Trauma does not make you stronger
Who would have thought repeated exposure to trauma doesn’t make you stronger.
What Helps the Most
People blame social media for generation Z’s mental health woes and that may be part of it but it’s an easy scapegoat that requires us to do none of the inner work as to why things have gotten the way they have.
Having a serious mental illness myself I would like to say the things that help the most people want to do the least. This is because they are sacrificial and contrarian. Modern psychology has trained us to be resentful when we are helping someone else and not getting anything in return. Things like platonic touch, hospitality, taking in venting, transportation, child/elder/pet care, etc.. are things people used to do more. There was more of a romanticization of servanthood to it and helping someone wasn’t looked down upon. These things helped keep mental illness at bay or at least lessened the symptoms.
So modern psychology makes things worse by forcing super needy folks with mental illness to this unrealistic standard of atomization. And then it tells those who are more healthy not to lift a finger on anyone else’s behalf and trains them to be resentful when they do.
Cognitive Sharps
In the mental hospital there is a cabinet designated sharps that is locked because it contains things that someone could cut themselves with. A cognitive sharp isn’t something that necessarily hurts you but it is something that you can take and go hurt yourself with (often with little volition on your part). For me Romans 5:3 is the ultimate cognitive sharp:
Not only so, but we[a] also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
(NIV)
My life screams the opposite of this as loud as it can. For example, people head for the exits when you suffer. That tends to not produce hope. When your mental health goes down your experience of God goes out the window or even turns against you. And Christians drop out of your life like flies and don’t come in. If suffering really was redemptive people would treat you like they treat you when something good actually happens like hitting the Powerball.
The second cognitive sharp is the Wheaton Center for Faith and Disability. This one is emotionally rending to write about. Wheaton College is the self-described “Protectant Vatican” and I ended up going there because I didn’t get into my first choice of college. I was one of the very few alumni with both a physical disability (some visual impairment) and a mental illness. I went there and I even worked there. Then Wheaton comes of with this center for faith and disability run by people without disabilities themselves. It is so paternalistic. I have a lot to say about faith and disability but since it’s not all puppies and rainbows my voice is ignored.
worst possible worlds
With regards to faith we are in the worst possible worlds.
We could be in a world where God didn’t exist and there was no innate desire for God.
We could be in a world where God did exist and there was no innate desire for God.
We could be in a world where God did exist and there was an innate desire for God which was satisfied.
But we find ourselves in a world where God doesn’t exist and yet our soul cries out otherwise.
overspent my poetry budget
i am on a fixed income of mental energy
your pep talks and crowing about suffering being redemptive and strengthening
do nothing for me
the soul is the brain’s shadow
the former shrinks with the latter
despite the light shining on it
i’m an etch-a-sketch
shake my head
and i am new again
no amount of money
can buy platonic touch
from someone you love
we stigmatize people who need treatment
for their pain, anxiety, depression, and ADHD
saying they exhibit drug seeking behavior
we need to reframe this
as peace seeking behavior
left is an industrial press you stand inside of
abortion is the floor
and euthanasia is the ceiling
people who say “what goes around comes around”
are half right
your sins will definitely found you out
but your good will get you nothing
lots of anger and bitterness
is borne out of the constipation of creativity
Fractal
Some preferences are pretty inconsequential like whether you prefer strawberry or vanilla ice cream. However, some have huge ramifications. I’m going to focus on a person’s religion here though this could be applied to other things. A person’s spiritual state is like an equation, what comes out of them is a fractal that can be zoomed and zoomed and all kinds of structures seen. I’m like this. There are good reasons why I am not a Christian (destructive experience of God, lack of evidence for the existence of a personal god, being treated like garbage in church, etc..) but those don’t really explain it all the way. So much of what I am stems from my beliefs just like a simple formula for a fractal can get you a structure that you can zoom and zoom in on to infinity.
I think this is why Christians drop out of people’s lives who have left the faith. It isn’t so much what they believe is different, it’s that it has manifested itself and everything they are is different.
The most powerful testimony for or against the faith is lived. I live Christianity being a lie by what I experience with my mental illness, what and how I think, ostracism, and low value. Christian friends (who haven’t already ghosted me) won’t even read my writing, that’s how far gone I am in their eyes. I’m speaking my truth and it flies in the face of what they have been taught to think and believe and is often literally off their map.
Work Comments
Great discussion on LinkedIn replying to this:
Good thing I didn’t get used to these crazy salaries and perks because all that is about to change. Tech salaries are way out of line with reality in these FAANG companies and all it takes is a recession to shine light on it. Back to reality!
Replies:
Nato R.
