It cuts both ways. It's always good to meet people with similar issues, but making your mental illness the core of your social life and identity can perversely make it harder to change and overcome it. Even live as a functional adult while managing it. I get the basic premise, but I sometimes feel like a lot of the mental health commun…
It cuts both ways. It's always good to meet people with similar issues, but making your mental illness the core of your social life and identity can perversely make it harder to change and overcome it. Even live as a functional adult while managing it. I get the basic premise, but I sometimes feel like a lot of the mental health community has decided that treating a mental illness, much less trying to cure it is problematic and ableist. There are some circles that barely stop short of admitting these illnesses are even bad. Just wave it away with talk about "neurotypical."
When I was in grad school for education and taking courses on adolescent mental health, the consensus in the field seemed to be that bringing kids with mental health or trauma issues together in small, structured environments could be good for recovery and growth, but left alone for too long would eventually bond around their shared problem and increasingly self-identify with it, leading to all the negative outcomes Freddie outlines above.
I'm reminded of the differing value between support groups and the more proactive forms of therapy. The former is, or can be, an important part of not feeling isolated. But it is the later that actually attempts to find paths forward towards better health. Engaging in the first while ignoring the second can create a closed circle, a feedback loop, rather than a way to actually engage with a challenge. A closed circle with no potential paths forward can only keep things static and will support the taking on of an illness as an actual identity.
It cuts both ways. It's always good to meet people with similar issues, but making your mental illness the core of your social life and identity can perversely make it harder to change and overcome it. Even live as a functional adult while managing it. I get the basic premise, but I sometimes feel like a lot of the mental health community has decided that treating a mental illness, much less trying to cure it is problematic and ableist. There are some circles that barely stop short of admitting these illnesses are even bad. Just wave it away with talk about "neurotypical."
When I was in grad school for education and taking courses on adolescent mental health, the consensus in the field seemed to be that bringing kids with mental health or trauma issues together in small, structured environments could be good for recovery and growth, but left alone for too long would eventually bond around their shared problem and increasingly self-identify with it, leading to all the negative outcomes Freddie outlines above.
I'm reminded of the differing value between support groups and the more proactive forms of therapy. The former is, or can be, an important part of not feeling isolated. But it is the later that actually attempts to find paths forward towards better health. Engaging in the first while ignoring the second can create a closed circle, a feedback loop, rather than a way to actually engage with a challenge. A closed circle with no potential paths forward can only keep things static and will support the taking on of an illness as an actual identity.