Mental health is a great cause; the thing is understood, the brand, registered. And it is also, according to many, the poor relation of the health system. So we have to talk about it. If only to clear up the prejudice and shame associated with it. Talking about it also to ensure that those who suffer are better understood, feel less alone.
I will leave it to others to explain that bipolarity, depression, schizophrenia, autism are not shameful illnesses. It seems obvious to me that the biochemistry of the human body is an infinitely complex thing and that the brain is a significant part of this complexity. With this in mind, if there is nothing to be ashamed of taking insulin, hormones or a proton pump inhibitor, why should it be any different from taking lithium or a anxiolytic?
It is true that we are talking here about an organ, the brain, which we want to believe has freed us from the animal kingdom and elevates us almost above the biological. When the brain is affected, our condition as human beings seems immediately called into question. Then doubt sets in, and a small voice creeps in. What is she saying ? “His mind is not strong enough to control itself. She insists: “His mind is fragile, he cannot resist the pressure of the outside world. »
The little voice, you see, recites its lesson well, it went to the right school, that of an anxious civilization placing power and control at the top of its values. I really want to answer him, me, to this very small voice.
Let’s talk about strength.
I knew a Jean-Paul who loved a Jean-Louis; he loved him like a brother. One day, Jean-Louis confessed to Jean-Paul that people wanted to attack him. A very bizarre story. A little too much… Jean-Paul spent a whole day with his friend, doubtful, but wanting to see this mysterious white car which followed Jean-Louis as soon as he left his house. Nothing. ” Obviously. They saw you were there. »
Medicines were prescribed. Those pills probably knocked out Jean-Paul or any of us. But they barely calmed Jean-Louis, his paranoia was so violent, a real fire in his nervous system. He lived with a smoke detector ringing constantly under his skull. What to lose the pedals, right? He slept with a loaded rifle in the corner of the room, near the bed. The story ends badly. But neither Jean-Louis’ wife nor children ever had to fear him. Besides, his last words spoke of love.
In spite of the suffering, the panic fear, he preserved his family as best he could and heroically resisted the syndrome of the cat eating its young. For the lack of strength, we will come back. Besides, before judging someone’s strength, one should know the weight of what makes his back bend or pushes his skull to burst.
Did you say fragile?
Some of the most beautiful things that exist are extremely fragile: the dragonfly’s wing, all eyes, the perfection of a melody, a moment of happiness, life, whatever. Fragility is even often at the origin of this beauty; talk to the Frost Gardens. To do without it would greatly impoverish us.
Having made this brief eulogy of fragility, the person in question burnout is she a fragile person? Would she inherently have a weak constitution, from the point of view of the central nervous system? No. Not necessarily.
Would you say of a slave working twenty hours a day that he died of failing health? It would be false and despicable, even if I have no doubt that the thing was said, and more than once. However, the burnout, to speak of this modern scourge, often comes after months and years of hard-to-sustain pressure. Repeated bad luck, injustice, harassment, abuse, humiliation, toxic work climate, ostracization, lack of recognition, insufficient salary to take care of his family, separation, isolation, mourning, exile, constant stress, the tiles sometimes fly in bursts before fall on the heads of people too overwhelmed to notice.
Yes, in life, there are circumstances from which one cannot, for economic, family or other reasons, extricate oneself. Situations that are unbearable over time and that would make any normally sensitive being crack. In this sense, if the burnout is indeed a mental illness, I do not believe that it testifies, in a systematic way, to a weakness. THE burnout is often an injury. A neurochemical injury induced by the environment and by circumstances.
One day, on the radio, I heard the filmmaker Micheline Lanctôt, whose beautiful smile struggles to hide her great anger, describe society in a devastating way. “It’s a world eater! she cried. A cry from the heart, bright as a distress flare.
So, yes, let’s talk mental health. But let’s also reflect on the world that we are building for ourselves, that we accept, or not, to serve, to nourish in its schizoid excess. Let’s talk about prevention. Let the famous energy cubes give pride of place to cubes of silence, free time, encounters, daydreaming, listening, sharing.
And refusal. Let’s change life. It will take the time it needs. It could be if it could be. What can we do better? A society must be designed as a shelter for those who compose it, the exact opposite of a world eater.
What if mental illness was the canary in the mine?