“or going up against their corporate overlords during the pandemic for the right to work however and wherever they wanted.”
It’s 2022, if a “corporate overlord” is trying to be overly controlling, it’s big companies and those who struggle to drive cashflow that will struggle harder in an incoming recession. Folks who are the ones who drive capital and cashflow at big corps can just quit and make the money without a corp if they have to.
Just because a recession is coming doesn’t mean employers have leverage over advanced employees their department can’t survive without.
We’ll see how stern managers get when folks are quitting mid-recession to either work for themselves or competitors. Just because someone is in charge doesn’t mean they can manage folks who won’t stick around.
Don’t go up against the corporate overlords who get abusive, leave them for better and the only one who loses is the corporation who can’t treat folks right.
People will opt for pay cuts to work where they are treated better over staying at companies who just gave a paycut… where that employee was just there for the money anyways. Some companies pay more, particularly because folks won’t stay otherwise without excessive payment at some companies.
Naimi D
I disagree. A key point these predictors of power shifting back to employers miss is the generations that dominate the workforce today: millennials and Gen Z. Unlike Boomers and Gen X, they are ok with sitting out from work, getting roommates, going back to live with their parents or hustling in gig economy to make ends meet while taking their risks in retail investing and crypto. They are not as obsessed with working their way up for “the man” as Gen X and the boomers. Generations like these have never been seen before. We still haven’t raised the federal minimum wage, yet these generations have forced places like McDonalds to pay their employees upwards of $16/hour by refusing to work for less. The power has always been there for employees to take, but Gen X+ all bought into the same lie and viewed it as a failure to not be living on our own and at certain point in our careers by a certain age. These generations don’t care. And in tech, many are capable of building platforms that could be direct threats to the big tech firms that need to keep young, innovative talent coming in. They can’t afford to be stuck with mediocre people who will just fall in line. They need that top talent. So they will comply for their survival.
Jono S
Same old shit – the whole article is about how “workers better wake up” when the hiring and salary ranges were completely determined by the companies in the first place. For once I’d love to see an article about work that didn’t threaten workers in some fashion. I don’t understand why we talk about work like it’s war and we should be grateful that someone took pity on us and gave us a job we didn’t deserve.
predestined
divine election is like the Harlem Globetrotters
God needs a bunch of stooge opponents
to lose and be dunked over
the gospel is fresh water
to those who are being redeemed
and salt water
to those who are perishing
if you aren’t one of the elect
loss of childhood
is
loss of God
(and I did so listening to Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine
on my big brother’s $300 CD Boombox)
for the non elect
there is more or a shock leaving childhood for adulthood
than leaving life for death
i only knew God when i didn’t know i didn’t know him
when i was six climbing tall pines i had no internal concept of God
and did not need one or have it occupy my head
i just communed with nature and played with my siblings
once i knew i didn’t know God things changed
(the “age of accountability” for me was just
when i failed to build an image of God in my head that helped me function)
the only time I “found God” in my adult life was when i was psychotic manic
after my psychotic break i was left with the pieces
deciphering things that felt so real
but now these things had to be split into what i was told wasn’t real
(delusions about the color orange)
and what i was told was real
(religion)
but just as i couldn’t feel the difference between the two in mania
i couldn’t in depression either
so i lost my faith
Own Free Will
The lower you are in society the less people associate with you on their own free will. I am neurodivergent, bipolar, and visually impaired and every decade I’ve been treated worse (though the outlier to this was junior high where I had the typical crappy experience).
One of the interesting things about being on the bottom is the responsibilities all apply but the privileges don’t. For example I’m still expected to help in church but the people are free to reject and ostracize me.
For a while I was volunteering moderating for a mental illness support group and I found that the people who were the angriest and most disruptive were not the lowest functioning but the people who were scraping by but at one time had been higher functioning and actually had friends they had a deep rapport with.
I am like this because people used to enter my life on their own free will. But that doesn’t happen anymore because of my negative value as well as my negative symptoms.
expect = respect
If I hire someone who promises to do good work and they do shoddy work do I have the right to be angry with them? Wouldn’t it show I respected them less if I weren’t?
Our generation expects God to act the way he is sold as acting not because we are skeptical but because we have faith. Rejecting someone that breaks their promises is not a sign of disrespect but of respect because we are respecting their word and we would expect them to do the same to us had the situation been reversed.
Trust goes both ways. I would need to see God trusting me before I trusted him. People accepting and including me in church; Christians not pulling away, ghosting, and cutting me off; having non destructive experiences of God. And experiencing small things that point towards a hopeful future because if I don’t see a trail of crumbs I correctly surmise there is no bread.