Can we talk about mental illness?

riparianx

For a site extremely focused on fixing bad thinking patterns, I've noticed a bizarre lack of discussion here. Considering the high correlation between intelligence and mental illness, you'd think it would be a bigger topic.

I personally suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder and a very tame panic disorder. Most of this is focused on financial and academic things, but I will also get panicky about social interaction, responsibilities, and things that happened in the past that seriously shouldn't bother me. I have an almost amusing response to anxiety that is basically my brain panicking and telling me to go hide under my desk.

I know lukeprog and Alicorn managed to fight off a good deal of their issues in this area and wrote up how, but I don't think enough has been done. They mostly dealt with depression. What about rational schizophrenics and phobics and bipolar people? It's difficult to find anxiety advice that goes beyond "do yoga while watching the sunrise!" Pop psych isn't very helpful. I think LessWrong could be. What's mental illness but a wrongness in the head?

Mental illness seems to be worse to intelligent people than your typical biases, honestly. Hiding under my desk is even less useful than, say, appealing to authority during an argument. At least the latter has the potential to be useful. I know it's limiting me, and starting cycles of avoidance, and so much more. And my mental illness isn't even that bad! Trying to be rational and successful when schizophrenic sounds like a Sisyphusian nightmare.

I'm not fighting my difficulties nearly well enough to feel qualified to author my own posts. Hearing from people who are managing is more likely to help. If nothing else, maybe a Rational Support Group would be a lot of fun.

If there nobody to talk about deep personal issues in the city in which you are living, why are you living in the city in the first place?

The last time you posted something like this, I fretted for a whole day, trying to figure out how to respond. I found I could not do so without a mindkillxplosion at how offensive it is, so I settled for a silent downvote.

Welcome to the Mid-southern United States, where nothing is within walking distance of anything else, huge swaths of land have no sidewalks, gas mileage is artificially deflated, public transit consists of like three buses if you live in a huge town with at least 60k people, and there is no way to travel between towns other than owning your own vehicle or having people willing to drive you. (I did find a cab driver willing to get me to the nearest town with an interstate bus terminal; he estimated that trip would cost me $130. In a good month, that's over 10% of my cumulative funds.).

On the bright side, the cost of living is low enough that Wellfare is actually livable, if one min-maxes food and utilities and has no debt.

Now, add mental illness on top of that. Then, be careful never to so much as hint that you might maybe possibly be anything other than a practicing Christian (or at least be so damn smooth that you can get people to believe you're joking when you reveal your nonchristianity, on the grounds that "I don't believe you're a bad person" (an actual quote from one of my father's customers)). Not that religious discrimination matters when you're completely isolated.

Now, you have lots wrong with your life, but the tiny handful of things that you still manage to care about are staying here.

You're unemployed, disabled, friendless, have less than $2000 to your name, ~$90000 in student debt, and are drowning in anxiety/depression/akrasia/learned helplessness... and someone from a nice city with financial security expresses bafflement that you don't just move to a nice city like theirs. The pattern-matching alone was absurd enough that I couldn't trust myself not to quote The Grapes of Wrath.

I really don't feel like I handled this well, but I've been holding it in for a couple years, now, and clearly, something needed to be said.

I empathized maybe a little too much with this post. Thank you for writing it.

Sometimes I'll read something written by a person from a different area of the world and be utterly baffled- these people are WALKING to the store? I mean, there's a Braum's about half a mile away, but if you're actually buying things that can be pretty impractical. I live pretty close to the metro in my state, but even still, everything's pretty far away.

Something I've noticed about Europeans in particular- what to us is the next big town over, is the next country over to man... (read more)

1ChristianKl11y

Of course suggestions to make radical changes can offend. Here I have basically two choices: (A) Don't try to address the issue on a deep level (B) Say "I see this triggers your pattern of learned helplessness". "It needs a certain amount of pain for a person to decide that their suffering is enough and that they stop to suffer." Unfortunately text isn't a good medium for doing (B) and even Skype isn't. In your specific case being blind also adds additional issues that don't exist for most people. [...] "Expressing bafflement" isn't a good description of what I'm doing when I'm asking for "Why do you do X?". I ask that question because I feel that the other person benefits from answering the question and getting clear about "why they do X". If you actually make a decision that it's for you the right choice to stay where you are at the moment, you feel more agentship.

2[anonymous]11y

In a conservative society/culture why do people live on their own? Why not in their extended family? To be fair, being in love with living in nuclear families is a standard feature of Anglo cultures, some even proposed they actually caused them becoming richer than others. There are 13th century records of English villagers moving to other villages to work and then buying land and settling down and hardly ever seeing their relatives again in the old village. I find this mind-boggling. Still, even in an individualist Anglo culture, I would expect its more conservative subsets would be in favor of blood relatives living under one roof. Which is an excellent idea for people poor and ill. For example, in Eastern Europe (both poor and conservative) the idea of every adult child gluing another wing to the parents house, big enough to marry and have a child or two, is very popular. It is cheap, no mortgage, just buy materials and DIY with friends. And the generic conservatism of the region supports this, because it puts family and relations and community before the individual.

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