The Privilege of Sanity and the Cost of High Sensitivity

I wrote the blog about sanity being over-rated :http://samanthathesanevegan.blogspot.co.
uk/2015/08/im-not-sane-but-sanity-is-over-rated.html to help try to reduce the stigma of mental illness whilst at the same time not trying to romanticise it.  It's an area where you really have to tread carefully. Many people attribute their creativity to their mental health issue.  Others feel that the experience of having a mental health issue can be a good teacher and allow them to help others. 

now that's my kind of inspiration! RIP

The reality is, however, that mental illnesses can make life difficult and can add further obstacles to achieving what we want to in life.  I'm just the kind of person who tries to look for the silver lining, this is why I try to embrace my lack of sanity and also why I love Alice in Wonderland! I feel that sometimes sane (or 'neurotypical' to be PC!) people fail to acknowledge the extent to which mental illnesses can impact on a person's life and trivialise their feelings, accusing them of being lazy or not trying hard enough.

So in what ways can having a mental illness impact on a person's life?

This is something I've really felt compelled to write about.  Practically everyone I encounter in my life: family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, (with the exception of a few friends who have experienced depression themselves) comments on the fact that I have a low status job for my level of intelligence.  Somebody (who I don't know that well) recently actually asked me if I was 'mad' and said that I had gotten too lazy and comfortable. 

When I talk about the difficulties I have with job hunting and interviews as a person with low self-confidence and recurrent depression I'm met with 'Oh but everyone hates job hunting' and 'Just act confident'. People cannot differentiate between the normal mild anxiety people feel when going for interviews and that of somebody with an actual mental disorder.  It is an actual fact that having a serious mental illness dramatically lowers one's chances of getting a job.  

As this article states 'Only about 20% of people with severe mental health problems are employed, compared to 65% of people with physical health problems and 75% for the whole adult population. Even for people with more common types of mental illness, such as depression, only about half are competitively employed.'
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2007/nov/14/mentalhealth2

'Oh, but what about this 'inspirational' celebrity who had depression or bipolar disorder and was still successful?'

Ugh, 'Inspiration Porn'

brilliantly put

There might be 'inspirational' stories of people with mental illnesses who still achieved great things and this might make some people think that all people with a mental illness have just as much opportunity as others, they just need determination or to 'change their attitude'.  It's akin to saying, for example, that the existence of successful black female jazz singers like Ella Fitzgerald or Nina Simone in the 1950s in America proves that black women were not a marginalised group and had the same opportunities as everyone else.  Race, gender and mental illness are of course separate and different issues but they are all factors that can impact on a person's life opportunities.  It needs to be acknowledged that those without a mental illness have an advantage over those who do.  There is nothing I loathe more than those 'What's your excuse?' or 'The only disability in life is a bad attitude' posts!

Sensitivity - Blessing or curse?

overwhelm is a horrible feeling

I've written before about being a HSP (highly sensitive person) in my blog: http://samanthathesanevegan.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/depression-part-2-food-mood-and.html. There are 15-20% of the population who are believed to have a higher than average level of sensitivity and empathy (and I definitely fall into this category!) Whilst psychopaths are often highly successful in terms of climbing up the career ladder and earning large sums of money, highly sensitive people are more easily overwhelmed and tend to have lower self-confidence.  It's been found that about 1 in 5 CEOs are psychopaths.  Many people in positions of power such as politicians fit the typical profile of a psychopath whereas the tendency to feel overwhelmed in highly sensitive people may sometimes result in lower status (and lower paid!) jobs for highly sensitive people.  There are some world figures and politicians who fit the profile of a HSP (Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Jo Cox (a British MP)) who managed to accomplish wonderful things and fight for justice (tragic that so many of them seem to end up being murdered!) Others might feel debilitated by their sensitivity and suffer from quite serious depression that prevents them from being able to function normally in life, let alone further their career. There is such a thing as 'Compassion Fatigue', a sort of exhaustion/burnout that some people experience from caring too much.  Self-care and taking some time for oneself where possible is key in these cases. 

Redefining Success

What does success look like for you? It is a shame that society seems to define success in life as a sort of 'grocery list' of achievements or milestones and Heath Ledger has really hit the nail on the head in this quote. If I thought of success in those terms like I used to, I would make myself miserable.  Do I have any of the things society might expect a woman in her early thirties to have? Nope!  But am I currently happy and do I experience pleasure and joy in my daily life? Yes!  That to me is success.  

I really wish that on social occasions, rather than asking what you do for a living or whether you've met that special someone yet or gotten pregnant etc, people would seek to find out how your life is going and genuinely want to offer support and care if the answer was not so great.  This would definitely take away a lot of pressure and the feeling of dread many people get when socialising at a lower point in their life.

Having a mental illness and being highly sensitive is part of me and something I've come to terms with, I don't want to sound like I see myself as a victim. I recognise that I have a number of great privileges in life and I am grateful: being born into a first-world country, being able-bodied, absence of any physical health problems, being a native English speaker, having 2 parents and a stable upbringing with good moral guidance. I just wish for a bit more understanding of the challenges people with mental illnesses and/or high sensitivity face and a shift away from the 'grocery list' view of success!