In the Irish language, we are not our emotions. We are not sad or anxious. We have sadness or anxiety on us.
To say I am sad, we say tá brón orm – there is sadness on me.
I am anxious, tá imní orm – there is anxiety on me.
The language recognizes these as passing states, not permanent fixtures of who we are.
I saw this on Facebook and it immediately caught my attention. I have always wondered why we speak of mental conditions as though they are permanent. I have never heard someone with Melanoma say, “I am cancer.” We never expect a person who has had a hard attack to claim, “I am heart disease.” Some how when it comes to our mental state we often make the mistake of acting as though people are their emotions.
My mother was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Her doctor never said that she was bipolar but many lay people would refer to her that way as though the sum of who she was as a person was defined in a label. The truth is that her bipolar disorder was chronic and had to be treated with daily medications much like I take a pill for my GERD, but she did not always display the symptoms of her illness. More time than not she had her illness under control.
If I miss a few days of my Prilosec I end up with heartburn so intense that I become unable to function. So too it was with my mother. She relied on her meds to keep her disorder at bay. If she tried to wean herself from the medication the symptoms of depression and mania would return, so my brothers and I monitored her regularly to be certain that she was following the directions of her doctor. When all went as prescribed she was delightfully as “normal” as anyone. Sadly, she and I both despised the word normal because it too implied that she was somehow broken, different, not quite right.
We do people a huge disservice whenever we equate anyone with any kind of mental illness as being that illness. Society has a way of making those who are afflicted feel like pariah. They want to hide the disorder. They want to be seen for who they are. They don’t want to be the condition that is making them unwell.
We have to be careful how we say things about people. We sometimes complain that we should not have to measure our words. We argue that being “woke” is a bad thing that limits the truths that we might speak. Instead I would propose that using our language in a way that does not demean others is the way we should always be.
We use the term “he/she is” in some very negative ways. A person should not be defined by either his/her appearance or the workings of the brain. We simply do not yet understand enough about why some people suffer from mental illness or have addictions to food, drugs, alcohol, sex. Doctors and researchers have barely uncovered the mysteries of how our brains work and why the neurological activity of our brains trigger all kinds of behaviors.
I truly hope that the day will come when we are as confident in our knowledge of the brain as we are about the heart, kidneys, or eyes. I dream of a time when doctors will know exactly how to treat and defeat mental illnesses just like they do with cancer. In the meantime surely we have evolved enough as humans to quit acting as though we are still in the middle ages when people believed in witches. We think we have accurate descriptions of what is normal and what is not but when it comes to mental states our ideas do not take into account the incredible diversity of the human brain.
I don’t know exactly why I possess an introverted personality but I do. It is not who I am. There is so much more to me than the fact that I feel better in a quiet environment than in a raucous one. It should be long past time that we eschew phrases like She is crazy. He is anxious. They are sad. Instead let’s get better with language like the Irish and learn to say “She has been afflicted by a mental illness. He is feeling anxious. They are dealing with sadness.”
Think about how much it hurts for the people afflicted with emotional distress or any form of neurological illness to feel as though they have become their psychological conditions. They are so much more wonderful that that. They deserve our loving respect. Their states of mind are passing and only a small part of who they are. When we refer to them let’s use language that is respectful.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 