but first...
what is “OPEN”?
This project has been on my mind for several years now. I am constantly trying to find new curiosities to cultivate, and more often than not, those curiosities come about through hearing what others see in or feel about different facets of life. The Mental Health issue is the first in this zine series, in which I will be gathering some of my own objective research and giving it a place to coincide with the subjective experiences of everyday individuals. Numbers and surveys only scratch the surface of personal realities; mental health, for example, resonates with everyone while playing a very different role in separate individual lives and contexts. I was in high school when I first started contemplating my mental state, and like many others, I experienced my first heavy feelings of depression. Those feelings manifested into unhealthy coping mechanisms because I was never taught how to talk about mental health; at that point in time, I had no idea that many of my peers were experiencing the same thoughts and grievances. I started a blog in my junior year (2016) where I opened up about the pains and frustrations I was facing, and when I shared those thoughts with my social media following, I was shocked at how my classmates, friends, and instagram followers responded. I was scared that I would be viewed as “attention seeking”, but instead I was met with a myriad of responses along the lines of “Thank God I’m not alone in feeling this way.”
How are we America as of 2018 18%
American adults *diagnosed* 1 with a mental health condition
Nearly half of these have a co-occurring substance 1 abuse disorder.
Drug overdose deaths have increased from 6.1 / 100,000 in 1999 to 20.7 / 100,000 in 2018 — over a three hundred percent 1 increase.
Youth Rates of Depression
Youth rates of depression are increasing and 76% of youths are getting insufficient treatment, if any.
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Mental Health America
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feeling today? America as of COVID-19 Social isolation and loneliness is linked to reduced physical and mental health. US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy highlights the high prevalence of loneliness should be viewed as a public health concern as it is correlated with reduced lifespan and a risk factor for 2 mental and physical health disorders. 69% of teens are feeling detached and isolated. They are more likely to be obsessed with screens since the spread of COVID-19 and more likely to believe their obsession is harmful. 3
Self reports of anxiety or depression in July of 2020 was about 40.1% as compared to 11% from January to June in 2019. 4
Just 13% of Americans see their lives going back to exactly how they were before COVID-19. 3
42% of people have made positive life changes they plan to maintain in the future, while only 3% of people feel they have developed bad habits that will stick with them. 3
I don’t want to return to my pre-COVID normal. I want to learn from this and take a hard look at the chaos I was living in and the rushed, distracted, unquiet path I was on. I was running so fast, and accomplishing very little of substance. 2 Kaiser Family Foundation, “The Implications of COVID-19 for Mental Health and Substance Use” 3 Known, “The Human Condition 2020: Shock to the System” 4 CDC National Center for Health Statistics
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— 51, female 5
Therapy, Behind the Scenes I sat down with Claire Lawrance (MA, LCPC), head of Clarity Counseling in Bozeman, Montana, to hear what goes on in the day-to-day mind of the very people who help us understand our own brains.
When you started out as a counselor, was it hard separating yourself from your profession? I suppose, did it take awhile to acclimate to being an impartial person there to help a client out with what’s going on in their mind? I think that was one thing that my graduate program did an excellent job drilling into our head: the importance of self awareness. It was a requirement in my grad program that we all received our own therapy for at least ten sessions, so that was a constant conversation that was happening — be aware of your own feelings so that you don’t accidentally put them on someone else. I think that’s really important even more so than not having enough competency to work with a certain issue, because that’s how you stand to harm somebody the most — if you’re accidentally asserting things like “I’m sure this is what you’re feeling” or “this is what’s happening for you” but not self-aware of what you’re processing.
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So I want to say in some ways, right away; like I said it was a constant dialogue within my study. Like, when you feel that “oh me too” urge, you need to think about it and discern whether that sentiment would be useful or not. It’s a skill that gets honed in more with practice, because it’s a funny thing to have a separate piece of your brain making connections back to yourself while remembering not to let your own emotions come into play. With practice you just adapt to compartmentalize in a way. It’s something you’re going to be cognitively aware of from the start, but you’ll have missteps from time to time. It also takes practice to be aware of what your body does in session, because those can be the cues of asking “Why did that sit in my stomach so funny?” but remembering to address it out-of-session with your own therapist or, if you’re in the supervision stage, with your supervisor.
