ptsd

We Don’t Talk Enough About Mental Health.

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ 4 Comments
RFTaranOhioBackyard

I’m an imperfect human being. Over the years I have had to remind myself of that when I might have been being too tough on myself, too arrogant, or too demanding of others. It’s a way of keeping myself real, and maybe I do it too much or too little at the right and wrong times. I’m an imperfect human being. We’ve covered that.

One of the friends I checked on today – Sunday, I check on friends – is going through a rough patch and mostly I read what she had to write. It seemed she was being very hard on herself, something I know about, and I asked her to consider this quote:

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

John Steinbeck, East of Eden.

It’s a good quote to throw around in your head if you’re unfamiliar with it. Personally, I survived most of my life by being harder on myself than people in authority were. I’m not recommending it, people who get yelled at more frequently seem to be happier for some peculiar reason. This is meant to be lighthearted, work with me here.

I only have my experience to work with, and again, I’m an imperfect human being and when it comes to these sort of things, I happily point people toward where they can get help instead of attempting it myself and possibly making matters worse. Yet there is a stigma with going to talk with someone who can be objective about us, because as friends we are biased.

There are so many stigmas about mental health services that admittedly I haven’t gone myself until fairly recently. It wasn’t anything dramatic, I simply finally decided it was time because it was possible I was having issues and I needed someone objective. For me, I was fortunate and found someone by hopping on Google Maps and searching for a psychologist. It can be more complicated with health insurance, but I lucked out.

We all have blind spots. For example, a guy I know seemed like a real jerk after a few drinks. I cut ties quietly, and one of his female friends mentioned, “I don’t know why he’s like that. It’s as if he’s bipolar when he drinks”, and it dawned on me that I almost always associated women with being bipolar but not men. I mentioned this to my psychologist, and she pointed out some interesting facts: Women are more likely to avail themselves of mental health services, and that women are more commonly diagnosed with the condition.

That gets to we guys. A lot of reels I have been seeing on Facebook recently, relate to we men not having people to talk to. Dave Chapelle went as far as to say that only women, children and dogs get unconditional love. There are expectations of men. I don’t know how true it is, but it resonates with my world experience between friends and my own personal experience. Maybe this is a factor of being of Generation X, maybe it’s a factor of all the workplace stuff that was a minefield during my days in offices, and maybe part of it is a bit of culture that needs to change.

I don’t know.

I do know that there shouldn’t be a stigma related to getting help, asking for help, or going to see a counselor, psychologist or psychiatrist. Personally, I’ve found it valuable, not because I’m a raving lunatic – I am not – but because it allows me to see a reflection of myself through an objective mirror rather than the warped mirrors of life. I have found it helps me keep grounded.

Did I drag my feet getting to see a psychologist? Yes. To be fair, maybe I wasn’t ready yet. Maybe you’re not ready yet. Maybe your friend is not ready yet.

But maybe they need to know it’s perfectly fine to go talk to someone professionally, who isn’t going to judge you based on a personal relationship. Maybe it’s easier to climb the mountain than to carry it.

On Suicidal Trees

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ 1 Comment

Suicidal Hog Plum Tree.Like most suicides, it gave no warning. The machinations of digging the pond included the tree being over the pond.

The pond was dug right at the very end of dry season. The tree seemed to be fine, this large hog plum tree. No roots were broken, no damage to the tree.

Leaning against it, I learned of the biting ants and learned… not to lean against it. It became a landmark of one of the many things to avoid casually touching on the land, like the weaponized chlorophyll of the Trinidad Roseau.

Maybe it was that lack of touch that was the signal. Maybe, somewhere in the latent consciousness of trees it decided it was not just alone but lonely. Maybe I had chopped down some of it’s children and it couldn’t stand to live without them. Maybe it had seen it’s reflection in the beginnings of the collected water of the pond and it didn’t like what it saw.

Whatever the reason, I found it in the pond one day, broken at the roots. At the roots, I saw the stone.

IMG_20170604_154150

I do not know why it committed suicide. It seemed happy enough. And here I was left, having to remove it’s burdensome body from the pond, something that between the pickup, tractor and excavator was done… dismembering it accidentally here and there. Corpses are so fragile.

I write all of this to show how easy we are to anthropomorphize non-human things, and how we treat humans like non-human things. About how people commit suicide every day – U.S. military veterans alone at a rate of 22 per day, once every 65 minutes – dismissed as numbers that march into the sunset.

Civilians, too, who pass quietly into the night, not the celebrity.

And here I wrote about a suicidal tree.
And you read it.

Share this to support Suicide Awareness. The life you save may never know. 

Relaxing: Not That Easy

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Mayaro SunriseIt’s not that any of this is good or bad. It’s not that it matters too much to people. It’s just that some people are like this. Some people may always be like this. Of all the characters you interact with on a daily business, there’s someone that has this problem. Maybe it’s that lady who smiles near the bread, maybe it’s that quiet bearded guy who is staring down as he walks into the store – or the greeter, smiling while looking you in the eye as she welcomes you.

Your idea of relaxing might have a built in level of safety, where you don’t have to keep an eye on things. Or it might mean that feeling of safety when someone else is around. Or it might be that constant watching of the entrances and exits.

And then there are people who don’t have that level of relaxation. Their calm is wired tighter than Cher’s chin. When you’re comfortable, they are but at a different level.

It wears on them. It would wear on anyone. And when it does, they react in different ways.

Don’t tell them to relax.