seriously is honestly laughable and it shows you've never put one iota of thought or research into learning about our experiences, start listening to chronically illness people particularly those of us who are also mentally illness.

This is an anecdote and not necessarily true for all chronically illness and mentally illness people but people and providers actually take my chronic physical illnesses and issues significantly less seriously than they take my mental illnesses but you know what I'm never going to say?

I'm never going to tell people "we should take physical health as seriously as we do mental health," because that's bullshit and I'm not trying to drag down other marginalized people in order in order to pull myself to the top.

Q's:
"Do you ever find that simply having the psychiatric label makes it that much more of a challenge in getting your docs to take your physical complaints seriously?"

A's:
Surprisingly, not really but that's not because they don't dismiss everything as having a psychiatric cause. They do but the providers that do that seemed to do it regardless of whether or not they knew about my mental health history, I went through a several year period where I successfully hid all my mental health diagnoses and they honestly just dismissed everything as being based on mental illness thinking I had zero history of mental illness just as much as they did when they knew I had mental illnesses. People are missing that mental illness is not analogous to acute, temporary physical health problems.

You don't just catch a case of PTSD for a couple weeks before it clears right up after a round of antibiotics, my main point is that you need to stop acting like this is some sort of us (vs) them.

You don't need to spread false narratives about physical health and chronic illness in order to say that mental health needs to be taken seriously, you can talk about your issue and why it matters without disparaging other groups of people you're clearly not a part of.

Any time you want to say "if they did X to Y people, there would outrage,",you're almost invariably wrong because X does happen to us and there's no outrage.

A SPECIAL THANKS TO:

• Dr Oliver Schofield (Consulting)
• Dr Seth Gryffen (Consulting)
• Clayton Euridicé Schofield (Editor/Journalist)
• Henrie Louis Friedrich (Analyst)
• Timothée Freimann schofield (Photgraphed)
• Shot at GQ’s Studios by José Schenkkan and Benjamin Schenkkan Joseph
• In collaboration with Steve Oswald Freimann (Model)