Positivity, it should be shared, right?
It is quite disturbing to see how many people are actually not agreeing with this.
The reason behind this is not truly known to me, so if it’s justified I would not know, but to be honest, it does not truly matter either way.
While this is an obvious weird response to something, it is just the same at many other subjects, including talking about mental health.
I personally am not shy to talk about the subject of mental health, eventually, I have a disorder myself, it is part of me, and that is that..
Or so I hoped, as the internet has immediately show the opposite is true.
About a year ago I wrote about having autism while trying to focus on the positive parts, instead of the negative parts.
Soon after I got quite some responses through the Twitter social media platform, to my own surprise, mostly negative…
Most messages were about 1 thing, which was that according to people having autism and being positive could never be possible.
Not being shy of a conversation, I asked why, which gave me the answer of “Self-Mutilation”, with the added note that no one with Autism could be happy because of that.
It raised a frown at me, as I do not practice self-mutilation, reasons should be obvious to most, yet it was claimed that everyone with Autism does that.
A simple turn to Google showed actually that only about 30% of those with Autism practice ways of self-injury.
Basically 1/3 of those with Autism, and that are just statistics, but instantly it was assumed by someone else with Autism that it was the same for everyone with Autism.
Yet, the number of 30% hasn’t surprised me, as in terms of self-injury the majority comes from cutting, but also quite a major part comes from “Head banging”…
Noticing this, I did something which seemed obvious to me, I contacted a psychologist and asked the obvious “Is head banging truly a form of self-injury?”
The answer I got was quite simple, which is a “no”, as only a quite tiny percentage of those who head bang because of disorders injure themselves by doing so, it only gets problematic when age progresses, yet according to the psychologist I talked to, the number of headbangers actually decrease as people get older..
I got disheartened, as what I saw was that the valid problems behind mental health differences were made even more problematic, but not by the “general society”, but rather by those with mental health differences themselves.
It didn’t seem right, but also actually ain’t right, it is not how things should be, but at the same time not surprising, as the fact behind everything is, is that the general society push these ideas into people’s minds.
This was noticed by myself when I got attacked several times by trolls at the Twitter social media, attacked for the most nonsensical reasoning, like me apparently being instantly a Zionist because I am Jewish..
You basically shouldn’t expect people to be able to be positive when they are attacked over being themselves, and basically nothing more, and while this is mostly happening around politics, health is a subject many are attacked over just as well, mostly because of focusing on unimportant parts, or even just plain lies.
Down syndrome, bipolar, and post traumatic stress disorder are amazing examples to show what I mean.
Down syndrome is mostly associated by the general society with the differences in appearance that can occur, with a needed emphasis on the word “can”, not will.
Also most are aware of the lower IQ that generally happens with down syndrome, and the difficulties to speech are known as well generally.
Bipolar is quite commonly known that it is about massive mood changes.
And PTSD… Well, it is commonly known as the “Veteran disorder”, even though this is 100% incorrect, as the reason why it happens so much as veterans is trauma, something that is basically forced upon soldiers, though able to happen to truly anyone…
The 3 possible ways of seeing things, with bipolar being quite correct, yet missing important facts that are not said, down syndrome being also only partially correct with things that could happen taken as something that always will happen, and at PTSD incorrect information, as yes, it does happen at veterans, but the connection between PTSD and veterans is not truly there, it is PTSD and trauma instead…
Yet, while saying this, it is important to know.. that none of the above explaining is of any importance!
The thing about discussions surrounding health, not just mental health, is that the importance is how you interact, not what the differences are at the other person.
And yes, you need to adapt to ways of others, but it is not like you would not need to do the same with anyone without any difference in health.
Never in life things will go exactly how you want if you don’t adjust yourself at times, instead of expecting others to do so.
The problem behind our society, which becomes more obvious when we get into the discussion of mental health, is the lack of acceptance.
We are always expecting others to be the way we want, while at the same time being unable to do the same ourselves.
Our whole lives we move around this, as we see at the fights when it comes to politics, the quite huge amount of trolls online, the discrimination about almost everything, and the need for fame and power.
Even though if we would face it head-on, we would be able to resolve basically every single problem we have.
In this case the focus is mental health, but I also shared it about politics with the fact of politics being problematic as it is seen as something special, instead of normal jobs and needing the expertised people, instead of chosen people.
Sadly however, I doubt change will happen, as that is just the point which everything I just spoke out makes clear, we are just not willing to do so.
We can keep on focusing on the major issues, like climate change, conflicts, poverty, but none of those will ever be resolved in our current way of doing things, as we call others do something, but doing so ourselves…
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