Stuff you, stigma

I did a sponsored row the other night as part of Row 453, a fundraiser for the Veterans mental health charity Combat Stress. I am not a lover of military action. In fact I have done my share of campaigning against war, and find a lot of military/ex-military culture abhorrent. But anyone with mental health problems, for whatever reason, is a fellow human being. No-one should have to live without being loved and getting support when they need it. And so I took over an hour, in a busy and tiring week, to row and row and row until I'd hit 453 calories.

If I had blasted it, I would have ended up injured and failed. But I chipped away at it, calorie by calorie until the job was done. Blasting things is my usual method for tackling important things - go for it full volume, full commitment, full strength. It took real discipline to make myself go slower and chip away.

So - Stigma.

Stigma is a funny old thing. Even those who battle being stigmatised in one area can be as bad as anyone else at reinforcing stigma for others. "You shouldn't stigmatise me for being X; at least I'm not like one of those Y". You even get it in the disability rights world - I may not be able to use my legs, but at least I've got a brilliant mind. Yeh, great for destimatising disability for anyone with mental health or learning differences. And that kind of thinking is as old as the bible, if not older. Jesus had no sympathy with it, and neither do I.

That's why I'm determined to challenge stigma wherever I find it, even if it's not something where I have a personal connection, and even if someone is stigmatised about a characteristic, lifestyle choice or difference that I can't really understand or that goes against my way worldview. Because stuff you, stigma is a comment on stigma itself rather than a statement in support of people stigmatised for a particular reason in a particular way.

What's this got to do with Row 453?

Last night, as I rowed, it was a metaphor for living with mental illness. You have to pace yourself, you can't allow yourself the luxury of going for broke or you will implode, sometimes you have to keep going a minute at a time, sometimes you can think about keeping going for an hour or a day, you find strategies to get you through that next minute or hour. Some of the battle to keep going is within your head, but some of the battle is handling how other people change how they relate you when they know you have a mental illness and a lot of the battle is handling your self-image in the light of media reporting about mental illness.

Row 453 is raising money. and that's needed. Row 453 is also raising awareness. But perhaps what is also needed is a chance to stamp on the stigma. To say "stuff you, stigma" and be proud to be who you are. I am who I am. I live with mental illness - or neurodiversity - or a committee in my head - or whichever way I choose to describe it. I am still me, still human, still valued, loved.

Ah, if only it were that simple. Until we've got a bit further in challenging stigma as a society, there are still limits to how much I am comfortable making public about who I am, I'm still not willing to publicly talk in more detail about what it is like to be me/us. [But if you have  a genuine reason for wanting to know what dissociative identity is like, how my head is organised and who is inside it, I'm happy to talk one to one.] Because even in 2015 sometimes, for self-preservation, "stuff you, stigma" still needs to be chipped away at person to person rather than blasted with a public blog.

Many friends, colleagues - dare I say even Gov Camp Cymru fellow campers - live with mental illness that they can't publicly disclose because of stigma. How do I know? Because my being casually open about my brain gives them permission to talk casually about their own brains. The more we do this, the stronger we get. The stronger we get, the easier it will be to say stuff you, stigma.

ps, it's not too late to donate to Row 453 via https://www.justgiving.com/Row453 - and if you leave a message, say you heard about it from Anne from The Crossfit Place.
pps Combat Stress is the only veteran-specific charity I have supported, and that's because mental health problems really suck. [That's why I also support organisations like Freedom from Torture who work with victims of torture who manage to get to the UK for sanctuary and safety. And why I support SaneLine who are there out of hours when you need someone who understands when you don't understand yourself.]