No, I’m not okay, and yes, you can help

 

Photo credit: auntjojo under a Creative Commons license

This weekend, I have been, well, what I like to call “wallowing.” Actually, it’s been going on a bit longer than that, but on Thursday I broke through the Netflix-induced haze and graded a class set of papers (and yeah, just doing that much is kind of a big deal). And it’s not to say that I’ve done nothing at all this weekend, but I haven’t done as much as I should have, and that’s led to a cycle of wallowing, guilt for wallowing, more reason for wallowing, more reason for guilt for wallowing … and so on and so forth.

And then in this charming vortex of unpleasantness, I realized that exactly one year ago today, I first wrote openly about my own longtime struggle with depression and the stigma that surrounds mental illness. February has always been a particularly unpleasant month for me (and at least one depressed friend concurs, so perhaps a move to go straight from January to March is in order). So I figured that today is as good a day as any to revisit the topic, because it certainly hasn’t gone away.

To be honest, every time I speak or blog about this issue, I half expect for the world to come crashing down around me as people realize that I’m maybe not quite as “put together” or “stable” as they thought I was. I don’t like asking for help, and I don’t want to be treated any differently.

Wait. “I don’t want to be treated any differently”? Really?

I’m starting to see how problematic that statement is. It’s a statement born from the ugly epidemic of stigma that surrounds depression in our society, and it makes no sense. Imagine a person with a broken leg. Wouldn’t we treat that person somewhat differently, recognizing that some tasks might be more difficult (or downright impossible) for that person? I would certainly hope so.

So why do those of us with depression often hesitate to ask for some extra understanding for ourselves when we are going through a difficult period? I imagine that some of this stems from the fact that depression and other health disorders are often accompanied by anxiety, low self-esteem, and a general desire to keep our problems under wraps lest we be found weak. It probably also comes from hearing, time and time again, you’ll be fine…just get through it…your life isn’t that bad…

But every time we say it, we are in fact making things worse for everyone with mental illness, because we are suggesting that we don’t sometimes need a little extra understanding. And I think what we are really trying to say is “I don’t want to be treated like my mental illness makes me ‘lesser than.’”

So maybe, instead of trying to fight stigma by saying, essentially, that we shouldn’t be stigmatized because we don’t require any help, maybe we could work instead to be open about the fact that yes, sometimes we do need help, and sometimes we do need some understanding, but that’s okay. It doesn’t mean we are weak. It just means that we have a mental illness, and that illness is just as real as a physical ailment.

I’m trying to do this. It’s hard. On the first day of class this semester, I stood in front of a lecture theatre of 100 undergraduates (future teachers, no less, who are often burdened by an intense desire for perfection) and spoke about my depression, despite fearing that it would make them treat me differently. I did so to show them that it’s okay to need help and to show that sometimes being an ally means risking our own privilege (in this case, this is the privilege I’m afforded by staying quiet about an “ism” that isn’t outwardly visible).

And I’ve noticed that my students have started speaking out as well. A few weeks ago, students in STARS Regina ran a Twitter chat about supporting students with mental health. Several of them have also taken the brave step of blogging about their own experiences (Raquel, Kendra, Dave, and Meagan, to name a few).

Ultimately, we all need to be more open, and to trust in the humanity of those around us. So to all of us who need a little extra kindness sometimes, I apologize for discounting that. To all of my friends and colleagues and students and complete strangers who are just a little broken (and I don’t mean that in a bad way), I’m sorry for trying to minimize your stories. And when you find yourself wallowing, as I often have recently, remember that you are not alone, and that we, the broken ones, are all around, perhaps hiding in fear of stigma, but always ready to listen and give a little kindness.

And by the way, to whoever decided that we should add the extra leap day to February, thanks a lot.

Dissertation isolation: Say it ain’t so…

Three years ago, if you’d told me I would be writing a dissertation having anything to do with social media, I’d have laughed at you. Three years ago, I had just gotten a Twitter account and had used it…oh…maybe five times. Social media was a fun distraction, sure, but not much more.

Flickr photo shared by Marc_Smith under a Creative Commons ( BY) license

But for the past few days, I have been intently focused on finally getting my proverbial s*** together and finishing a draft of my dissertation which deals, in large part, with social media and digital identity. But I don’t always have the best attention span. I get distracted by many things – organizing my books, vacuuming, obsessing over how many steps my Fitbit has recorded today, and, of course, social media. Some might even say that social media, and the Internet in general, gets in the way of my productivity. And sure, sometimes it does. Did I really need to re-read that hilarious blog post about why procrastinators procrastinate for the twentieth time? Probably not (but if you haven’t read it, you really should…). Did I have to look through the trending hashtags on Twitter to learn that the odd one that I couldn’t parse was, inevitably, about more One Direction drama (I kid you not – every single time). Well, no.

