Sticks and stones
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me.
Is that true? Do names have meaning, power, or can they be shrugged off? I’d suggest that it depends on who hears it, and what state the hearer is in.
Crazy as a loon/crazy as a fox/crazy as a shithouse rat/Loony/Gaga/Off her rocker/Off the deep end/around the bend/Batshit/Batty/Bonkers/Bugged out/wacked out/wigged out/Psycho/mental/demented/Drank the Kool-Aid/One can short of a six-pack/Not right in the head.
If the hearer of the name-calling is feeling vulnerable, misunderstood, and worthless? Those terms have wounding power indeed, and only serve to feed the feelings of worthlessness the sufferer is feeling. If they’re in a better place, mentally, there’s less harm to be done, because they know that the name-caller has no perspective on what it means to actually be crazy. But when you’re in the midst of it? You hear it differently. That name-calling is shorthand for the following internal monologue: “You’re crazy, you’re worthless, no one loves you. No one could love you. You’re not worthy of it, because your crazy.” Round and round that thinking goes, until your own brand of crazy breaks out into suicide or violence. “But I didn’t mean it,” “You knew I was kidding,” “you taking things too seriously!” It doesn’t matter if you say these things. The harm is already done– the name-caller has jump-started the cycle, the circle, that results in black hole suicide or blood red rage.
I have used these words to refer to myself, and to refer to my mother, especially when she’s aggravating me. I need to make light of my illness, of her illness, for a moment, because things are sometimes too serious to face them full on. But I would never use these names to her face, and I never describe her as anything but “mentally ill” or “bipolar” or “having some problems” when I’m in public. When I’m disclosing my illness for the first time, I talk about it in precise medical terms. Informal comments that “I’m feeling crazy today” are reserved only for those who have proven their understanding, who get it, who would never call me crazy when I really was. Because then, unlike other times, the words have power, and hurt, and get me going in a bad spiral, down, down, down. It feels bottomless inside my own head– why would you try to make it worse once I’ve told you how it is? When I am in my bad space, I’ll thank you kindly to refer to me and my illness clinically. And while I can only speak for myself, it’s my feeling that other fellow sufferers feel the same way.
The mentally ill/Depressed/Anxious/Bipolar/Manic-Depressive/Schizophrenic/ Disassociative/ personality disorder/mental trauma/biochemical disorder/ hormonal disorder/Survivor of rape/child abuse/sexual abuse/verbal abuse/war/ civil strife/ Functional/Disabled.
Those who don’t know better must be made to medicalize mental illness and mental trauma– to be forced to use the clinically correct terms in discussing someone’s mental state. Those terms have meaning, that can be ascertained by looking it up. By doing a little research. By taking care. Clinical terminology can provoke scientific curiousity– “what does that mean?” “how does that work?” and “how do you treat it?” Make the discussion serious again, eliminate the “joking” terms that can wound at the right-wrong time. Those without the experience of a sufferer or a caregiver must learn, must be forced to confront the truth– that names, deployed at precisely the wrong time, can be sticks and stones.
March 10th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Hmm.
One thing – on the opening saying. Any non-native English speaker I’ve introduced to it always says that it is a dumb saying, that it should be something that says words are worse than anything.
And I don’t know. I agree with you about medicalizing the medical rather than crazifying it. But I often use “crazy” and many of the others in the opposite way, sort of like “queer” got changed, and even “cunt.” If I use words like that on myself, or you for yourself, as a professional lawyer and full person, maybe you take the sting out of them for someone more obviously disabled.
And personally, the term that still makes me cringe most is bipolar or manic depressive – I’d rather be some undefined crazy. Once they nail it down like that, to me it sounds so much worse. I don’t think I’ve hardly said either of those terms aloud, ever. If I need to tell someone, I literally almost have to say, “You know…the thing they treat with lithium.”
Think I might also post this over at your blog.
March 10th, 2008 at 11:05 am
I could not agree with you more. What we joke about ourselves is one thing because we do it at the times, as you say when we need a little levity, or when we feel comfortable with certain people and can feel we trust them to “get it”. I have found that for me being called the wrong thing/in the wrong way/at the wrong time can trigger severe defensiveness. But then when the dust has settled I usually cry – for the way I was defined and for the weariness those struggles can cause.
As always a wonderful post.
March 12th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
I remember one day, while returning from a supervised walk, in the hospital, my supervisor pushed the button for the fourth floor, psyche ward, and the woman in the elevator cringed, and hugged her daughter closer. When the daughter, alarmed, asked her why, the woman said, quite clearly, “The fourth floor is where the crazy psycho’s live”. Although she assumed that I was quite well, and couldn’t have guessed that I was hospitalized for my bipolar, the guilt and shame that burned in me then is something I won’t ever forget. Or the immediate rage that sprang forth. And sadly, that child will in turn grow up and maybe see people through her mothers eyes. Talk about cycles.
March 14th, 2008 at 3:01 am
And sometimes, it doesn’t matter WHAT time “crazy” is used; the mere hint that you’ve done something out-of-sorts is enough to launch you down the rabbit hole all by yourself.
Thank you deeply for this.
March 16th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
I have really mixed feelings about words like “crazy” and “nutty” etc.
I absolutely 100% agree that mental illness needs to be medicalized for people to really start to understand and respect the various and very different kinds of mental illnesses suffered by people.
But I feel a lot more comfortable when I approach my own mental illness with levity. A lot of levity. I don’t get hurt ever if someone calls me “crazy” or “mental”. I just say “Why, yes I am!” because I have been working really hard in the past few years to see the blessings of mental illness.
One thing that really changed my way of talking about my mental state and my way of looking at it was an experience I had with a neighbor. It wasn’t the name she used to describe my mental conditions it was her attitude about it. After revealing to her that I had finally gotten an official diagnosis she had this to say “Not everyone is as understanding as I am, I wouldn’t tell anyone else in the neighborhood about your diagnosis.”
I felt so dirty and put down. I also felt anger. I decided right there and then that I would be open about my mental illness and I would seek to feel comfortable with it and embrace it as a part of who I am. So if someone wants to call me “loony” or “psycho”, let them. I will endeavor to show people that for me, that is a compliment.
Having said all that (remember I said I had mixed feelings about this) I really try to reserve that levity for myself and not apply it to other mentally ill people unless I feel confident that they know the spirit in which my words are spoken. Because for a lot of people, it’s true that words can really bite. And I don’t want to bite anyone.