Bipolar 2 From Inside and Out

Posts tagged ‘Internet’

Men’s Mental Health and the Manosphere

June, which is coming up faster than you think, is Men’s Mental Health Month. We can expect PSAs about depression and PTSD, messages that men are allowed to have feelings and seek help, and actors and sports stars admitting they have reached out to other men who were having problems.

Teens and young men in particular need to see and hear these messages. In addition to raging hormones and brains that aren’t fully developed in the impulse control regions, young men don’t often learn how to deal with troubled thoughts and feelings, and they can fall victim to addiction to violent video games or online gambling. These powerful forces influence them in ways that are detrimental to their mental and emotional health.

And on top of all that, they can be lured into unhealthy feelings and behaviors by the Manosphere.

What Is the Manosphere?

The manosphere is a section of the internet, including social media apps, Reddit, YouTube, blogs, podcasts, gaming forums, websites, and communities that give a voice to dissatisfied, lonely, frustrated, and frequently hostile men. Their needs are real, but the solutions offered for them are harmful. The manosphere likely originated from the men’s rights movement, which promoted the idea that men were treated poorly in custody decisions and other areas of life. Much of the blame was directed at feminists. One of the manosphere’s main complaints is that by encouraging men to get in touch with their softer sides and emotions, men are being feminized, and that’s a bad thing. They call giving in to feminist thinking “taking the red pill,” a reference to the movie The Matrix. Red pill content is pervasive on the internet and often referred to in real-life conversations.

The manosphere seeks to offer a different definition of masculinity that they say young people are not receiving. Unfortunately, what the manosphere presents as an alternative is toxic masculinity and a return to caveman-like behavior. Women who object to what they are promoting are viciously and often obscenely attacked online. Women in the #MeToo movement are met with stories of false accusations of rape, and women are routinely pictured as sex objects and/or adversaries. In addition, segments of the manosphere promote anti-LGBT+ views, racism, and other forms of hate speech. And the “incel” community (involuntary celibates), who blame women for not being sexually attracted to them, have been known to attack women physically in real life. They have a sense of entitlement when it comes to women’s bodies.

Why Is the Manosphere Harmful to Men’s Mental Health?

First, denizens of the manosphere preach extreme self-reliance. And they deny that psychological problems even exist. Men who ask for help are seen as weak. They’re supposed to handle all their difficulties themselves. They ignore or scorn messages that seeking help for mental health is legitimate. There’s tremendous stigma attached to seeking help for depression, anxiety, loneliness, and relationship problems. And the manosphere teaches maladaptive coping mechanisms, rage, and aggression disguised as bonding and shared hardship.

Then, too, the manosphere promotes messages they call “male empowerment” or self-improvement. Teens and young men are particularly vulnerable. It sounds so positive and harmless—or fun, as parts of the manosphere claim to turn boys and young men into “pick-up artists” who scoff at the idea of consent. Empowerment, as the manosphere defines it, appeals to youngsters who feel alienated and discontented. It also results in disrespectful harassment and even violent behavior towards women and trans people they see as pushy or threatening, including authority figures such as teachers, women who blog about video games, and their female classmates as well.

The masculine ideal in the manosphere relies heavily on the physical attributes of video game and action movie heroes or bodybuilders: toned and ripped, square-jawed, and athletic. Achieving this is called “looksmaxxing,” and teens and young men are particularly susceptible to it. Preteen and teen girls already get messages from the media that their looks are deficient and in need of sometimes extreme improvement; now, preteen and teen boys are getting similar messages. This process results in significantly lowered self-esteem, and the manosphere seems to offer a solution, such as ads for products, coaches, courses, and supplements, often dangerous ones, that will help youngsters achieve the “right” body type. (Teens have actually been advised to tap on their face with a small hammer to achieve the “chiseled jaw” look.)

What to Do About the Manosphere

Combatting the malign influence of the manosphere will not be easy. Manosphere influencers present messages that appeal to teens and young men, who don’t realize how harmful they are. Getting young males to listen to messages that men are allowed to have, and do have, mental health difficulties, and that seeking professional help is acceptable, isn’t a “sexy” message that plays on insecurity, misogyny, and blame-shifting. But it’s something that needs to be done before we lose a generation of young men to a vision of toxic masculinity.

Another avenue that needs to be considered is educating young men with critical thinking skills and information on how the internet works. They need to be able to examine manosphere content with an eye toward how reliable the information they receive is and what the poster has to gain. They need to understand that when they click on a link or watch a video, they will receive more content related to that interaction—more videos of Andrew Tate and other influencers, more links to other manosphere sites, more content that espouses misogynistic and patriarchal views, and more looksmaxxing promotion.

