The Walk of Shame

Can we please STOP doing the walk of shame?

I don’t understand it anymore.

I don’t understand that why in 2015 we still have a Cone of Silence around mental health.

I don’t understand why it is still cloaked in shame.

I don’t understand why we haven’t recognised it as the epidemic that it is, and looked deep inside ourselves to figure out a)our beliefs around it b)why we have those beliefs and c)what we should do about them.

Maybe that’s coming in a bigger way. I hope so.

There are plenty of people talking about it, bringing awareness to it and promoting seeking help. We’ve got brave souls all over the world standing up and “admitting” their depression, their bipolar, their eating disorders, their addictions, their PTSD, in the hope that it will empower others to seek help too.

This is great.

But there’s still a walk of shame involved.

People still feel plenty nervous in talking about their mental health issues, past or present.  There’s still whispering, conversations to the side, nervous admissions, worry about being judged.

We feel shame for having a mental illness in the first place, and fear that other people will find out. That’s why it feels like an admission.

There’s a judgment of ourselves in there somewhere.  

That maybe it’s a weakness, or maybe that we can’t our couldn’t beat it, or maybe that we really are crazy.

Is it a weakness?

No, definitely not.  It’s a strength.  It’s a really important part of the journey for some people.  It can show us how we are terribly out of balance with the self-worth that should be inherent within us.

I’m going out on a limb here and guessing that you wouldn’t experience the SAME level of shame if you had a heart attack, or cancer.

What’s the difference?

Is it the fear that we can’t beat it?  

That we might have to ask for help?  Is it because we’ve become so fixated on controlling our lives that we can’t admit that there’s something going on in our heads that we can’t get a handle on?

The same rule as above applies here I think.  Would you avoid seeking help due to shame if you had a heart attack?  Or cancer?

The limb again.  I’m guessing not .

Is it the crazy then?

Maybe we are we still caught in the images of people being wheeled down the hall on a gurney, screaming, about to get the shock treatment.  Or sitting catatonic in the chair staring out the window.  Maybe we fear getting trapped in our heads with anxiety, paranoia, alternate personalities.

I don’t actually know and I don’t believe in generalisations. Everyone is different. I have some thoughts about it. But I don’t actually know.

I wonder if it’s because we are hanging on to the ACTUAL insanity that tells us we need to be seen as perfect on the outside.

And if we admit that we’re not in the eyes of other people, that it might all come crashing down.

We worry that other people will judge us.  Ultimately, that always comes down to a judgment within ourselves.

We have to let go of the social convention that is telling us to hide our problems, to pretend they are not there, to shove them down so no one can ever, ever see our crazy.

Social convention is very often a bunch of crap that we need to let go of.

This type of thinking is not furthering our evolution as human beings.  It is hindering our evolution as human beings.

People with mental health issues are no different than you and I.  In fact, they may just be you and I.   Probably, in fact.

Statistics show that one in five New Zealand women have or will experience depression. One in eight American women will. We may all know someone that has struggled with PTSD or bipolar or anxiety or an eating disorder. These issues are not uncommon.
These odds are very high.

They say a lot about the way we are living. They say a lot about our beliefs around what is important and why we get sick (this applies to physical illness too).

They say a lot about our shame levels too.  We might not be able to point to that one in five friends because we are not talking about it.  We would still be unlikely to discuss mental illness in the same way we might speak about a physical illness.

But at their core, they are no different.  Mental and physical illness stem from unhelpful beliefs about our self-worth which results in a separation from our Divinity.  This manifests itself in some form so that can be pointed out to us.

I DON’T BELIEVE this means any illness (mental or physical) is ever our “fault”. I don’t believe it means that it can always be “fixed” in this lifetime either. Sometimes it can. Sometimes it can’t. It depends on what that person signed up for this time around I guess. These are very big questions that I don’t have the answers to.

But I do know this.

Perfection doesn’t ever exist on the outside. It’s only ever on the inside. It’s always there, waiting for us. But we have to go through a process of remembering it.  That’s why we are here.

In my late teens and twenties I struggled my way through an eating disorder.  I had no desire to acknowledge it until I finally recognised that it was running my life.  In an effort to gain control, I had completely lost it.

I also had a stint with depression after I moved countries, and then again with a reflux baby. Thank goodness for the other worldly patience of my husband, because I am well aware that I was simply awful to live with.

Those things were hard, hard, hard.  Hard for me to live with.  Hard for the people around me.  Hard to admit because I felt ashamed.  I had a soft spot.  I was out of control.

Processing those things and learning from them taught me more about the way I should view myself than any other way would have. 

They were actually amazing gifts.

Anorexia taught me that I needed to love myself a whole lot more. When your self-worth is so low that you literally try to make yourself disappear, it’s a pretty sure sign that you don’t love yourself at all.  If I hadn’t have lived it, I might not have learned that so well.  It stuck.

Depression taught me that our beliefs about ourselves and our corresponding emotions are never something to take lightly. “Not good enough” can pretty easily manifest itself in depression.  Anger (at other people or ourselves or both) can pretty easily manifest itself in depression.  All sorts of situations and circumstances can but the bottom line is an ugly, festering wound that won’t go away until we acknowledge it and do something about it.*

That wound also makes space to let the light in.

That particular insight was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

Our wounds, our cracks, our “imperfections” make space for the light.

They allow us to see that we weren’t letting enough in.

I wish you all the love and all the light in the world.

Love and Blessings, Sonia

*This is not meant to be an exhaustive discussion of the possible causes of depression or the treatment options.