A few things collided in my head last week. And that means I need to write about them. On the internet. For people like you to read. Thank you for being here with me.
It's not a disturbing collision, more of a productive one. Think bashing a piñata with a stick than a head slam into a closed door (I did the latter once when I was eight and broke my rainbow glasses).
I trace it all back to one heady evening last July when I had a conversation over Zoom with Chris Young, author of Walk A Mile: Tales of a Wandering Loon. Chris recorded our conversation for his forthcoming podcast series on 'personality disorder' for the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
I valued our conversation a lot. Like many of my favourite conversations, it changed the direction of my thinking. Chris and I covered a lot of ground in less than two hours and I spoke about how learning to 'think dialectically' transformed my life, the revolving door reality for many people with certain mental health diagnoses and the parallels between what I do with Talking About BPD and why I advocate for teaching children about their autism diagnoses in my career.
I also chatted with Chris about how the friendships that I value the most are with friends who make me feel safe enough to show all aspects of my life. It's this that I especially want to share with my blog readers today.
As funny as it might sound, I want my friends to know about my lived experience of mental health problems.
I want them to know that I've seen more therapists than I can count on one hand, been on antipsychotics that made me forget what order to put on my clothes and cried on hospital floors until the kindest security guards ever brought me a ham sandwich.
I want my friends to know all these things and more about my lived experience of some of the less-talked about mental health problems.
Why is that?
It's because I want to know that my friends still like me, want to spend time with me, trust me and see me as a worthwhile person to have in their life.
I *need* to know that anyone I choose to call a friend won't see my lived experience of mental health problems as 'a mark of disgrace'— to use that famous phrase from Erving Goffman's 1963 famous work Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity.
I love my life too much, and actually value friendship itself too much, to be worrying whether friends would cut ties if they knew all of this and more.
During our podcast conversation, Chris gave me the word for my want (need?) to share all parts of my life with anyone I choose to call a friend. I didn't even know I was looking for a word for it until he said it.
"Rosie", he spoke in his solid, generous way, "you mean you want authenticity." The only mic was inbuilt into the laptop, otherwise it would have been a mic drop moment.
It may be 2025, but the slow burning dread of possible disconnection is one of many machinations of stigma. I know lots of you reading this blog feel what I'm going to call 'relational unease'— and I wish you didn't have to.
2024 Research by YouGov for the 'Let’s Rethink' (Rethink Mental Illness) campaign articulates this relational unease that so many people with experiences of more stigmatised mental health problems feel. Let me share some of the poll's findings:
51% people of people wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing a diagnosis with extended family.
Nearly a fifth wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing their mental illness with immediate family.
3 in 5 UK adults wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing a diagnosis of severe mental illness with colleagues .
Almost a third would not be comfortable sharing a diagnosis with a friend.
'Authenticity' used to be a schmalzy word that cringed me, all self-care boxes with chamomile tea and bath bombs. Since Chris gave me the word though, I've used it in conversations with myself more times than I can count.
At the weekend this concept came to life as I sat with a friend next to a reservoir home to many birds.
Our conversation was funny and interesting. I was enjoying it very much. Then my friend asked me about my second book that I've almost finished writing. Though the question was not surprising at all, I became all deer in headlights.
A few weeks ago I finished writing the last chapter of my book: 'Connecting with yourself (and others)'. I'm still understanding how much writing the book has sharpened my identity over the last year. The book started out (slightly reluctantly) as one thing and become another (much more meaningful) thing as the book took on a life in the rhythms of my mind.
I told my friend that this book had become a book about why it's okay to be who you are as a person with more stigmatised mental health diagnosis. I explained that even though the world will imply you're broken, you don't need to remake yourself entirely. I shared that it become a book about identity (my identity), relationships (my relationships) and how both of these (highly personal) facets of my life are mediated by stigma.
Except I didn't say anything nearly so coherent as that.
My thoughts were too nascent, like my brain on waking from a dream.
And of course I was hyperaware of how grandiose, or hypersensitive, or self-obsessed that I might be sounding that I was fast becoming breathless with anxiety.
And in revealing how I felt about my book in that moment I was also revealing how vulnerable talking about all of that was making me feel.
When people I know— newer friends, family members or colleagues for example— ask me about my books I typically talk about the the word count, or how lovely my editor is. Sometimes I talk about how I wrote it feverishly around my work, my family, my daughter, my friends.
I tend to gloss over what writing these two books mean to me: an opportunity for me to be heard after being silenced. A chance to connect with others who feel similar to me. An opportunity to apply my love of words, my education, my multiple forms of privilege to something that I believe matters.
It therefore felt strange, almost out-of-body experience, to speak authentically with a newer friend about this almost-finished book that means more to me than I even fully know myself right now.
Not only that, it felt even stranger that I allowed myself to speak from deep-down places of ambivalence:
I'm so proud of my books, but they make me feel so exposed.
I feel compelled to share my experiences, but this requires courage and that takes energy.
I really want to talk about my books, but sometimes struggle to find the words during spoken conversations.
'I don't expect to be treated differently', I said, 'I don't want to be treated differently'.
Then my clamorous self-consciousness broke the fourth wall: 'you can see how hard I find it to talk about this. I'm so fluent at talking about this with strangers, but this is so much more difficult to speak about with people I actually know'.
