Our minds are shockingly vulnerable.

On re-framing mental illness without self judgment.

“Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.”
― Oliver Sacks

How often do you think about the vulnerability of your mind? Every day I take it for granted. Every day I worry that I am going to lose it. As a person who feels always on the cusp of insanity, I was really interested in reading Sarah Manning Peskins’s new book A Molecule Away from Madness. I am going to be talking to her this week - about the book and mental afflictions, some of which are curable and some not so much. Understanding how our minds function on a basic level, I feel is really important in curing mental illness and destigmatizing it.

Was there ever someone in your family who was “mentally ill?” Do you or someone in your family have a history of depression? Do people talk about it? Every family has several. I think. I have not done a formal poll. But if you answered no, I would seriously question the validity of that answer.

When I married Josh, I was worried that I was the mentally unstable one. I had a family history of depression and anxiety. I worried that his mother would think because I was so open about my struggles, that our children would somehow inherit my neuroses. And I would be an unfit wife who in turn created sub-par children, both in their maladaptive behavior and traced with hidden scares from my propensity to worry. And I get it. I do think all people want the best for the people they love. Or at least I want to believe that. (she has never once told me that she felt this way about me, it is only a fear on my part manifesting into an option I have no proof of.)

If you are someone who believes we have a choice in who we love, great. More power to you. I am not so certain I had a choice. And Josh fell in love with me, regardless of the existence of a conscious role or not. There was no trickery on my part, making him fall for me. Ok, maybe a little. I do remember doing what I would call “playing the dating game” with him in the beginning. I didn’t call him every time I thought about him. I didn’t tell him how I was in love with him only after three dates. Etc. I didn’t want to scare him with my certainty.

Have you ever questioned your sanity? (perhaps you do this all the time? I feel like to have a certain amount of self-awareness, something we all strive for these days it seems, you have to question your mental state. Perhaps this is presumptuous. Anyway, what does it mean to be sane? The definition of sanity is something akin to rational, sensical, or of sound mind. All of these synonyms are problematic in the context of moral relativity and our recent understanding that humans are emotional creatures that host rational thoughts on occasion. That the only way that one can be “sane” is if all of one’s needs are met (sleep, nutrition, love, etc) and are not affected by some external element. So what does it mean to be “well” in the mind? I would assume we will have different answers.

After being together with Josh for 6 years, I stopped taking my Paxil, I felt for the first time just how close I was to the edge of sanity. We all are. I started thinking of sanity as a tightrope. A perhaps trite metaphor but still one that feels like it accurately describes how in perfect alignment everything has to be for humans to function in this world.

I thought that Josh’s family didn’t have any mental illness - but it was just that they talked or didn’t talk about it in the same ways that we did. That it was just as present. That we are all both stable and unstable. There is no way to really know.

Side tangent; do you think people who live in cities have less depression and anxiety than people who live in the country? (apparently, people in the city. the theory is that people in the city have more options for help. And there is less stigmatization.)

If mental elements are not within our control, why do we feel the need to hide it? Say, for example, when I first went on Paxil at age 16, I was told that I could never run for office. That there would be a record of this and that people wouldn’t trust my mental state. I never wanted to run for office and so this didn’t deter me. But you wouldn’t think twice about someone who had had a history of say Cancer running for office? They are both lifelong medical conditions that for a large part are out of our control. Yes, perhaps we could have made better decisions when we were young. But mostly it comes down to things outside our control.

Perhaps it is because we don’t want other people to think we are weak? Or do we not want to burden them with our problems? But if actually, we have somewhat little control over them is it really a burden to ask for help?

In Sara Manning Peskin’s book, she illustrates different ways that our brains can be “hijacked.” For me, I started to re-think blame and accountability in the context of what well-being is and looks like. Who’s fault insanity is if we have very little control over it? (In the past I have blamed myself for my sadness. That there was something deficient or less than in my core being that was unworthy.) And ultimately, how we as individuals like to feel like we are in control, but there is just so much we don’t know.

“Let us advance on Chaos and the Dark”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

More about A Molecule Away from Madness:

A college student cannot remember if she has eaten breakfast. By dinner, she is strapped to a hospital bed, convinced she is battling zombies. A man planning to propose marriage instead becomes violently enraged, gripped by body spasms so severe that he nearly bites off his own tongue. One after another, poor farmers in South Carolina drop dead from a mysterious epidemic of dementia.

With an intoxicating blend of history and intrigue, Sara Manning Peskin invites readers to play medical detective, tracing each diagnosis from the patient to an ailing nervous system. Along the way, Peskin entertains with tales of the sometimes outlandish, often criticized, and forever devoted scientists who discovered it all. A Molecule Away from Madness is an unputdownable journey into the deepest mysteries of our brains.