Mental Health as Resilience and Resistance

"I believe in our youth, and the power of their voices and depth of knowledge."

If you can believe, we are 4 years out from the year that seemed to change everything: 2020. As a society, we have endured so much, it could wash over us like waves: a global health crisis, racially-motivated murders, police brutality, advocacy for social revolution, sweeping laws across the country setting back human rights, general political unrest, devastatingly brutal conflicts and genocides across the world, an increasingly expensive and overburdened for-profit healthcare system, a dwindling water supply and true climate crisis, prisons as a booming industry filled to the brim with slavery-wage workers, financial crisis due to the lack of distribution of wealth, and union busting by greedy corporations to strip workers of their power and voice . . . It is amazing we have survived. If we are paying attention, it is likely that we are disenchanted and exhausted.

At CHOOSE 180, this is what we mean when we talk about systems. It is not just one thing making us feel sick and tired–it is the carrying of the collective weight.

Everything is connected, and while working in mental health, we are so thankful to be able to address individuals: their stories, desires, and needs. AND this is why it’s imperative that we also address the systems that impact each individual. If the material conditions never change, it is essentially encouraging someone toward healing, and building them up to be put back into a toxic environment, just hoping that they can somehow be in a bubble protected from the toxicity. These conditions didn’t spring up from nowhere, they are intentional from the founding of our country’s policies, shaping, power structure, laws, infrastructure, education, and access. The multi-layered traumas of the past four years have erupted from decades, centuries, and millennia of the systems being ordered by people (largely this country’s colonizing group, white Christian western European settlers) in such a way that this would become inevitable.

Some people have decided that the best way to cope in the midst of so much injustice is to put the head down and pull the bootstraps up. This way of being can come from a place of survival because of a lack of options and support, or, it can come from a place of privilege, apathy, scarcity, and a sense of not wanting to feel the impact. The privileged place can also come with a denial of complicity–”I didn’t create this whole system, it was here before I got here, and I can’t just single-handedly dismantle it; it just is what it is, I guess.” Philosopher J. Krishnamurti stated: “It's no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." We are decidedly not okay. For those of us willing to have our eyes opened and our hearts broken, it can also feel paralyzing and impossible to cope. The caregivers, the activists, the social justice workers–we are deeply and truly burned out. What is needed is not for those who already care to care less, but for those who haven’t cared enough and who do have privilege, to care more and do more.

To meaningfully contribute to society is not to be an attempted savior or to virtue signal, but to be a participant in humanity–to resist the pull of the status quo and to rehumanize. Re-humanizing is to feel the suffering in such a way that inaction is no longer an option. For those with financial means and more social capital, avoiding this kind of pain has meant being numb and turning a blind eye; anesthetized to the ache in the self and the world. So the masses spend ourselves into debt, medicate ourselves into oblivion through any means, and fill every waking moment with social media, hoping to feel some sense of being alive. We work to live and live to work and often feel eaten up and spit out. The wealthiest and most famous among us may be most shielded from consequences, but maybe surprisingly, not the happiest or most fulfilled. I wonder what would change if those with more isolation or insulation from harmful material conditions got involved in their communities, their cities, not to vie for places of power, but to become witnesses of others’ reality. I wonder if “Undercover Boss” wasn’t just a show with cameras rolling, but a concept where those on top of hierarchies didn’t just temporarily live among those in the lowest ranks for a media stunt, but truly learned that the hierarchies themselves created the problems.

We are taught to show up in spaces as our best selves even if we are in a mental state of pain or having heavy emotions.

This is the result of a performance-based capitalist society that values us for what we can produce and how well we can interact in ways that follow the rules those on top set for the rest of us. If a person is in a mental health crisis they can be seen as a threat for raising their voices or showing items in public that could be considered weapons. They might be asking for help or requesting needed attention, but to the law or bystanders they can be seen as a danger. As a community, we can help re-humanize and recognize need when we see it. Stigmas help absolutely no one, and we have no idea what any other person is feeling or facing. Again, the fact that all of us are alive to be able to read this article is a miracle considering the collective compounded trauma of just these past few years. 

With the pandemic’s aftermath effect on health/mental health and the broadening social conversation of mental wellness, we can say that all of us are involved in our own mental health journey and likely also witnessing/feeling the emotions of another person. Mental health workers, activists, and those of us working in closest proximity to those most impacted are consumed with balancing the act of being a safe place for those that are sharing their stories, and still taking care of ourselves. I wish the beautiful concept of resilience didn’t always mean that so much had to be endured to get there.

So, how do the carers keep on caring when they’ve been in “the good fight” and wrestling to be attuned to the heartbeat of the world? It is so easy to lose heart when so much is so broken. I have to draw strength from activists and freedom fighters of the past, who had done this work long before I was born, and whose legacies will continue after I die. I believe in our youth and the power of their voices and depth of knowledge. When I see them advocating for themselves in schools and youth detention centers it is a visual and radical reminder of their persistence and strength.

I continue on because this is all for more than me, and because even if I can’t see all of the change I want in my lifetime, I will sow the seeds of revolution and community as long as I have breath.

I will resist the pull to give up on anyone. I believe in ‘calling in’ people who are openly expressing hatred towards others based on their own biases. It is something small we can do in our inner circles and around the youth that we are working with. It can be uncomfortable to address something we think was harmful in a conversation but it is important to have these conversations with those that are close to us or look up to us. 

In practice, I hope as a culture that we can be truly as attentive to our mental health as we have been in the past about our appearances. True self-care is a revolutionary act, and true self-love is counter-dominant-cultural. I hope we can find therapists who are affordable and are a good fit. I hope we take sick days when we need them for mental health days even if those aren’t in policy. I hope we can cook meals together with loved ones. I hope we can read books that encourage us and help us feel inspired and moved and seen (free from the Public Library, and audiobooks from the Library’s Libby app). I hope we can join groups and have friends that participate in fruitful and difficult conversations that help us feel less alone. I hope we can plant and enjoy gardens, take naps, smile at strangers, join protests, cry when something impacts us, listen to the elders and the youth, play games, go look at water, ache, move toward healing, and work toward the world that everyone deserves: a world where we can all truly thrive.

Written By: Daicia Mestas and Jana Detrick