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How would you say your job as a therapist plays into your daily life? How hard can it be, say, when you finish a really heavy session with a client — does that affect you when you leave the office? It’s another one of those things that you practice and get better at. You’re always going to be affected to some extent by your clients. I can’t ask for the amount of extreme authenticity and vulnerability that I ask for from people if I’m not also being authentic. So yeah, there absolutely are times where I leave a session and get home feeling like I don’t want to be around or talk to anyone. But those are few and far between. Cognitively I think it’s easier, because you always have the layer of “I’m listening to this because it’s my job to help do something about it,” which I think can make it feel less hopeless or heavy, because the attention needs to be shifted towards “how can I help.” I think that more often what happens is that my body and nervous system are what soak it up the most. My body is absorbing all these different energies and emotions in this room all day, so I need to be vigilant about self care. Even when I don’t feel aware of when I’m having a hard day, I’m adamant about doing the things that I do regularly when I’m feeling fine. You don’t always get to know what your brain
stem is doing throughout the day, so I always take care to make time for things like yoga, movement — things that help my body move and metabolize those emotions. That’s probably one of the biggest things that affects my day-to-day, because I’m militant about ensuring that those boundaries I set around yoga classes and whatnot aren’t infringed upon by going out to dinner or drinks, even when I want to do those things too. I think another way I feel affected is through my interpersonal relationships. Um, this might sound a little crass, but I’m just not really able to have people in my personal life who don’t have good communication skills and, frankly, don’t do their own work or get their own therapy and walk that path of introspection. I mean, it’s just going to be awful the first time I say “Hey, you said this thing, and it kind of hurt my feelings, and this is how I felt about it, and then it made me think about this one time my mom did that, so anyway next time in the future…” You know, like that’s really overwhelming to someone who’s not used to talking like that. So in my interpersonal relationships and dating -- I mean, I’ve never felt the urge to therapize my friends, but you can’t help knowing what you know, and if someone blows up at you it’s not
helpful when you say “Hey, can we talk real quick about how this is not about me, it’s about this other stuff going on in your life” like no one wants to hear that when they’re mad at you in the moment. So yeah, that’s hard, haha, that can be difficult.
“This might sound a little crass, but I’m just not really able to have people in my personal life who don’t have good communication skills and, frankly, don’t do their own work or get their own therapy and walk that path of introspection.” How would you say your job as a therapist plays into your daily life? You mention compartmentalizing, but how hard can it be, say, when you finish a really heavy session with a client — does that affect you when you leave the office? Yeah, and that’s another thing that happens a lot. People have a really quick excuse if they don’t want to talk to me about something. It’s a really easy out when they can just be like, “You’re just therapizing me!” In reality, I’m trying not to, I just also want to talk as a human. Which also speaks to the fact that I think a lot of people don’t quite get what therapy is. It’s not just something I can do to someone. I’m never therapizing someone when I don’t mean to be; it’s not something I can do unintentionally. OPEN - MENTAL HEALTH
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Burnout has come to mean something different to me; Is it a pretty fair emotional balance between walking away from a session that felt very productive and helpful for that person, vs. one where it did seem far heavier or discouraging? Like, does a session ever feel as though you didn’t do your job, or do you ever let that doubt creep in when a session wasn’t necessarily the most hopeful or progressive? Oh yeah, definitely. Because it’s such a collaborative process, that is really tricky. Right, because if I feel like I’m doing my job to the best of my ability, there are still going to be situations where that doesn’t feel like the case. It’s the whole ‘You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink’ idea. I think that with any sort of job it feels like if you do it well, it should turn out well; but it’s hard when that’s not always true. So the imposter syndrome can always creep in, leaving you to question whether you’re seeing this right or why it isn’t going well. These are important questions to ask yourself in general all the time. Even as much as you do your own work, do your own therapy, staff up the cases so you 8
