Crazy Adaptive

 

             The first day I came to the facility I walked briskly through the neighborhood, scared of homeless people hollering at my interview outfit. I sat uncomfortably straight in the common area—politely smiling to a man talking to himself two tables down. I answered all the questions with poise and a conscientious grace, but in reality I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had never worked with this population and frankly, I was naïve about the state of homelessness in this country. My ‘exposure’ was limited to armchair debates in upper level social work classes where most discussion circumvents an idyllic upheaval of the current system. Turns out, “there has to be a top-tier revolution” doesn’t comfort people receiving services on the ground. Similarly, knowing the DSM symptom criterion for a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder doesn’t prepare you for deescalating a client who believes the CIA has their room cased. The work—in reality— is a whole lot messier and difficult bear witness to. 

            As a residential counselor at a facility focused on supporting individuals with chronic mental health issues transition from homelessness into independent living, each day, in every hour, I am confronted with stigmas engrained in myself by society. People suffering from homelessness and/or severe mental health issues, ,as the two routinely occur in concert, are severely dehumanized in our culture. I see it on the street—people switching sidewalks to avoid the woman in a garish outfit mumbling to herself; using deprecating words to describe an interaction with a ‘bum;’ blaming social ills on these individuals or flat-out ‘othering’ their existence—a fascinating sociological phenomenon.

            These cultural constructs are fed by fear—fear of a reflecting humanness. It makes sense that people wouldn’t want to empathize with this population who suffers so greatly on a daily basis because people don’t want to believe that— if given the right combination of trauma, socio-economic circumstances, and lack of support—they too might find themselves ‘on the street.’

Trauma is the common denominator for most everyone suffering from homelessness and/or mental illness. A client I was having a conversation with last night couldn’t have put it better, “It doesn’t matter if it’s one big trauma or a bunch of little ones that culminate. Trauma is trauma,”—and it does wacky things to the mind and body. As a staff member, I have access to all of our client’s case files—their mental health assessments, family history, previous incidents at the facility—and it is heartbreaking to digest the vast history of even one person’s story. I can’t help but think, “No wonder their symptoms are so severe, given what they’ve been through.”

Our society labels these behaviors as ‘severely disturbing,’ and ‘unnatural’ to create a space between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ If we make a mental blockade around ourselves in which, all the thoughts and behaviors we exhibit are ‘okay,’ then we aren’t ‘crazy.’ Welp, if there is one thing I am learning with this job (which is a joke, I learn a million things a minute from these people), it’s that we all have the capacity to be ‘crazy.’ In other words, our mental landscapes are comprised of sedimentary experience layers that, if put under enough heat and pressure, will transform into dark metamorphic rock, or molten magma that will burn up your very understanding of your self in the world. What we forget to recognize, as “functioning” society members at large, is that our mental states are all made up of the same ‘rock stuff,’ so to speak, we’ve just all been exposed to different elements and to varying degrees of intensity.

When you start to think about symptoms and behaviors in context of the trauma in which the fragmentation was formed, it all makes sense. Viewing behaviors from the perspective of the person and their particular life-story, symptoms and behaviors to counteract those symptoms are easier to empathize with. Thoughts and behaviors in one circumstance may have been adaptive— dissociation, self-harm, or hypervigilance. When those behaviors become the ‘ctl-alt-dlt’ for any triggering situation after the trauma has ceased, therapy and social support can help re-write those patterns.  

Mental health professional Eleanor Longden gives a unique insider’s perspective into voice-hearing during her TED talk. Eleanor identified her symptoms as, “a survival strategy, a sane reaction to insane circumstances, not as an aberrant symptom of schizophrenia to be endured, but a complex, significant and meaningful experience to be explored.” I appreciate how Eleanor uses 'the voices' as a source of insight into trauma as opposed to demonizing them as 'abnormal' or 'crazy. I am fascinated by the idea of working with 'the devils' inside of us to unify the good, the bad, the ugly, and the traumatized into a whole person with whole experiences. Eleanor's eloquent commentary continues; “My voices were a meaningful response to traumatic life events, particularly childhood events, and as such were not my enemies but a source of insight into solvable emotional problems… The important question in psychiatry shouldn't be what's wrong with you but rather what's happened to you?”
              In psychiatry and society alike, a shift needs to happen with the way we approach 'crazy.' I would like to challenge people to simply have more empathy for the humanness in us all. Everyone has incomprehensible stories to share and everyone deserves the space, free of judgement, to actualize their wholeness. How can we expect to heal and progress as a society if a huge portion of us are cast out as social untouchables by virtue of our expression of pain, our calls for help?

It’s true; some stories are difficult to relate to, because they are so outside our own realm of experience. I honestly couldn’t imagine what it is like to hear voices or see things or constantly feel threatened and judged and persecuted, but I can resonate with the need to numb my own bag o’ anxious goodies with unhealthy habits or thinking patterns. I am learning that my role in this field is to offer a space in which unremitting positive support can be a grounding stone for hope in lives defined by instability. In the words of Becky Blanton, "The human spirit can overcome anything, if it has hope."