Only the week before I had told my husband, not for the first time, that publishing these books about my diagnosis of BPD makes me feel emotionally naked. And just as physical nakedness (especially in women) is often used an invitation for shaming, I can't help but fear judgment for my emotional undressing. I don't want to be told to metaphorically put my clothes back on.
I didn't think my friend was judging me in that moment. I had made the decision a while ago to trust him enough to risk speaking from places of still-forming thoughts and ambivalence.
But still. I felt like I'd pulled my vulnerability out of my pocket like it was a curled-up hedgehog or a snail with a broken shell, and said to him 'here, look, take it': my vulnerability an object for inspection.
We got up from the bench and started walking, but I couldn't mask my vulnerability.
35% of UK adults polled stated they would reconsider becoming someone’s friend if they knew their friend had a diagnosis of severe mental illness.
It was maybe not that I couldn't mask it— maybe I didn't want to. Maybe masking how exposing it felt to speak authentically would have felt like undoing it.
I'm embarrassed', I said. 'I'm panicking', I said. I didn't know where to look.
But what was I embarrassed about? And what was I panicking about?
I worry about making others feel awkward or uncomfortable.
I worry about people not knowing how to respond.
I worry about the change of tone.
I worry about my dysfluency and my visible discomfort.
When I gained some stability amidst my physiological disarray, I managed to look at my friend's face. I saw he had a calm expression.
I don't remember much, but I remember he asked me something like 'what do you need?' or 'how can I help?'
The internal chaos was too strong for me to respond, but the question and its tone made me drop my anchor. There was enough safety to root back into my environment, root back into the moment.
It was only later on that I could express my gratitude. I know lots of you reading will understand how much it means to be met like this in these moments.
Next week at work I'm going to stand up in front of many colleagues and share the work I've been leading on disability in the workplace alongside two of my colleagues and friends. This work contextualises training we had by the brilliant Pippa Stacey from Toucan Diversity in the autumn.
This academic year, in keeping with my slightly devil-may-care carpe diem approach to life, I felt more compelled than ever to work towards creating a more equal workplace where everyone speaks about medical conditions, mental health difficulties, sensory disabilities, types of neurodivergence and so on, in ways that make everyone feel safer and valued.
I'm not going to say anything specific about my life when I present the work next week. If anyone is strong at reading between the lines though, they might sense that I'm speaking from a both a personal and professional place.
I've been thinking a lot about the interconnectedness of the personal and the professional in the last few years, prompted by my growing openness about my life at work. The personal and the professional are more closely related than are often acknowledged— or examined.
Last week someone approached me and apologised for not feeling safe enough to speak openly. The themes of trust, confidentiality, information-sharing and openness are constant themes for me in my work as a teacher, in ways that run productively parallel to my life outside of it.
An apology for not feeling safe enough to speak should not fall onto the individual with something to say. There was no judgment from me. I'm aching for a different world.
I remembered the afternoon when a child in my class felt safe enough to voice something out loud for the first time.
This is the kind of world I want.
Next month I'm speaking on a podcast by a national broadcasting corporation (I will share more once it's live) about careers when you have a stigmatised diagnosis.
BPD is amongst the most stigmatised mental health diagnoses. Misogyny, and the diagnosis' origins in witch hunting and in hysteria (too often used to discredit disclosures of sexual abuse), play a part.
I think the relational aspect, and the kinds of people (mostly women) who are given this diagnosis, might be part of its stigma too. As Dr Jay Watts, clinical psychologist, psychotherapist and academic writes, people with this diagnosis are seen as 'too sexual, too clever, too aware of their actions to deserve care, interest and respect.'
I often think of this possible etymology of shame:
Old English scamu, sceomu "painful feeling of guilt or disgrace; confusion caused by shame [...] The best guess is that this is from skem-, from kem- 'to cover'.
Shame compels us to cover the parts of ourselves and our lives that we fear might repulse others. Shame is coercive. It alienates.
I think of the leper colonies 'home' to people shunned. I think of people with cancer who couldn't tell their loved ones. I think of individuals with HIV and AIDS ostracised in the 1980s.
Crocuses are growing in my garden. My daughter is two and loves to dance. I've got lots of coffee in my flat. It makes me happy. And I'm glad I uncover those aspects of myself that people— people who had power over me— told me to hide.
I have always preferred to risk shame than live in perpetual self-censorship. My silence will not really protect me.
I'm glad I have people in my life who can appreciate difference, hold onto nuance and look at things that might, at first glance, seem unusual.
It's unnerving and hopeful all at once, but I risk shame to open up the possibility of freedom. To open up the possibility of connection. In part, I do this for others, but most of all, I do this for myself.
This post, like my book, is for everyone who feels trapped between wanting to speak their truth but not knowing how it will be received. I know how scary it feels and I would love to hear from you about your experiences.
Thank you to all my blog and book readers for being here with me.
Rosie x
References
Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, 1963.
Dr Jay Watts, 'Borderline Personality Disorder - A Diagnosis Of Invalidation', Huffington Post, 2017.
'New poll shows nearly a third of all UK adults would not be comfortable sharing a diagnosis with a friend', Rethink Mental Illness, 2024.
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