know which of your own stuff is getting in the way; everybody’s got blind spots and you can still get sideswiped sometimes. It’s important to make sure that you accept that not all the responsibility is yours, acknowledge that clients have their own responsibility and their own right to empower themselves. I can’t rob them of their own autonomy. Back to the question though, in the positive sessions that can happen as well, and it is just constant compartmentalization. I get a 10 minute break between back-to-back sessions, and I can’t be super pumped about how a session went while the next person coming through the door is going through a depressive episode. That’s going to be just as detrimental as if it were flopped: if I were feeling really low-energy and too down to really listen to someone. And that comes from having a lot of permission for yourself. It is far better for me to not see a client if I’m in a place where I can’t compartmentalize or something happened or i.01 FALL/WINTER 2020
whatever, which isn’t fair in some ways. I am so strict in my cancellation policy for clients, however, I will hold space for what is ethical. If I have to cancel a client session because I can’t put myself in a good position to practice and really be there for a person, then I have to respect that boundary at that time. It really does just take you being permissive with yourself, that you’re going to be affected. You should be affected if you’re doing it right. You always have to think, “Is this thing getting in the way?” Can you be affected by what your clients are bringing into the room and going through without that stuff getting in the way with how you operate? I have like eight brains thinking at the same time.
I try not to conceptualize it as this place that should never be reached. So then how do you prevent yourself from reaching mental or emotional burnout? You’ve mentioned being permissive, compartmentalizing, and practicing self care but could you elaborate? First, I think I should mention that every therapist gets burnt out, and probably more than once in their career. Burnout has come to mean something different to me; I try not to conceptualize it as this place that should never be reached. It’s a spectrum like everything else, like the closer you get to it, you just have to figure out what brings you back away from it. I’m really careful with the amount of clients I see in a day, for example. If I am working 8 hours, I will not be seeing 8 clients that day. Like, sure, I might have the time in my day to fit an extra person in, but if I make an exception here and another one over here, then it can turn the day into a slippery slope. Five clients is an unusually full day for me, and that’s really hard, because these are relationships and people I care about. You want to fit people in when they need to see you,
but you have to respect those boundaries and maintain an ethical practice like I mentioned before. I don’t ever see more than 3 clients back-to-back. I try not to let a session go past its scheduled hour, because I only have 10 minutes between backto-back sessions. And those 10 minutes are precious to me. I protect those really carefully, I get my own therapy, always. I also will say I don’t trust therapists who don’t get their own therapy. Do you ever listen to My Favorite Murder? They talk a lot about mental health on that podcast when they aren’t talking about murder. They discuss their own experiences in therapy and with meds and stuff, which I love. One of the hosts had this quote that I really enjoyed: “When you’re juggling a lot of balls, you just have to decide which ones are glass and which are plastic. There are plastic balls that can hit the ground, and they’re okay and you can pick them back up when you’re able. And there OPEN - MENTAL HEALTH
are glass balls that can’t hit the ground.” So, incorporating that into my work, the day isn’t going to fall apart if I miss an email. Or if I can’t be urgent with the administrative tasks, I always always stay on top of the clinical stuff -- that’s the glass ball. And also I think that getting to know what burnout really feels like on an individual level is important. I have a few physical reactions that I now know I get when I’m working too hard. And I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t let myself reach burnout, or if I hadn’t gone to therapy. I feel like now I know how to see the symptoms earlier so I can back away from reaching that point. So I guess part of not burning out is allowing yourself to burn out and learn from it.