We need safe, male-friendly, and peer-to-peer spaces in families, schools, and counseling practices for young men to process what they hear versus what they feel. They need to know that talking to other young men and to mental health professionals about their problems, questions, and difficulties is a valid way to get the support they need. We need to offer alternatives to the manosphere, examples of nontoxic masculinity, and ideologies that don’t present women as the enemies of men. We need to present messages that there is no one way to look or to be if you’re male, and no one way that women view men or act toward them. In particular, those messages need to come from male role models in boys’ lives and in the media. And those messages need to be appealing and repeated. Of course, women have a lot to offer, too. But until the influence of the manosphere is tamed, women’s messages are likely to be discounted, ignored, or even violently rejected.

That’s a lot to ask of a PSA.

Category:

mental health

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How I’ve Experienced Group Therapy

I’m not great at group therapy. I’ve tried, but I never managed to get anything from it.

It may be familial. My father had a particularly vicious cancer, multiple myeloma, which he survived for a dozen years, a lot longer than the doctors thought he would back then.

The hospital where he was diagnosed and treated offered support groups for cancer patients. I remember one called “Make Today Count” (which I think implies a certain recognition of mortality that’s not really encouraging – but I’ve never faced it myself).

My father refused to go. Adamantly. Of course, the choice was up to him, but he chose not to get involved and made no apology for it. It wasn’t that he couldn’t accept help. He just relied on family and friends for it – people he knew and had a connection with. I’m sure that support helped him to survive as long as he did, and I can see how a group of strangers, even if they had the same or similar conditions, wouldn’t appeal to his independent streak. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a positive mental attitude, either. No one could have been more determined that he was going to persevere for as long as possible. No one could have been more confident that he would prevail. And no one could have kept doing the things he loved for as long as possible.

I have had experiences with group therapy, but they have not been successful. When I was in college and experiencing a depressive phase, I went to a group offered by the university’s health services. I was skeptical at first. One woman’s problem was that she didn’t know whether she should marry a rich guy or a poor guy who had both proposed to her. (I’m not denying that she was conflicted, but I wondered how much a mental health group could help. Maybe individual therapy could have helped her clarify her thinking, but then again, I just don’t know.)

The other thing I remember was that once the group facilitator issued us a challenge – which of us could role-play meeting another person and holding a conversation with them. My hand went up, and I performed the task easily. I had reached the point where I could fake my way through simple social encounters, so it wasn’t all that difficult. The facilitator looked impressed and slightly disbelieving. It was something I already knew how to do, so it didn’t actually help me with my problems. I don’t know if it helped anyone else either.

Another time, when I was out of college and in private therapy, my therapist was going on vacation and recommended a group I could go to while she was away. They took us through a relatively simple exercise – making a drawing of our life journey. As I recall, we used only symbols, no words.

When I finished, I burst out crying uncontrollably and didn’t know why. I don’t remember anyone there helping me process what I was feeling. Maybe I expected too much from a therapy group. Maybe they weren’t equipped to handle a meltdown. But it was a thoroughly upsetting and unhelpful experience, and I didn’t go back.

Another group I attended a few times struck me as a bit peculiar. The participants each related a difficult situation they had been in and the symptoms they experienced, then told how they would have handled it previously and how they handled it now. There were lots of quotes from a book they all carried like a bible. There was no discussion – just the facts and the quotes. (Once I offered someone a piece of gum or a mint and they pointed to me, chuckled, and said, “Dry mouth!”) Again, I didn’t find it really helpful.

At this point, I’ve pretty much given up on therapy groups. Perhaps, like my father, I am simply not a group person. I know there are those who will say that I simply haven’t found the right group. They may be right, but I have stopped looking.

There are lots of mental health groups – not therapy groups, of course – on Facebook and elsewhere on the internet. I’ve become the moderator of one (https://www.facebook.com/groups/HopeforTroubledMinds – come check it out if you want to). What founder Tony Roberts and I try to do is offer a place for people with brain illnesses to learn from and share their experiences, with a faith component. Tony, who is much more in touch with the faith-based communities than I am, provides most of that part of the content. I facilitate by curating articles from around the internet on anxiety, depression, PTSD, bipolar disorder, psychosis, and general mental health. I post memes that relate to mental health or offer encouragement – or sometimes ones designed to bring humor to the subject. And I ask questions intended to spark discussion. I hope it helps.

And I also hope that other people have had better experiences than mine. I’d love to hear about them.

