Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays. As a child, I remember walking into my grandmother’s dining room and being captivated by the table where we would all soon be dining.
Special place settings adorned the table, and just a few hours after arriving, the table would be filled with family, friends and food. Everyone brought something to the table.
However, what made these moments so meaningful wasn’t the place settings or the food; it was something deeper, something that couldn’t be captured in a photograph . . . something invisible.
Have you ever felt invisible? Unfortunately, as many beautiful moments I had during the holiday season growing up, I also had many other moments that were filled with loneliness, struggles, and a feeling of being unseen - even while sitting at a table full of people that I loved.
Many of the struggles that individuals around us navigate can’t be seen. It would be easier if we could clearly see the signs when someone is struggling with mental health challenges, but that’s not always the case.
Often, an individual who struggles with mental health challenges, conditions or crises does go unnoticed. The struggle is something deeper, something that can’t be captured in a photograph, something invisible.
But why is it so hard to see? One of the major contributing factors is the stigma that is attached to mental health challenges.
Unfortunately, even with increased cultural awareness about the realities of mental health challenges, it’s easier for people to suffer in silence.
Often, individuals who struggle have become experts at hiding what’s going on below the surface. They are often afraid of being misjudged, misunderstood, feel like they’re going to be a burden, or don’t want to bother anyone with their struggles. They can be sitting right next to us at the table and we wouldn’t even notice.
In addition to stigma, the other major contributing factor is lack of understanding concerning the realities of mental health challenges. Explicitly or implicitly individuals are encouraged to pick themselves up by their bootstraps.
This fosters the notion that mental health challenges are always something that someone can quickly get over or get through if they try hard enough.
Biologically and neurologically this simply isn’t the case. Even if an individual were able to push through, they still face sociological pressures to conform to the status quo that rewards the perception of happiness.
It reminds me of a line from one of my favorite poems, “Solitude,” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox that says, “laugh and the world laughs with you; weep and you weep alone.”
Assuming someone who is in the midst of a mental health crisis or has a diagnosed mental health condition can simply “get over it” is the same as having an expectation of a family member with no oven in their home to cook the turkey for the family gathering. If someone doesn’t possess the tools, it isn’t reasonable to have an expectation of them to perform a task where those tools are required.
In addition to an individual not having an oven, some ovens can’t get up to temperature (chemical imbalances), some are missing oven racks (neurodevelopmental differences in form and functions of specific systems), some have faulty thermostats (dysregulated reward centers), some have bad control panels (misfirings in the orbitofrontal cortex), and some have limited functions because they were victims of misuse or abuse in the past (PTSD and trauma).
The vast majority of the times these forms of dysregulation and imbalance happen through no fault of the individual who is experiencing them.
So, how is it possible to respond and understand something that we can’t see? In addition to being intentional about increasing our knowledge and awareness, one of the best things we can do is free ourselves from the burden of having to have all the answers or the desire to fix the problem.
Most people long for unconditional acceptance more than comprehensive understanding. It’s entirely possible for us to respond with compassion (empathy plus action) to the people we share spaces and tables with without having to fix them or understand everything that they’re going through.
While we can’t see the invisible things people are carrying, we can always offer them a seat at our table.
As we continue this conversation, we will explore what it means to bring something meaningful to the table.
