I suffer from intrusive thoughts and repetitive thought patterns. They’re two different but connected ailments; the former likes to beam shocking and repulsive things into the back of my eyelids when I least expect it, the latter takes those thoughts and others and makes sure that they run around my brain like a mantra, for minutes and hours on end.
I couldn’t really tell you when they became a part of my life. Often, they ebb and flow, becoming worse when I’m feeling especially anxious, and receding when I’m doing fine. For a long time I didn’t mention them to anyone, because I found them shameful and, on some level, hoped that ignoring them would eventually make them go away.
A few years ago, I finally cracked and brought them up with my therapist. Here, I told her, were the horrible things that had been hitting the inside of my skull this whole time. I put them into words and it felt awful, then it felt freeing. I was proud of myself and, for a few days after that, believed I’d cured myself.
The thoughts returned under a week later. I told my therapist about it as it made me feel dejected, like I’d somehow done something wrong. She looked at me as if I was a bit simple. Of course, speaking about your mental illness isn’t going to magically cure it. Did I really expect it to work?
The truth is: I guess I did. I guess I did think of myself as the child protagonist in a fairytale, defeating the big baddie merely by speaking its name. By conquering my fear, I thought I could free myself from it. Obviously, it didn’t work.
Instead, I’ve had to do the boring and complicated thing. I have this problem – which maybe comes from my ADHD, or maybe means I have OCD, or maybe both – and I have to learn to live alongside it. I can’t let it affect me too much, but I shouldn’t entirely ignore it either. I shouldn’t see it as some inherent part of me, but I must treat it as a reluctant fellow traveller.
It took a lot of work, and it still does. It doesn’t feel as bad as it once did, but I do try to ignore the fact that it may be something I suffer from for the rest of my natural life. No one likes a downer.
No one likes a situation with no clear solution either: with no easy way out everyone can work with. You saw it with what happened at the Baftas the other day. John Davidson was in the audience because his movie was nominated for some of the awards. I Swear, which was mostly autobiographical, told the story of a young man with crippling Tourette Syndrome.
On the screen as in life, Davidson has to navigate rather more downs than ups because his disorder, among other things, makes him involuntarily shout swearwords and obscenities at the most inopportune moments. In an especially cruel twist of fate, Baftas viewers who hadn’t seen the film got to witness a slice of it in real time, as Davidson shouted the n-word at Delroy Lindo and Michael B Jordan, two Black actors who were onstage presenting an award.
The incident was excruciating. Though the crowd in the room had been warned about Davidson’s disability, and Lindo and Jordan reacted with incredible grace, the whole thing felt like a nightmare.
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Speaking in a statement afterwards, Davidson said that he was “deeply mortified if anyone [considered] my involuntary tics to be intentional or to carry any meaning. […] I chose to leave the auditorium early into the ceremony as I was aware of the distress my tics were causing.”
Still, much has since been published online – in newspaper columns and on social media – insinuating that the campaigner actually was racist, or said the word on purpose. Though this backlash would have always been troubling, there is something especially frustrating about it happening today.
Over the past few years, so much has been said about mental health issues, and the need to talk about them and be open about once-private struggles. Awareness campaigns have become unavoidable, with the message being that, whatever is happening to your brain, you ought to be able to talk about it, and not be ashamed.
What the Baftas incident asks is: was that ever true? People who’ve never suffered from mental illness like to think that depression and anxiety, say, may get better if they no longer hide in darkness. That isn’t entirely incorrect, but there is a lot more to it, both for those two conditions, and the many others people may suffer from.
I searched for easy answers to my own complicated problems with my therapist, and eventually came to the conclusion that, well, sometimes there just isn’t a happy ending. That’s what ought to be taken from what happened at that awards ceremony. Sure, it’s good and nice to be open about mental health, but that won’t solve everything.
Hell, in some cases, there are things that just won’t ever get solved, and must be managed, day-to-day, on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes, those things will end up being upsetting to others, but there just isn’t much we can do about it. Really, the only way through is to remember that compassion and understanding can go a long way. We can’t always fix everything, but we can at least go through it all together.
Marie Le Conte is an author and political commentator
