A Facebook Post that Was Written but Not Posted on Facebook

By Anonymous

There is something oddly vulgar about posting one’s mental health status on Facebook; a weird pleasure in reading about someone else’s suffering, whether it is in vicarious empathy, or in a voyeuristic thrill of seeing someone bear their garish wounds to the open air; and on the writer's end, a selfish wish to solicit sympathy and be a hero or evangelist.

So before I begin, I want to say a few things about my purposes in posting my feelings on the internet. My main request is to my friends; I hope I won't be treated any differently by them, even though that will inevitably happen. I think messages of sympathy in my inbox and a flood of comments, “love you <3” might actually be too much for me to handle. Sad reacts are probably not warranted because I do not think what I am trying to convey is actually very sad. In any case, no matter what, I would love it if I can still be [name] to you, with all his awkward, sunny and quirky personalities. Thank you.

The question at hand that I wish to address is a well-known and simple one, stigma and mental health. There is enough awareness already about the topic and so much has been written; I do not know if I have anything else to contribute. But perhaps the oddity of my own experiences and the strangeness of them warrants another voice to join the many that are now speaking up.

I can speak from the perspective of my family, and the network of Chinese friends who I was surrounded by since the cradle -- because I do think my own peculiar experience exists in a social context that arises from my childhood.

Overall there is a lot support on all ends, and it seems inappropriate to take up the tone of a complaint. However, I wonder if something needs to be said about the role of Chinese American culture in mediating how we take care of ourselves, our relationships and emotional well-being. It is difficult for me to lay a finger on it; if I were to speak about this to my parents or my brother, they would likely say it is an illusion, "Everyone suffers from these problems, not just Asians; you're probably discriminating against yourself." And yet, it is my family members that I am most concerned about, and by extension, the nebula of Chinese family friends that surround this circle—and it seems like no one wants to admit it. ("I think you're projecting," they say.) We might speculate about a number of factors, the immigrant experience, our socioeconomic histories, Confucian mannerisms, political silence and so on, but it might be termed a cold and hard fact that, if my family members were to run into mental health issues; if anyone in my network of Chinese family friends were to encounter long-term periods of gloom, no one would ask for help. No one would talk to each other. No one would call a therapist, unless they believed that their mental condition was threatening their own careers. I have heard it in agitated whispers—there is somebody who would rather walk agitatedly along the river between 1-4am than admit to the shame of needing help—although this perhaps is just a hunch. 

There seems to be a conception floating around in the Chinese communities that depression is a monolithic American condition. If you have it, you see the psychiatrist or go to peer counseling. If you don't, then you work hard and work through. But what is depression? My own conception is that it is a chronic lack of motivation (maybe, or maybe not). And so, if I do not have a chronic lack of motivation, I am certainly not depressed, and I suppose I don't need to seek help. I don't want to be diagnosed with anything, and, above all, I don't want to be diagnosed with Loneliness. I'm much less pathetic than that—so the Thought, trailing off on her wondrous way, goes.

Yet when one reads an email that I wrote less than a month ago, there is loneliness written all over it. I speak many times of a "talking therapy," which refers to in this case, psychoanalysis, though I find it quite a misnomer, because it suggests that you can just talk to someone and be cured—whereas in traditional psychoanalysis, the analyst must be trained for several years, and the analysis often lasts for two or more years of one-on-one meetings at least three times a week.

Dear [therapist],

I write to you now, not as a student interested in [a psychoanalytic topic], but as someone who is increasingly convinced that he is in need of some sort of therapy -- he does not know what, or what affliction he has -- but all he knows is that some underlying current of unhappiness lies below. As to what that is, it shames him to point it out - for it is not depression; it his will to hermit-ism and eccentricity - a desire to bury himself in the depths of books and hide his ruminations, not knowing who to share them with and not desiring to share them with anyone who is closest to him. He wishes to talk to his parents but cannot; he wishes to tell his friends that he loves them so; he wishes to explain to his brother but cannot; he wishes to post on facebook but cannot; he wishes to joke around with his colleagues in the workplace but cannot; in short, his life is surrounded by the most pressing walls of in-communication it is a miracle at all that he sends this message to you.

Now he (that is, I) have heard of something called the talking therapy, whose success lies in the opening up of silence and the convergence of one's self to one's self. I am at a loss, quite flabbergasted, why communication, that unwieldy word, seems to be at the root of my problems with family, friends and health, and do not know how to fix it, but yet possess the clarity to know that it is the root.

As he will not dare tell his parents what it is that troubles him, even less so that he wishes to seek therapy, that sign of modern American weakness, he does not know how to go about doing things. Life goes on, even at its loggerheaded pace, and things are tolerable as they are, such that without the intrusion of a therapy of sorts, he will live, indeed, hopefully, thrive.

But in short, I would like to ask you for your thoughts and will not be offended whatsoever if there is a long interval to reply, or if the reply is meagre and insubstantial. For I may as well shirk the third person, and reveal that it is I, [name], speaking quite selfishly, to you, revealing thoughts that are personal and diseased and thus stinking to the touch. But I am in need of the talking therapy and so, would be quite happy if we continue the conversation in person.

-[name]

For those who are puzzled about my reference to psychoanalysis in this email, it is not very important for our purposes, other than the fact that it is currently an unpopular practice in America, unjustifiably, because almost no one has actually read a word of Freud. You might also find that the author did not believe that he had depression. He wrote it, not to ask for a cure, but because he wanted to know more about his unconscious—and "unconscious" is one of those words that is very much misunderstood in American English. It has now been turned into a cartoon vision of the attic in the brain, but in fact, when it was first invented, I believe, it was merely a useful term for all the feelings, ideas and emotions you couldn't express in words. For, if you were conscious of the ineffable, why would you be unable to put it into words?

To all my dear friends, thank you for being concerned, but in fact, shortly after this email was written, I moved to school and found myself in a completely different environment where it is quite impossible to be incommunicado, which is sometimes a problem because I do very much like my own solitude. So while I would appreciate your messages of sympathy (it is only human to want to dispense with it), maybe I would appreciate a continuation of life, as it has been going on for you and me, more. (Yet again, Virginia Woolf once wrote that communication is health; communication is thought; communication is happiness; it is human nature to share, so if you want to talk, I'm happy to be an enthusiastic interlocutor.)

People might also want to write to me, "if you want help..." and I did choose, in the end, not to undergo psychoanalysis. I don't think I have the time and money for it, and I am worried about what my parents would say. Yet I don't think I need a cheaper, more efficient form of therapy either (like CBT, psychotherapy, dialectical behavior therapy, etc). I am more concerned that many Chinese Americans need mental health treatment and are afraid to get it. It seems also a little unfair that someone like myself who was able to spew out his thoughts, albeit clumsily, gets showered with sympathy and attention when there are many more who need it.