My Bravery and Shame
I've had lots to think about since I first shared dadpression. Today I want to share something different. Not a module with exercises, or a story of my experiences. Today I’m sharing my thoughts on what the site has brought up. It’s about the comments I’ve received and the conversations I’ve been having since I made this site public.
It’s about the words that have been used. In fact, it’s about two words. ‘Brave’ and ‘shame’. It’s about what those two words mean in the context of mental health. But more than that, how society continues to treat people who battle with their mental health.
I’ve had loads of people comment on my posts, message me, or call me about dadpression. Lots of wonderful, supportive words that have made me proud to have the friends and family I do. You’ve also empowered and inspired me to keep talking and writing, which I love.
One of the words that has been coming at me a lot has been ‘brave’. That I have been ‘brave’ for sharing my stories and opening up to people about it. Receiving compliments is right up there for things that make me most uncomfortable. But something about being called ‘brave’, wasn’t only uncomfortable in my usual way. I was uncomfortable with what it meant. What it was saying about us as a society.
The Mirriam-Webster dictionary defines ‘Brave’ as “having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty”. There have certainly been times when I have been brave in the face of anxiety and depression. But as far as I see it, publishing a website trying to help people shouldn’t count as bravery in that context. If you don’t agree with me on this now, I’m hoping you might by the end.
Now this is not a dig at anyone who told me I was ‘brave’. Not at all. I thank you all for the support. It’s about how as a society, we have built this mindset that someone needs to be brave to share these stories.
In my attempt to come up with an answer to the bigger societal question, I had to start with my own personal thoughts. Why did it take me so long to share this? That site was sitting there for six months before I told anyone about it. I wrote some of those stories years ago. I've had heaps of opportunities to talk about my experiences.
So I started thinking about what the opposite of brave is, the absence of bravery. The most common answer you’ll find is cowardly. I think this is the root of my problem with being called ‘brave’. It’s the implication about what is happening in bravery's absence. Do we really want to imply that people who aren’t ready to talk about their mental health issues aren’t brave? Do we think those people are cowardly? I don’t think we do. In fact, the support I’ve received since I shared dadpression has convinced me otherwise.
It got me thinking about something. We are all empathetic when it is an individual. Someone we know. But somehow at the societal level, the attitude shift still hasn’t happened. There is still a fear and a wariness about going outside trusted circles with this topic. But I think we all understand that there is a significant stigma that exists here.
I’m sure most of us have heard the expression ‘the coward’s way out’. You won’t be surprised to learn that I despise this saying. But if you’ve never heard it before, it’s an incredibly unsympathetic way to refer to suicide. This attitude continues to exist, and it’s this ‘bravery’ mindset that gives birth to such a term. For those who haven’t experienced depression, it’s and attitude that stigmatises those who do. And for those with depression, it alienates and silences them. Fear of the ‘other’ becomes the problem, and it dulls our compassion for them.
I’ve been reflecting on why I hadn’t said anything about suicide, or suicidal thoughts too. I wanted the site to be a positive resource for people, I told myself. The site was there to share a few tools for how to navigate common pitfalls, and that was it. It felt like maybe a step too far for what I wanted to achieve. But as the weeks have passed. The more I’ve been called ‘brave’. The louder my own silence has become.
And it’s that silence that has got me writing this. Because another term I don’t like, but is far more accurate, is ‘the silent killer’. And I have been asking myself, why do you think no one talks about it? Why do you think we stay silent? I kept thinking about bravery and cowardice on a continuum. Where I might have been at different points in my life. That led me to the other word I mentioned at the start. Shame. Because we’ve all been taught that we should be ashamed to be a coward, right?
That word, shame, it also came at me a lot. This time, from the people who were identifying with what I was saying. I knew exactly what they meant when they said it too. I’ve felt it. The shame and guilt of going through a significant depressive episode or suicidal thoughts, is something that anyone who has been there, will know. So, I threw that in the tornado of ideas that were spinning around in my head.
One thing that people have asked me is, what do I want to do with this website? What’s the ultimate aim here? I honestly don’t have an answer for that. But while I’ve been reflecting on bravery and shame I’ve stumbled across something to work towards. It’s contributing to the de-stigmatisation of talking about mental health. For this, in my opinion, we need to talk about mental health and illness as we do for any other illness.
Now, for this next part I’m going to need you to follow me on a couple steps of logic. But I promise you, I have a point to make.
Starting with this as our premise. As a society, on some level, we are comfortable with treating depression and anxiety as an illness or disease. It seems we have made a lot of progress on general attitudes towards this in the last decade or so. You can go to your doctor with it, you can get referred to a specialist. Seems like it’s part of the general field of health. With me so far?
In fact, it’s not just part of our conversation about health. It’s big business in the health sector. The global anti-depressant drug market accounted for $13.75 billion in 2016, and is estimated to reach $15.98 billion by 2023*. So, pharmaceutical companies are perfectly happy to treat mental illness as a disease like any other.
We’ve got doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies all agreeing it’s a disease. Everyone who works or participates in the treatment of illnesses includes mental health. We’ve also got peoples general attitudes towards depression and anxiety accepting that too.
So why the difference? Why does bravery and shame come into it? Would you expect someone coming out of the hospital on crutches to feel shame? When you hear about a friend or colleague who has a cancer diagnosis, do we think they are brave to talk about it? We think they are brave dealing with the treatment, certainly. But we wouldn’t assume they feel shame, why should they? It’s not their fault.
When someone has suicidal thoughts or even attempts suicide, the correlation I want us to draw is with cancer. Let’s compare the two. Say you’ve been battling this disease for a while, have had ups and downs, but the treatments you’ve tried haven’t worked for you at this point. You reach ‘stage 4’ and it feels terminal. Stick with me here. Now, if you then survive, why are you ashamed? Because that’s one of the main things people say. That they are ashamed. I’ve said it and felt it too. They came up against the worst this disease can throw at them, and survived. And the overwhelming feeling is that of shame. Imagine recovering from stage 4 cancer and feeling ashamed.
And this is the point of this whole rant. That if we want to treat mental illness as a disease, we can’t be picky about what parts count. It’s all part of the whole. This is why, in my opinion, we need to think hard about whether we want ‘brave’ and ‘shame’ to be words we use when talking about mental health. Because I know lots of people who have battled with depression, who haven’t talked openly about it. None of those people are cowards. But as long as we, as a society, allow this narrative to persist, the pervasive attitude is that to speak up is to be brave and to remain silent is cowardly. Whether we mean it to be or not.
My challenge, for all of us, is to try to talk about mental health the same way we talk about health in general. Without the need for bravery, or shame. If one day we can discuss depression and anxiety in the same way we talk about a cold or flu, we will be in a much better place. You won’t need to be brave to talk about it, and you certainly won’t feel ashamed.