The silence in manic psychosis is deadly and deafening. It connects dots of imagination and untruths in the loudest of ways whilst not saying anything out loud.
This silence is the scariest I have ever experienced. This silence should not be allowed to exist. This silence needs kind company, trust, time, love, and often even medication to overcome and navigate through and out of.
This silence is not fun. I would not wish it on my worst enemy.
As a complete contrast, another type of silence I have been lucky enough to experience is the one where you are sat under a beautiful tree, back against the bark, alone in body but oh-so connected to something so much greater than just yourself.
In this quietness, you can hear the birds of hope, feel the warmth of the sun, the bliss of the breeze and you know all will be more than ok.
I write about these two types of silence to give you an idea of just some of the many experiences someone may have when thinking of the concept of ‘silence’.
A group of six people with lived experience recently met up with three facilitators from the University of Bristol in a workshop to share time together and discuss ideas and experiences of silence.
It was a very intriguing and interesting topic, bringing up themes of connection and isolation amongst others.
Silence is more than a word and much more than just something to be ignored, with a spectrum of emotions and experiences counted. It needs to be explored in greater depth, and, hopefully, that’s what this project will do.
When I was at my most depressed, I lived with someone who was also depressed, and a silent and wretched-looking lurcher we had bought after seeing a Gumtree advert which just read “Dog. £150. First come, first served.” Left with time, and no ability to fill it, we sometimes played a kind of word-game where we attempted to describe how depression felt.
“It’s like feeling very light and empty and insubstantial, but also very hard and heavy and dense all at the same time.”
“It’s like being in love with someone, but instead of obsessing about them, you’re just obsessively thinking about how you are the worst person in the world and how much you want to kill yourself.”
That episode wasn’t my first time being severely depressed. The last time round (in my early 20s and more alone in my suffering) I’d been fanatical about a book called ‘Wittgenstein’s Private Language’. This aimed (amongst other things) to unpack the connection between pain, language and isolation in the philosopher Wittgenstein’s work, a subject I think has a particular pull for unhappy or depressed people. In it, the author (Stephen Mulhall) writes that we could see:
“the provision of a language for pain to someone immersed in inarticulate suffering as a means of giving him some perspective on his own condition- at least enough distance from it to articulate that condition, and thereby to place him in the position of acknowledging the state he is in, which must include acknowledging that it may end, that he may be comforted, that he might transcend that state, if only in his imagination.”
Coming up with our depression similes years later, it became clear that this approach did not work for our particular problem. Talking about depression did not give us any perspective on or comfort in our condition, which was all-encompassing and surely endless. Attempting to say the truest, most secret name of depression had not – in fact – given us power over it. But then why would it? We also played Boggle for hours and hours a day (a far more popular word game than our invented one), which – shockingly – didn’t magically end up curing us either.
After I finally got well, I told my friend he’d saved my life. He was nonplussed by this and said, “But I was just there, I didn’t help you, I was just there”, but then that was the extraordinary thing. The form of care he gave helped me get better because it didn’t require me to say or do anything to be understood and loved. Depression is both so incredibly mind-numbingly boring and makes you so incredibly mind-numbingly boring to others – we knew that inside-out. In that state, what could I possibly have had to say? So, his main role (apart from the difficult work of keeping me alive) was just being there, mostly unable or unwilling to talk either, just waiting it out together.
This is not how UK mental health campaigns tend to suggest that caring for your friendly neighbourhood depressive is supposed to work. Things like the recent “Time to Talk” campaign (“Some conversations are scary, some aren’t”) emphasise how easy and un-frightening it is to use words to connect a mentally ill person, both as a necessary precursor to and as a form of care in itself. The artist, activist and researcher Rachel Rowan Olive, has an excellent parody of this campaign, styled in the same way, but the text says “Screaming Awareness Week. It’s way past time to talk; it’s time to scream. Let’s bang our heads on the wall.” The top of the poster reads: “Every week from now until the end of time #aaaaargh.” Aaaaargh indeed – truly the only form of silence-breaking adequately suited to mental illness (and to dealing with mental health services).
To be clear, I’m not entirely against talking. I think words can be vital in dispelling the shame, self-hatred and loneliness that are part of depression, and I believe in good therapy. However, I also think that a combination of the failures in the UK mental health system, an increased mental health awareness in the general population and the dominance of cognitive therapies like CBT have led to people being more likely to have a stab at wrangling their depressed loved ones into speaking about their depression, in a desperate but misguided attempt to alleviate it through rational argument. For me, the idea of your loved ones somehow talking you out of being depressed or giving you the right space to talk yourself out of depression baffles me. It reminds me of the tweet, turned popular meme, which reads [sic] “guys r like don’t kill urself ur so sexy aha”, funny for many reasons, but at least partially because of the ridiculousness of the idea that being told you’re attractive could ever stack against the terrible, terrible logic of depression. What words could?
We’d had the dog for a whole horrible, hot, and silent summer, when she got over excited running in the park, and finally let out a sharp series of barks. We were taken by surprise and ran after her shrieking and whooping, which completely freaked her, something that was so comical to witness it made us laugh as well. Which- for me – was the closest that speech had got in that time to making me feel well again.
To purchase Rachel Rowan Olive’s “Screaming Awareness Week” artwork (and others), visit her website.
