Social Masks & Authenticity

Authenticity is two parts; finding one’s true self and expressing that self. They say “To raise a child, it takes a village”, however I would add onto that statement by saying “…but It takes an army to raise yourself”. Rather than “I should be!” you acknowledge that “I am!”. How much digging does it take to find the “real you”? What are the consequences of being your unfiltered self? How do you express the socially unacceptable parts of you that exist? I found out the hard way through years of instability and emotional disregulation that how I express myself in writing is sometimes seen as bold, confrontational, socially unacceptable and aggressive. There is a real tension between my social identity and the person I truly feel I am inside. The purpose of an army is to defend against threats both domestic and foreign. How does a nation defend itself from itself? Obviously, such a conflict implies you have a civil war brewing inside of you.

The other day while I was attending a group therapy session, I was warned about the intensity of my self-expression in anger mangement when I participated in an exercise of writing an angry letter where the participants were expected to vent out their frustrations on a piece of paper. While others calmly read a delicately written, focused, polite and neatly composed letter that addressed their specific concerns, I wrote a firey indictment about someone I have had unresolved issues with. The response was shock at the conclusion of my letter and within minutes after the class had ended, I was pulled aside and told that I could not say such things. It seemed I was too “spicy”, even for anger management! I knew that the tone of my short paper was highly provocative, inappropriate and hostile. Even without the intention of acting on anything I had written down, it was unanimously agreed upon that I had crossed a social boundary. I was surprised about the reaction to my writing, because I assumed that this class was the place to express such destructive emotions.

I could not believe that I had hit another ceiling, run into another brick wall and experienced yet another limitation. I wanted to be free, but I also recognized that the venting didn’t do me any favors, it only intensified my frustation and made it easier to justify my own instability. This was another catch twenty-two; damned if I do, damned if I don’t. Through years of comparison, I knew that my emotions were more volatile than how others experienced them, though I never liked the diagnosis of “bipolar” since it only brought me a label that I was not interested in wearing. I felt like it was tattooed onto my forehead and no matter how much I tried to escape it, there it was for every doctor, psychiatrist, therapist and family member to point out. Ever since my diagnosis at age seventeen, it became my identity whether I wanted it to be or not. Something that at one time I had used as an excuse, but now was something that felt oppressive and shameful.

Mental Illness & Deviance

In my sociology class, I’ve been learning quite alot about labels. The term “Secondary Deviance” refers to the acceptance of one’s negative labels applied to them by others, which can then in turn, influence their sense of identity as they go from a position of hesitance or neutrality towards internally accepting that label. For as much as I resist, even I must admit that I always had a difficult time managing the strength of my emotions and how I expressed them. Throughout my life, I had always been on medication of some kind or another and from early on did not care for the ritual of swallowing pills and the occaional involuntary psychiatric hospitalization that would follow after some particularly bad “episodes”, we’ll call them.

If I wasn’t on some kind of ADHD medication, I was on something to help me manage my acid reflux and if not that, then on something else to manage my bipolarism. While others with similar problems appear to passively accept this as their only chance at living a stable and happy life, I’ve spent a lifetime actively resisting that grim prognosis.I had grown to dislike and distrust medication and its various side effects. Always feeling like I was being abused by a system that only wished to categorize or “fix” me.

Sometimes I would give in and cooperate, other times I would protest and refuse treatment. This has been the bane of my existence for many years since childhood. Presently I am taking medication to manage my moods, though I am not exactly thrilled about it. To me, the word “Bipolar” is just as taboo as a racial slur. It invokes a sense of inferiority, the thought of being seen as “lesser” than other human beings. Of course I find the idea of turning it into some kind of political issue to be ridiculous, I feel still frustrated by modern medicine and its limitations.

Destined To Destroy

My primary disagreement with the way in which doctors, psychiatrists and therapists see people with untreated bipolarism is that they feel very self-assured in their belief that it will inevitably lead to chaos and life ruination. I simply do not believe this is the case! I think that if I can learn how to take advantage of the unique strengths that my brain has, I can fully benefit from them without interferance. To me this idea that my highly energetic brain needs to be tamed and subdued is just a myth. Writing is my outlet and my source of joy. Emotional intensity allows me to be honest even if that honesty manages to arouse contempt from anyone who reads me.

I have been let down too many times to have any faith in this modern process of trying to control a brain that is performing naturally as it should be. The things that are our greatest strengths are sometimes misdiagnosed as handicapps and I believe if no one challenges that idea, it will remain the dominent theory in our society. I only continue with my medication because I’m at the end of my rope. I feel I have been gaslit into believing that the way my brain works is the source of all of my problems, as if I can’t manage to redirect that destructive energy into something highly productive and creative.

This very article is my attempt to exercise this compulsive, obsessive, highly emotional superpower that I possess. I am not just fighting an internal battle with the many things in life that irritate me, I am struggling for authenticity in a world that sees me as defective. You know you’ve reached the end of social acceptability whenever you’ve been to an anger management class that can’t understand or tolerate your intensity. I feel so goddamn frustrated by the softness of people and their unwillingness to confront negativity head on. You can’t fully dismiss what lies inside of you, it continues to live whether you acknowledge it or not and furthermore, it only intensifies the more it is denied!

What Once Took A Village Now Takes An Army

Now that I’m an adult I have to figure out how to manage myself which is what I mean by “it takes an army”. I am dealing with hostile forces outside of myself who want to “edit” my mind to make me into someone less taboo, less provocative. I’ve spoken before in a previous post about my distrust towards modern methods of medicating and treating mental illness. As an extention of that idea, I find it most helpful to express myself here with all of my thoughts and feelings. I view the word “illness” differently by itself than I do when it is paired with the word “mental”. The way ordinary people and professionals talk about these topics comes off like a religious dogma. The idea that having a brain which functions differently should be labeled as “illness” is almost as fanatical as the people who take the MBTI seriously. It carries weight and has “real consequences” like any other social construct does.