But.

And that’s a big but (no pun intended).

But.

Social media is also a goldmine of incredible information. The vast majority of the citations in my third comprehensive exam paper, which was about digital identity, came from Twitter – well, more specifically, from what I dug up by searching for my Twitter handle + #identity in order to access the scores of articles on the subject that I had carefully curated from others’ sharing over time. And social media is the gift that keeps on giving. Today, I was writing about why it is so critical that all of us, but especially educators, speak out for social justice in online spaces, even though it is potentially risky (and, as in my case, can lead to being trolled in a not-so-nice way). And on one of my social media breaks, I came across this fantastic post by Bonnie Stewart about the way that social media shapes our world. To quote Bonnie:

“Facebook – and more broadly, social media in general…but Facebook remains for the moment the space of the widest participation across demographics even while targeting ads designed to keep people IN their existing demographics – is the stage upon which the battle over dominant cultural narratives is played out.

Social media is where we are deciding who we are, not just as individual digital identities but AS A PEOPLE, A SOCIETY.”

Thanks for the dissertation material, Bonnie!

Writing, publishing, literacy in general – it truly is now all about participation and collaboration.

So writing my dissertation has been incredibly hard, but perhaps not for the reasons you might think. When I get into my groove, I am a prolific and rapid writer. But these days, I write mostly blog posts, and I find that my ability to write academically has been overtaken, in some ways, by my ability to blog. If I could blog my dissertation, I would. I’m a bit lost without the ability to hyperlink to other blogs or articles or people, and I feel that my writing suffers because of it. Because really, that’s the magic of social media, social writing, and Web 2.0: writing, publishing, literacy in general – it truly is now all about participation and collaboration. A good blog post is a good blog post because it links into a much wider web of knowledge, and it does so in a highly transparent and accessible way. Sure, we cite others in academic papers, but to access a cited work we would usually have to search for it in an academic database or – gasp – go to the library (I have helpfully linked to the Wikipedia page about libraries here in case you’ve forgotten what they are). The way we think about knowledge is changing, at least when it comes to the digital sphere: as David Weinberger said, “The smartest person in the room is the room.” I even watched this shift play out in my research. What began as an ethnographic study/discourse analysis rapidly changed into something much more collaborative. Instead of me sitting alone and analyzing my participants’ words, we sat there and picked them apart together – both their words and, at times, mine. We constructed (well, in the case of my research, deconstructed) understandings collaboratively. And the experience was so much richer because of it.

In a particularly depressing moment of Heart of Darkness, Conrad writes, “We live as we dream – alone.” In many ways, academia seems still to embrace this worldview – it might as well read, “I write my dissertation as I dream – alone.” But just as the magic of Google Drive means I will never have to edit documents alone again, the magic of social media means that I no longer have to write, read, think, or be an “expert” in isolation. Maybe it’s time academia embraced this incredible connected culture that we live in just a little bit more and took up a more social form of learning. After all, “We participate, therefore we are.”

And hey, I might even find a way to work this blog post into my dissertation.

 

2015: A Year to Share and to Connect

A few days ago, my friend and colleague Alec Couros asked, via Twitter, about people’s personal and professional goals for 2015. My personal goals are still a bit muddled (2014 was a challenging year in many ways, both for me and, to be honest, for the world in general), but professionally, I have a pretty good idea of where I’m headed:

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So I’m ending this year by getting started on those first two goals with a blog post (second in a week – must be a record or something) that will hopefully hold me accountable in some strange, don’t-let-the-Internet-down kind of way.

I’ve got two plans so far – the first is to take part in the Photo-a-day Challenge, which I’ll be doing on my newly minted Flickr account (yeah, I know, it’s empty so far), and the second is to get much involved in Twitter chats and other Twitter conversations – I share resources a lot, but I could be so much better at engaging with others. I just need to work a bit harder on believing that others care what I have to say.

Thinking about all of this sharing, I’m reminded a pretty cool quote by Eric Raymond about gift economies:

In gift cultures, social status is determined not by what you control but by what you give away.”

This idea seems to align really well with what happens on Twitter – the people I respect the most in that space are the ones who comment, who reshare, and who engage with others: who give away knowledge, insight, sometimes even just a bit of humour or support.

So…in 2015, what will you give away?