Author bio
Cat Papastavrou Brooks is a PhD candidate at the University of Bristol, working on the impact of community violence as part of the TRUUD programme, and a researcher at the SPIRED Clinic, SPFT NHS Trust working on eating disorder research.
Too articulate for support. Named as a ‘Personality case’ by a Health Care Assistant. Although this led to a lot of distress and a complaint, I now know on reflection that this assistant is the most honest person I have come into contact with the mental health system. At least I know where she stood and how she would treat me.
Requesting to be reassessed, as have no connection with EUPD. However, no one wishes to listen. I’m silenced as no one hears. Then, the angrier I get about this, the more of a “personality case” I become. Silenced due to judgement and stigma.
8:30 pm: Left my home for a walk, I had tried everything to stop the suicidal thoughts, voices, and visual hallucinations.
10:00 pm: Rang Crisis Team in distress. Told to look at my coping mechanisms book. I was walking along a dual carriageway, but I was not asked where I was so I did not say. Silenced by choice?
11:00 pm: Rang crisis line. Was told to breathe; I feel unable to speak, now on a motorway junction.
12:00 pm: Rang Assist Line as needed someone human to listen to me, and just be with me so I could clear my head enough to work out what I really wanted… They heard the cars and asked where I was. I told him and he called the emergency services. I told them it was a waste of time and went to the bridge, which was the plan. Stood and cried. The police came. The crisis line tried to convince the police to take me home, offering no further support. Silenced by no one being prepared to care or listen.
Police detained me under section 136 of the Mental Health Act. I said it was a waste of time as I felt the mental health system did not care at all.
After 4 hours of broken sleep at ‘the Place of Safety’, I woke.
At the assessment, I was told:
‘We all have negative thoughts, people just do not talk about them’ (Literally being told to be silent)
‘Look at me, try to look out and not inwards because that’s just making it worse’ (I am using every bit of my energy to answer questions… let alone look at you. Is this my fault? Should I be silent?)
I know I am seen as a personality case – ‘I know you have had many discussions about your diagnosis. Personally disorders, is such a horrible term as what it really means is that people experience trauma and then create unhelpful coping mechanisms’. (So I am the problem…).
I stop talking…
‘You have so many positive things in your life we are going to let you go home’, the mental health team concluded.
It is widely assumed that asking the ill to tell their story offers them empowerment and liberation through being heard. But the demand for illness narratives, well-meaning as it may be, can place an additional and damaging burden on those already suffering.
In recent years, there has been a huge growth in illness narratives, especially digital stories, as online accessibility increased. Stories of suffering and recovery, particularly concerning mental illness, are now common, and published by everyone from school children to celebrities. Part of the motivation behind this growth was the desire to move away from a biomedical model of mental illness where knowledge is guarded and dispensed by medical professionals and to move toward a more holistic, patient-centred approach.
These are all good intentions, yet we now have a phenomenon where narrating illness is on the verge of becoming a social imperative. For example, the sociologist Arthur Frank argues that we need to acknowledge our ethicalresponsibility to narrate one’s illness. One must narrate to aid one’s own recovery but also to show solidarity with fellow sufferers, to inspire others and to highlight the place of suffering in life. There are also expectations about how that story should be told.
For example, in the US, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) produced a 70-page guide titled Share Your Story, A How-To Guide for DigitalStorytelling: Supporting the Recoveryand Healing of Self and Others Through Messages of Hope.In this document, adorned with stock photos of smiling families, the sufferer is told that sharing their story will reduce negative stereotypes, encourage others to seek help and empower the narrator. They are guided in how to ensure the story comes from a ‘strong foundation of recovery’along with ‘messages of hope’ or a ‘call to action’. An illness narrative must have the right amount of hope, resilience, inspiration and recovery.
But this expectation is dangerous. It risks isolating those whose stories do not fit this genre of hope and inspiration, overlooking those stories that highlight anger, despair and even neglect and inequality in healthcare that needs to be addressed.
Not only does the demand for illness stories alienate those whose stories do not fit the accepted genres, it also alienates those who do not wish to narrate at all. We fail to recognise that ‘suffering in silence’ is a legitimate choice rather than something inherently bad, externally imposed and oppressive. This assumption is highlighted by the philosopher Dan Degerman who has claimed we should challenge the ‘fetishisation of silence breaking’. There are different types of silence, some of which are a choice. Some suffering cannot be put into words and to do so would distort it. Putting pressure on the ill to narrate their story at all (let alone through socially sanctioned genres of hope and inspiration) is an extra and unnecessary burden which could lead to further distress.
If silence can be the way to honour suffering, then we need to learn to honour silence.
Author bio
Sally Latham is in her final year of a PhD with The Open University researching narrativity, non-narrativity and mental health and is a recipient of The Royal Institute of Philosophy Jacobsen studentship. Her most recent publication, co-authored with Mark Pinder, is ‘Is it Good to Conceive of One’s Life Narratively?’
This is the website for ‘Beyond Voice’, a research project about experiences of silence in depression and bipolar.
It will host blog posts by collaborators and the core team, project publications, events, and other useful resources for people who are interested in learning more about silence and mental health.
If you want to get involved or you have any suggestions for the website, please get in touch through the Contact page!
