Anonymous’ recent article reminded me of an old conflict that haunted me for quite a long time. Like Anonymous, I, too, have had the lingering feeling that something is wrong with me, that I have an inherent problem that impedes my ability to interact with other people. I may not be a hypochondriac – though I confess I do often take medication at the slightest provocation if I have a deadline looming – but, in spite of the stern warnings of my Psychology professor, I ended up looking for myself in the pages of my textbook. (It didn’t help, of course, that all the tests we administered on ourselves during practicals diagnosed me as “highly neurotic”.)

I wrote about this last year on my personal blog and I have reproduced the same [with modifications and annotations] in the hope that it gives a slightly different perspective on the issue.

An Aside on Anxiety

I may have anxiety, I think to myself multiple times a day, but especially when I am faced with a crowd of people and I have to speak. Or in the quieter moments, when an intimate conversation ends abruptly, and I wonder what kind of impression I made on the person. I think this to myself as I involuntarily wring my hands in an attempt to soothe myself.

And then I remember my brief fling with psychology in school, where the cardinal rule I was taught was to exercise caution in self-diagnosis: our ailments are a checklist, and it is one which it is easy to tick items off. I have been through no trauma to trigger this, I think on some days, and on others, I attributed it to [deleted].  I want help, a hug, some “self-care“, but I then recall this article, [1] which laughs at us for being weak wusses, and  suggests we are but children in search of coddling. Everyday Feminism, of course, has a response that is readily available on my newsfeed: you wouldn’t hesitate to accommodate someone with a physical illness, so why should it be any different if your symptoms are invisible?

Foucault [2] then comes to mind, reminding me that madness as an illness is a relatively recent construct, and I find aspie [3] support groups online who unwittingly echo him in their assertion that theirs is just a different way of processing emotions and thoughts. But then the lawyers jump in, pathologizing  yet again, and I suddenly decide that I am perfectly sane.

In my quieter moments, I am aware that the truth, as always, lies somewhere in between – that perhaps we are too quick to de-normalize unorthodox ways of thinking, but some people do genuinely have more difficulty than the rest in adapting to society. And because of our constructs of mental disability as illness, as criminality, as a society we are reluctant to accept that the pool of different-thinking people could be much wider than those whom we believed. Capitalism also has a role to play, of course, wreaking havoc on our persons in yet another  way – through our minds and emotions this time. It is natural for us to be insecure and anxious when our world is crumbling and our worth is precarious – I even believe a lot of social anxiety could possibly be a result of the immense pressure capitalism places on selling yourself, even in matters as intimate as friendship. [4] (Though of course, it is a hunch I cannot really substantiate.)

In the end, however, with counseling failing me, and without access to therapy, all I have is myself, and my view of my issues. And – speaking for myself alone – it has helped me immensely to view anxiety as something transient and circumstantial, so that I am not crippled by a feeling of helplessness in dealing with it, while recognizing that this is hardly universal.

*****

Notes

[*] Please forgive me the unintentional alliteration in my title.

[1] Interestingly, none of this literature is specific to India. We know more about American social phenomena than we do about our own.

[2] M. Foucalt, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (1964).

[3] Term used by self-advocates with Asperger’s Syndrome to describe themselves.

[4] But here is an article that provides some of the limitations in the sample study used in the previous link. So … I dunno.

A year hence, I do think I am leaning more and more towards capitalism and the collective loss of community as an explanation for wreaking havoc on our relationships, but I still tend to believe that ‘madness’ as a concept is societally constructed. Foucault is especially helpful to understand how particular to the modern era is the construction of madness as a disease – which is premised on the flawed and non-existent idea of an ‘ideal’ or ‘perfect’ human. Of course, this must be separated from the disabilities incurred by ‘deviancy of thought’ – those should not ever be ignored and people undergoing such disabilities should be provided every support that they require. This is also not to completely denounce medication, nor does it denounce the impact of trauma on the human mind. It’s the difference between blindly diagnosing (or self-diagnosing) with depression, or making the required and applicable diagnosis with regard to the social circumstances.

For those of you who are shaking their heads and pointing out that mental illnesses often involve a change in your brain chemistry, I’d like to draw your attention to the diathesis-stress model, and the resultant conclusion that the environment has a huge role to play in our symptoms. And I would like to distinguish disorders from neurodiversity, or different ways of thinking and learning that are simply not in line with the ‘right’ way. (As well as the problems associated with this idea. Every idea has problems.)

The solution, I believe, is a mixture of empathy (towards the affected person) and critical thinking (towards the construction of madness in general), and to build a more loving, more just, more empathetic society – but what is the chance of that happening in the brutal gossip mill that is NLS?

