I get what you're saying about the pressure/guilt that can arise from knowing we have some control over our brains. I don't think it's really the right way to look at it, but it is the most natural. I dunno, think about it this way. Say you had a stroke and had lost the ability to speak and had to relearn how. You have all of the "stuff" you need to get it done yourself. You have a brain and a will to speak and presumably working speech organs. But nobody expects a guy to wake up in the hospital after a stroke and pull themselves up by their bootstraps and teach themselves to speak again. Much of us have this outdated idea of mental health issues, but it's really not much different from any other biologically based brain disorder. The stroke victim must learn to speak again, with intervention and outside care and direction. They go to therapy to increase the activity in the language centers of their brains and learn the exercises they need to practice to regain mastery of speech slowly over time. (This is to the best of my knowledge from what I've picked up accidentally over time. lol. )
What's different with mental health disorders?
In general, people don't think of those things as biological disorders akin to any other. I think on a deeper level, people might resist this because tying our behaviors and emotions to our biology creates problems with people's notions of free will. We don't like determinism. We like to enjoy a more robust sense of self and sense of agency than we probably really have. But whatever the reason, we don't generally think of it this way and so we think we can will ourselves to recover from this disease as if it is unique. We do have the "stuff" we need, just as the stroke patient does. But we also require intervention sometimes, and direction. What's more damaging about mental health disorders is that it often distorts our will to help ourselves. This isn't the case with other disorders. We don't break a leg and say "fuck it". We treat those things because we know they're treatable. The choice is obvious, and if treatment is available we'll take it. But for mental health disorders our will and hope are part of what's affected. Instead, with these things, we'll say "fuck it" more often than not. There's a chemical for hope. There's a chemical for self-love and having the will to be and do. Or, most likely, there's a chemical soup responsible. And the guilt we feel at being messed up and not being able to fix ourselves, there's a chemical soup for that. So, when our disease eases up and enables us to, we should work on thinking about this stuff logically. Maybe we should even write it out on paper and really look at it critically.
I can say all this and still look in the mirror and call myself a stupid, weak piece of shit for not being able to fix myself. That's the beauty of the beast.
Basically, we're just living in the dark ages and there's a social stigma surrounding mental health disorders because we're still on the frontiers of our understanding of it. And we're predisposed to hate on ourselves about it because it's in our brains to do so.
And this was great.To anyone out there who's suffered with depression, or anxiety, or addiction, or anything else that weighs heavily on your mind or your heart: I am so, so sorry that you've had to go through so much pain and difficulty in your life. You have my deepest, most heartfelt sympathy and you always will. I would never tell you to "stop feeling sorry for yourself." I would never tell you that you should be over this by now. I won't minimize what you've been through, because I've been through something like it and I have some idea what it feels like.