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So part of what prevented me from seeing a therapist early on in quarantine was that I wasn’t sure whether telehealth would be very helpful. I really value the ability to physically separate myself from my environment and have my body language analyzed. But of course there’s also the thought that any therapy is better than none, but I guess how could you make more of an argument for telehealth? Initially I was really against tele-therapy; I didn’t want to compromise the quality of the services I was practicing. I worked with Betterhelp when I was first moving and transitioning to find a job here, and I was pleasantly surprised by the video sessions and how well they still maintained that connection with clients. I can still see what nervous tendencies they’re showing and tell when their body shifts as they speak. Phone sessions are harder. I actually just moved to video from phone with someone, and through that I learned they had been crying far before I could hear it in their voice. Pretty much all the tele-medicine I do is in rural North Dakota where people don’t have much access to these services. It’s helpful for crisis situations as well. When winter hits, for example. There’s also some research that shows that children don’t really translate what they’ve learned from one session to the next. I learned this from doing equine therapy in North Dakota; their learning didn’t stick in their heads after returning home but remained in the barn. So when it comes to tele-medicine I think there’s something to be said for getting therapy and learning the lessons in the environment where you need those lessons. It can be quicker to grasp by letting your brain fire that neural network of whatever new lesson you’re trying to learn in an environment that is familiar to you.
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Is there any sort of overarching advice you could give, if you were therapizing the world? I think it would be something more along the lines of checking out all those “shoulds” that we all have. I think that’s probably one of the things that stands out to me the most that I’ve learned as a human from being a therapist. We all walk around the world with all of these really weighted, pressured ideas of how we’re supposed to function, what we’re supposed to do, who we’re supposed to talk to and how… And in a really weird idealistic way, it’s all complete crap. I don’t have to stop at red lights; no one is holding a gun to my head stopping me, but I choose to because I want to keep myself safe. On all these levels we have all these rules of society that we live by, and we don’t stop to ask “Does that work for me?” or “Do I agree with that?” often enough. •
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I remember when I first opened up about my own struggles with mental illness and traumas, and it was overwhelming the responses that weren’t simple comforts but rather “me too” resonances. That’s where this idea found its roots; five years ago in high school, where I felt like I was living completely beside myself in experiences that were no one’s but my own. True, in a sense, although I failed to seek or understand the empowerment that came from community. Sharing my stories helped me as well as some unexpected readers, and I want my audience to feel welcome in sharing their stories to make that helping network larger and more compelling. In the presence of a global pandemic, we’ve seen an absence in human connection. With social media holding so much influence over our daily lives, we tend to forget about our gratitudes or lessons that lay right in front of us. Creating a tangible object for people to flip through, laugh at, cry with, or dwell on — I hope that people will feel connected to the many voices and the pair of hands that go into this project’s creation. For this issue, I asked the following questions from my anonymous participants: What has been your experience with mental health? Good? Bad? Overcame? Work in progress? This is a safe space for you to vent, advise, celebrate, or feel vulnerable.
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22, nonbinary My mental health has been an ongoing struggle for me for as long as I can remember. Most people perceive me to be happy with no worries and smiling face. Some days are really bad. It saddens me to think that my depression makes me do things like forget to eat, sleep too much, or fantasize about death. Some days are the complete opposite, nothing seeming to bring down my good mood or rain on my parade. Sometimes the sadness lasts for months, sometimes it’s brief. I don’t know whether I’ll ever find the perfect balance between the two or learn to openly express both parts of me. I get angry that there are so many people like me, yet every single day we feel alone. It’s frustrating that mental health is not taken seriously, and often I’m deemed crazy for feeling too much instead of being validated and reassured
29, male I’d say largely my
that my invisible pain is seen. Nobody wants to talk about
experience with mental
mental health or why taking a pill to numb myself won’t fix the
health has been okay.
way my brain tries to turn on me. It seems as though nobody
It’s had its share of ups
understands how I can contemplate death and simultaneously
and downs, particularly
be so in love with life. I’m on a never ending rollercoaster of
recently with long
emotions; each day feels like a battle, and each night seems
bouts of isolation, but
endless. I’m too scared to venture into the dark parts of my
video games and online
brain, so I pretend I’m okay.
experiences have been a part of my life from a very early age. This has
made social interactions different but certainly not unbearable without physical contact. Coming to terms with how terrible the American educational system explains the experiences of minority groups has been rattling my brain quite a bit as well. There has been guilt that I’ve turned into energy geared toward educating myself more. Still have plenty to learn. Journaling serves as a way to unspool the tangled wires of my perceived mental health. Looking at something physical representing something so seemingly indescribable definitely grounds me.
