A Preface
This is an article on the language sued to discuss mental
illness and its understanding – inshttp://www.elefriends.org.uk/ -
organised by the Mental Health Charity Mind. Elefriends not only involves an
animal metaphor, the focus of this article, but also emphasizes the importance
of a supportive and strong community to discuss mental health. I would
certainly recommend a look! I guess I can
look at depression a little like looking at an elephant – it may scare
me in its unfamiliarity, but it is not something I would want to harm. What I
want to do is understand it.
pired by my visit to the website
And therefore my reflection on:
Making a Metaphor
The simplicity of the phrase ‘making it’ is something I so
often strive for, when reflecting upon it.
Depression may leave you feeling that anything you ‘make’,
if it all, is a mess. And in turn, to climb out if the clutter can be the easy
part – to look at the apparent order and synchrony of people around you, their assumed
ever-arranged social events, self-security and smile. It can be a transition
from an accumulating chaos to an icy isolation in the space of couple of
minutes – to feel the fated futility of your life to then look at the apparent
ease of someone else’s.
But not only is this potentially illusory, but not
necessarily any closer to ‘making it’.
The process of ‘making’ occurs endlessly, at what could be
considered a much more accessible level – nature.
At a most basic level, even on a bad day, the birds still
sing. Rain may bead and shine on the branch before it falls to the floor. In the
sensations and moments of suspension it offers, nature at this level expects
nothing back. Often lost is contemporary culture is the comfort of simply
appreciating nature for a moment. Nature
too can terrify, can compress, as can anything; The wind can feel agitated and
overbearing, the rain relentless, we may well acknowledge certain creatures
with fear and phobias.
But the sun rising still ‘makes’ the morning. Looking out of
the window to the trees in the field opposite I know that amidst the branches starlings
have ‘made’ nests from mere twigs and moss that has fallen.
Nature makes the day, not depression.
To take a perhaps more domestic example, how many people do
I know who confess that their dog or cat has made their day? A great number,
especially considering the return from university to home. When we embrace
nature and animals, we embrace life.
Of course, not all of life is or feels good – for example the experiences ,many have to
deal with in terms of mental illness. Yet this leads me to my point of ‘making’,
metaphors and nature. Not only can
nature ‘make’ different sensations, but
also can ‘make’ something of mental illness. Take the metaphor of the ‘black
dog’ – often used to discuss depression, as seen in just one example in the
form of the website: http://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/.
This website interestingly also advocates the approach to mental illness of ‘doing
what comes naturally’ – apparently emphasizing the importance of turning to
nature rather than turning away from it even when we may feel like it is human futility
which is at fault.
The dog metaphor is furthered in T.H White’s allusion
to mental illness in ‘The Once and
Future King’ - ‘Learn why the world wags
and what wags it.’ If we consider the movements of the world like the wag of a
dogs tail, it is potentially part of a process of seeing engaging with the
world as requiring a relationship of trust and patience in order to be productive.
Ultimately, We use animal metaphors for mental illness as they make it
accessible; Kate Chopin in her short stories describes the outlook of
depression as ‘humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable
annihilation.’ Yet we know that worms, no matter how much they may repulse on observation, can be great natural good – tilling the soil,
allowing for new growth.
Perhaps that is why animal metaphors can be so useful within
mental health, in discussing conditions like depression – it is not desirable
to ‘kill’ depression. To approach depression with an attitude of ‘killing it’
or ‘fighting it’ is ultimately inhumane. After all, I am a vegetarian, and the
association of mental illness with animal metaphors would seem somewhat bizarre
if this was my aim. But on a further note, mental illness is by its nature so
very frightening and even alien – like a wild animal – because it affects the mind,
leaving the individual in fear of what is themselves, and what is the illness. Thus,
it cannot be a case of killing.
I would not want to kill a dog, although it may have the
potential to be vicious, because there is also the possibility of interacting
with it and learning to love it. Stephen Fry furthers animal analogies and metaphors
in a recent Guardian Article in terms of mental illness being the ‘Elephant in
the Room’ http://www.theguardian.com/society/christmas-charity-appeal-2014-blog/2014/dec/05/-sp-elefriends-the-social-network-for-the-mental-health-community
– in which he highlights how depression can feel like a looming creature, but a
creature that we can learn to love and want to be understood, in its own way.
In turn, it is important to approach mental health issues
according to their nature – and aim then not to ‘kill’ them, but to understand
them. It is ultimately through understanding and interaction that mental
illness can be brought under effective control for many. Therefore, I welcome
attempts to increase accessibility to mental health services and discussion through
new formats – such as animal metaphors, pictures even comic strips. These highlight
that mental illness lives just as we live. But what ‘makes’ us who we are is how we
understand and deal with it.
Baiting the bear
It entered the room
Long before I can remember
I knew its muzzle
between my ankles
Begging bits from the table.
I supposed it was sponsored to keep me young
Like the toy of childhood
Grasped in the fixtures of sleep
The glass eyes glazed over
With a rasp of fingernails.
Felt like a braille
Even in dreams
Bear substituted the mind-blindness
Swallowed the screams
As I grew
Bear hollowed
As I learned to speak
Stitched through my voice
Was not the growl
But the teeth
Which clipped short the words
A fur on the cheeks
Others called moisture
She has a wild imagination
You better watch her
But the bear watched me
The draw of translucent claws
On laminate
Agony
A futile domesticity
Like the wildcat kittens
Which still savaged the scientists.
The bear yet
Smiled, learned to listen
An imitator, still vicious.
Its black mass would wait
On the edge of my vision
Its fur asking for embrace
Of those same fingers
Nails different
Bitten down, picked
Bloodied
Too many times. The bear sleeps
In the doorway of the morning
I think of a white spotty rind
Fat festering porous, beneath
A pelt inches thick.
Its stench bitter
Galling
Left in the rain too long
I thought I had grown
But its tongue still sickens me
With its black layer
Lapping up imagery
Frozen-fear in a quick glance.
When I reached for the switch
Its smile dripped on my hands
You are just a child
The bear’s breath encrusted
A silt to each eyelash
Coming closer to the bed
Shaking itself into speech.
I used to ward it off with a laugh
Now it takes all week
For it to return to the doorway.
These are the walls of my nursery
This is the rattle of silence.
I wake to find
The bears jaw in my hands
Like a lifted receiver
I could put to my ear and sob
Into that stinking glut
Of darkness and stomach
Fizzing bloodless my foot
Somewhere under its front.
Unhooked
Its muzzle presses my shoulder
And falls down my spine
Like the hair of the woman
I could have grown into
Given the time
My hands glisten at the keys
The bear bristles
As I write
Its snout lifts from my shoulder
Stares out of the window
A reflection moulded, I share
On screen or in picture
Which asks if it offers
A feasible future.
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