One morning, if you were to summon the courage to wake up early (or if you were to involuntarily wake up after a late night alcohol binge), and stand in front of your mirror and tilt it at an angle so that the first rays of sunlight hit your reflection, you might happen to see a gaping hole in the center of your chest. It won’t be a perfect circle, but a mass of raw, gaping tissue, as if somebody had clawed their way through your sternum. You would be shocked that you were still alive. This hole had begun innocently enough, as a discolored bruise. One day you noticed it had assumed the texture of a scratch. Two mornings earlier it was an incised wound, and you were seriously considering going to the doctor. Now you look at yourself and expect to faint, but somehow you’re still standing and everything around you is just as ordinary as ever.

The doctor at the hospital doesn’t think anything’s wrong. Your blood pressure, temperature, all vital stats came normal. You repeatedly point to your chest and he gives a slight leery glance, adjusts his spectacles and says, “Really dear, there’s nothing there. The X Rays don’t show anything. Maybe you should take some rest. It will be alright, eventually.” So you put down your hole to an early morning hallucination because really, if you were that hurt you would have bled to death by now.

You carry on with the motions, going to class, going to lunch, going out with friends, going to bed, repeat, ad nauseum. You consciously avoid looking at the hole when you dress in the morning, but its presence haunts you in the form of a dull, throbbing pain which refuses to subside. You watch your favourite music videos, read your favourite books, binge-eat, crack the same stupid jokes you do in every conversation. Nobody notices your wound. It occurs to you that maybe some supernatural spirit crept into your bedroom at night and ripped out your heart, replacing it with some imposter organ. Blood doesn’t flows in your veins anymore. It has been replaced by a bitter, corrosive poison. You cannot summon the energy to do anything, not even cry. The melancholy of not being able to share your predicament has been replaced by a strange listlessness that makes you want to sleep all the time.

This time, the doctor sends you to a ‘specialist’, one who claims to know all about such holes. He personally thinks it is hogwash, but suggests you give it a try. The specialist scientifically explains the different types of holes she has encountered over the years-splinters left by heartbreaks, cracks from years of abuse, valleys carved out by professional failure. “I haven’t experienced any of these,” you say numbly. Your own voice sounds alien to you now, so do your body and your mannerisms.

“Try yoga,” she says helpfully, with the all too bright smile of someone who knows she has a lost case on her hands, but tries anyway. “Or exercise. I have some books you can read-”

“Tried all of that. Thanks.”

“Well darling, you can’t be like this forever, you know, it isn’t normal.”

“I know,” you say helplessly.

“Well I have these, err, toffees, they are really good,” she says, her eyes flashing.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t worry these things happen. It will be alright, eventually.”

So you take her toffees, and they taste okay enough, and they dull your senses even more and make you want to sleep all the time, but you’re like ‘whatever, she said it would help patch up the hole.’ Instead it only widens, so now you can see all the blood vessels inside, and how they’ve been corrupted.

When you tell your mother, she expresses disbelief at first, and then advises you to go to a priest. “This is all because of the absence of God,” she says wisely, a bit too wisely. “Turn to prayer, and it will be alright, eventually.” You say thanks and put down the phone. You are old enough and smart enough to know how your predecessors had turned to religion or communism or art or fanaticism, that most people with holes end up becoming radicals or revolutionaries of some sort, and those who can’t turn to other, different kinds of toffees to solve their problems.

You often surmise why is it that in a world with billions of people, you had to be the only one with this ailment. Are you some kind of Chosen One? You know that isn’t true though, there have been people before you, and people after you, and many of them have gone on to become successful professionals, artists, doctors, businessmen and criminals. You watch their documentaries, watch at how they laugh and talk about how it’s all okay now, how they’ve managed to assimilate with the crowd, and wonder how is it that they can lie so convincingly.

You know that this is an epidemic spreading across the students of the world, and that while it cuts across barriers of caste, class, religion and gender, it affects some communities more than it does others. You think back upon your past and wonder if it was always there in you, even as a child, this inability to reconcile yourself with the world and the people who inhabit it. You read about a boy who loved science and stars and nature, and wonder why his words resonate with you so much. When you tell your friends, they will laugh and say, “You’re so silly yaar, you worry about such silly things.” Your spouse pats your head comfortingly and says, “It’s the office stress, I know it. Let’s go on a trip to Switzerland. My friend told me about this amazing offer-”

Needles knit up your lips, a curtain of nonchalance drapes your eyes, and just like that a mask is constructed. The corruption is finally complete. Your entire body is now hollow. Your in-laws will express their approval at your transformation and say, “See we knew, having children would solve it. Things always become alright, eventually.”

Years from now on, activists will politicize your hole and journalists will write tell-all articles about it and reams of medical opinion will be published on the diagnosis of holes and how proper treatment could have saved you. Strangers on Facebook will make your hole their public property, as if they had always known it was there and had lived with it, in fact, were best friends with it. Those who claimed to be closest to you will express confusion and distaste and sorrow and say, “Well, we had no idea they were that sick! They never said anything! They were always so hale and hearty, not even a common cold. I swear to god, right up till that day-they were-”

Right up till that day, you will see it in the mirror, that abyss inside you. You will shrug and walk out, with a last glance at your reflection. It doesn’t matter, you tell yourself, before closing the door. It will be alright, eventually.