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20, male Of course my mental health has fluctuated throughout the years and seasons. I find especially now that the day to day fluctuations are dramatic and sometimes hard to manage. I think the political climate is seeping into my mental health more than ever. It can’t and shouldn’t be ignored, but it is degrading. I find that it’s a lot harder to wake up right now and I feel exhausted throughout the day. I find that my mood is either stellar or in a deep pit and there is less in between. I used to not have to actively fight to stay happy, but I’m finding that now I do, even if my personal sphere is full of good things in theory. I think the weight of the world is affecting my mental health unlike any previous time in life and I’m struggling to want to continue given the uncertainties that loom. 24, female It’s up and down — mostly down since quarantine started, and even worse with the start of the wildfires. My home is disappearing, my friends are displaced, and some of them have lost everything; it’s peak migration season for birds and other wildlife, and millions will die. I’m just sort of out of hope. At the beginning of 2020 my mental health was the best it had ever been since being in a sexually abusive relationship for almost 2 years from 2014-2016 and now all that progress seems lost. My grandpa passed away in February this year, and I still don’t know how to properly grieve that loss. I feel grateful for what I have, but when I look at my parent’s generation I know that my life and the lives of my friends will always be harder than theirs was.
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19, female Mental health is a fluctuating thing I think in most people’s lives. I work hard most every day, but sometimes I slip to remain mindful, present and grateful. These are the things that bring light to my life and fill me up — but I have struggled, like many, with anxiety and depression, though they seem to reflect in minor forms for me. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had my struggles. But for the most part, thankfully, I have been able to work them out myself without the use of medication... even though I know I have been guilty of self medicating at times. 16, female Personally, mental health has been and always will be something in the works. Although there are multiple feelings I associate with it — anxiety, depression, instability — I don’t see myself “overcoming” any of these things. However, becoming content with them and learning how to work with myself to benefit all is probably my main goal with mental health. I think that we as a society are often expected to mask these feelings in order to achieve a rather toxic goal of ‘success.’ Don’t get me wrong, this can be very satisfying & helpful for our futures, but the standard set can also feel very caging, almost like there is only one “right” way to go through life. I think it’s important that we all understand that we, before anything, are simply trying to survive, and hopefully doing our best at that.
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22, female I’m in a good spot now but I do suffer from anxiety and depression—mostly anxiety. I wasn’t diagnosed with either until my freshman year of college, when I went into panic mode and spent 4 months completely on edge 24/7. It felt like bees were swarming in my head and I actually believed that I would die. I didn’t know how and I didn’t know when, but I was sure that I wouldn’t make it to the end of the semester. That lead to thoughts like, “Why not just end it now” and “Do I even deserve so much support? I can’t seem to do anything right.” I couldn’t breathe and I was desperate to find a cure, but looking back that was something I needed to define for myself. I’ve worked really hard to recognize the signs that I’m getting anxious and take steps to mitigate them before I spiral. For me that means acknowledging my thoughts and letting them pass by, taking a step back and breathing (full inhale, full exhale), being honest about what’s going on with those around me, and making it a point to eat something 3 times a day. I’ve also gotten really good at prioritizing my work load. If something is making me anxious, I get started on that task right away. Even just a few steps in, I feel better (because nothing is ever as bad as I make it out to be in my head) and that is really powerful. Recently, I had the privilege of adopting a dog who also suffers from anxiety. It’s very therapeutic for me to take care of him and help him work through his triggers too.
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22, female When I was in the seventh grade I was diagnosed with severe depression. The viewpoint I had on mental illness at the time was so bogged down by societal stigmas that I REFUSED to take medication. I thought that by proxy I would be called insane by my family and my friends, my classmates would jeer at me in the halls if they ever caught wind that I was being medicated for depression. That viewpoint I held was so detrimental to my growth; I suffered, unmedicated, until my freshman year of college. I’m in my fifth year of college now, and I beat myself up day after day for letting the perceptions of others dig into the cracks of my brain so deep that I refused to take care of myself back then. Every once in a while I get the urge to say sorry to my younger self. I wish I would’ve been more kind to her.