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Category:

mental health

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Beware the Mental Health Meme

This post was specially written for BlogHer’s Social Media and Blogging section, but I thought it worth sharing here too. (Credit for the photo goes to my husband, Dan Reily.)

 

Slide1

Most Internet memes are harmless, or even amusing. They proclaim that someone has a wonderful granddaughter or that kittens are cute.

But some memes that travel the world sow unhelpful or even hurtful ideas as they go. The one above appears mild and even inspiring, but to a person with mental illness, it says a lot more than appears on the surface.

The meme that started me on this train of thought was one that invited people to embrace the crazy or enjoy the madness or some such. As a person with mental illness – bipolar disorder – I found the message troubling. The comments were even more so. One said that manic-depressives could at least enjoy the mania.

Admittedly, mania comes with feelings of soaring confidence and a whirlwind of creativity. Mania can also prompt risky behaviors – reckless driving, shoplifting, unsafe or extramarital sex – that can lead to a lifetime of problems, including failed relationships, arrest records, serious debt, and worse. Those are surely the opposite of enjoyable.

But I didn’t know if I was alone in these feelings, so I asked other bipolar bloggers how they react to popular memes. Here’s what they had to say.

Nondescript inspirational memes (of the sort that proclaim daylight follows darkness) seem relatively harmless. Reactions went from “meh” to “a waste of time.” Bipolar blogger Brad Shreve (insightsbipolarbear.com) likens them to affirmations. His research showed that evidence from reputable studies confirms that affirmations mitigate stress. Nevertheless, “I find most of them trite and condescending,” he says. “They just aren’t my thing. I choose meditation.”

Amy Balot, who blogs at madwomanacrossthewater.net, dislikes the sort of memes that tout positivity. “I do have a big problem with the way a lot of ‘motivational’ images seem to imply that all you need to do is think positive thoughts and your life will be hunky-dory,” she says. “It seems to be blaming people for things like depression or anxiety.”

Supposedly positive memes raise the hackles on a number of the bloggers. Dyane Leshin-Harwood, blogger at proudlybipolar.wordpress.com and author of the upcoming memoir Birth of a New Brain, says they range from “cool and empowering” to “[make] me feel guilty that my life isn’t as good as it could

be! It seems like it would bring anyone with bipolar depression down even
further.”

It does that to me as well.

Many such memes also promote a “bootstrap” approach to mental illness – which Jim Buchanan, who blogs at mythoughts62.wordpress.com, finds “irritating”: “I feel that this sort of thinking is harmful and it essentially blames the person reading it for their problems by implying that they ‘don’t want to allow themselves’ what is needed for a good life.”

Shreve adds, “Usually these entail [the idea that] the individual can change by doing one thing – [changing] our attitude. As if we could just snap out of depression, mania and more, if we would just put [our] mind to it. I find these guilty of mental health shaming.”

And as for the “find-your-sanity-in nature” meme that began this article? Amy Balot doesn’t care for that type. “I don’t dispute that spending time with animals or outdoors can be great and even therapeutic; but I do dispute the implication that these things are a replacement for therapy or better than therapy,” she says. “It minimizes the struggles of the mentally ill and says they’d be ok if they just took their dogs for more walks in the woods. Not all problems are solved by a little sunshine and fresh air.”

Memes intended to be humorous are a gray area, since humor is so subjective. Personally, I don’t mind being called “crazy,” but many bipolar people do. Using “crazy,” “insane,” or any of the many synonyms – “weird,” “eccentric,” “not normal” – can make people with mental disorders feel as if the meme speaks directly to them, even if that wasn’t intended.

But some people with mental disorders enjoy a gentle poke of fun at themselves. Shreve agrees: “These can be touchy because they could hurt or offend someone who is going through a difficult time, but they help me.” (Here’s one of his favorites: http://www.someecards.com/usercards/viewcard/326b0799dbae216dbe3bf6069e297ea48d).

I must admit that I can sometimes see humor in our situations. I’ve written pieces called “The Lighter Side of Insomnia” and “Confessions of a Crazy Cat Lady.” It’s not a matter of malice being intended; I don’t think people who pass along memes that we consider hurtful are “out to get” those with mental disorders. But that’s the problem: They don’t think before they click “Share.”

So I’m asking: Please think first. One of four Americans will have a mental or mood disorder at some time during their lives. You wouldn’t make fun of someone with a physical illness. Ask yourself: Would this meme still be amusing or inspiring or helpful if you substituted fibromyalgia or diabetes or paraplegia for “mental illness”?

If not, think again.

Category:

mental health

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