I don’t write as much as I used to, partly because of the mental battle to keep focus, when it is constantly at threat of being ‘stolen’, (to steal Johan Hari’s term). It’s also, partly because I get locked into an inner conflict about the validity of the point I’m about to make in that moment.
During the last decade I lost the forthrightness of my convictions about the violent ways in which capitalism shapes our interior lives as much as the exterior, at least in writing, if not in art. I got stuck into a pit of self criticism in my 30s, where I increasingly began to blame myself for my life position, without an ability to work out a solution.
And I just got exhausted by trying ever harder to get somewhere, somewhere where I could just feel ‘ok’ – and thus ideas and projects just got harder to roll out so quickly.
A fear arose that on one of my bad days, where my inner critics are causing me havoc about the validity of my life, that if I try to talk about the political causations of mental distress, there will be some people out there, sometimes even well-meaning, that will turn it into that the argument ‘it’s your perspective on reality that’s making you feel this’ and ‘it’s all your own responsibiltiy’; that the ‘not ok’ feeling is entirely subjective, and is a matter of inner work.
And of course, to refute that would be an absurd thing to do; to abdicate myself of any autonomy, or say that I have zero responsibility for my actions and feelings would be to give up on myself, which is not what I want to do.
However, with the mental conditions I battle, and the physical, material conditions I have found myself in (and, disclaimer, I’m not for one instant saying I’ve got things harder than a lot of people in this country), once I try to take a more self-caring leadership role over my life, there are so many barriers that are beyond my control. As there are for most of us. And there are also the injuries caused to us in our lives that have a big impact of our circumstances and how we cope with them.
Everyone’s traumas and things that have shaped their character and circumstance are bespoke, in some sense they shape our character – but on some level they all also all have a common cause: they are injuries caused by their position in a society that is shaped by capitalism.
Life is getting stressful and harder if the last ten years is a barometer to measure things by. A hard pill to swallow for those of us who were told life was going to get easier, and although I believe this is a huge factor in our contemporary mental health crisis, it’s not what I’m focussed on here.
What frustrates me is that we talk about mental health quite often now. But to mention that it is a ‘political issue’ like Mark Fisher said, feels like heresy. Because the inner critic is by default usually a voice developed out of disempowering social experiences, it always take the side of a perceived more powerful voice that is in opposition to something we feel, but can’t quite articulate.
I fear to say out loud that my struggles are not entirely my own fault. But they aren’t. Neither are yours.
The argument that you should only speak of or critique the world, when you have yourself healed is deeply problematic, if you’re battling against a system that is set up to make it difficult to access those things you need to heal; like time, resources, space, other supporting people who aren’t themselves in a battle, and not debilitating anxiety about the uncertainty of the near future, that I KNOW that millions in this country currently have.
I really want to do what I can to improve my life, I want a good life, in spite of overhanging issues, but the fact that these issues are themselves issues because of political decisions, makes the separation reckless. A lot of us are already battling the inner debilitators and destroyers on a daily basis, so at least give folk the liberty of saying my struggle “is not all my own fault”.
It’s “polite language” when talking about mental health awareness, to refer entirely to the individual sufferer. It’s not bad language, but at the moment I can guarantee that political decisions that, like most political decisions, are being posited as a inevitable as the sun rising tomorrow, are doing some serious fucking psychological damage to thousands if not millions of people in this country.
When do we change the “it’s ok NOT to be ok” into an argument that suggests that’s “its NOT OK, or normal, for so many people to be frequently mentally ill”? Is it not deranged to suggest that a society of people with stress, anxiety, depression, popping prescription pills, should all individually sort “get their shit together”?
Onwards and upwards to everyone who is struggling in some way or form at the moment. I want to improve my life, and I know I need to do things about this. But I’m not going to shy away anymore from saying what Mark Fisher said, that ‘mental distress is a political issue’.
PS. Apologies for how limited an argument this is, I just needed to vent at the end of the week.
John B Ledger 