64, female I have struggled with clinical depression for about 30 years. The medication has been a godsend. When I have tried to go off of the medication or it stopped working, I have had severe bouts of depression that have been extremely difficult to deal with and my husband has been truly a blessing for his patience. I have learned that I have a chemical imbalance that runs in my family and I will not be able to ever go off of medication. I admire people that struggle with mental illness and keep fighting the fight. There is nothing wrong with us. We just have an illness that needs to be treated with medication.
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23, gender fluid My journey with mental health began when I was learning to ride a bike. I had training wheels on still and my father and I went out for a ride. Suddenly one of my training wheels fell off and I was mortified. I was screaming and crying to my dad about how scared I was and that I needed his help. I was met with yelling, frustration, and “It’s not that big of a deal, stop crying and get back on your bike.” As you can guess, that didn’t sit well with tiny me and only made them more terrified. My struggle with mental health continued as my Dad struggled with his alcohol usage. It continued when he hit me for not liking lasagna at the age of six. It continued when I listened to him beat my youngest brother while growing up, scared shitless and sobbing because I wanted to interfere but what could I do but join in on the beating? It continued when I got into an abusive relationship at the age of 13 and didn’t escape until I was 15 and started therapy, only for another abusive man to follow. It continued when I started to hurt myself in high school and made plans to die. My parents found out about those plans. Instead of meeting me with compassion and “What can we do to help?” I was met with “We didn’t want you to turn out this way,” and having me show them my forearms every time I entered the house. It continued when my Dad went missing for 12 hours only to be found in jail because he tried to drive blackout drunk to pick up my brother, but instead rolled his car three times, totaling it. He only remembers waking up outside of the vehicle after the fact. That incident is what made him decide to be sober. Finally, at the age of 18, I moved away from home to Montana. And so it goes. Much more happened in that time including deaths, finding my passion, severe heart break, discovering my sexuality, sexual assault, and still sometimes wanting to die. And of course, too many therapists to count. I have now found the best therapist for me here in Bozeman, and the love of my life. Nothing is or will ever be perfect. I may fall back into self harm as I have a few times since high school. I’m not going to be happy all the time. I still need therapy. But, having my cute squishy cat, my beyond amazing partner to support and validate me along with the work I do in therapy, I couldn’t ask for anything more. I am starting to dive into my religion of being Wiccan, which has its own past trauma that I’m dealing with. Needless to say, my mental health journey does have a beginning, but it doesn’t have an end. As this year has shown us, trauma is everywhere and lasts generations. While I’m privileged to be white, my traumas associated with having a “woman’s body” will be passed down to my children with vaginas, if I have any.
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My trauma will never go away. It happened. How I deal with it and how it shows up, is up to me and the work I do with my therapist. It’s hard to recognize that healing isn’t linear, but once you do it’s almost freeing...but also terrifying. Mental health is terrifying but so worth putting in the work to understand, validate, and deal with. Especially when you find the right therapist. Whoever you are reading this: You are a beautiful person and even if I never meet you, know that I cherish you and everything you have to offer. 62, female I have lived with 2 siblings and a mother that had an extreme diagnosed mental illness. My brother and father had alcohol-induced mental illnesses such as depression and anger issues. So living with it as a child, even though I knew something was wrong, it became the norm. I found that as an adult I was the last person to see it in others, especially those close to me, as an illness. It took years of sporadic counseling to unpack the impact on my life of living with demented people. It impacted my choice of spouses, because women have a tendency to pursue men similar to their fathers; they are drawn to the psychological makeup of men that are familiar to them. Then the process of fixing that person begins. This is where the trouble starts. People cannot be fixed, first of all. Secondly, trying to reshape a male figure to be the person you wanted all along that your father/ brother never was is totally bewildering to that spouse/partner as they come to you as who they are, not who you want them to be. I could not function as a whole person, because the paternal side I was given was lacking in worth or value and was in fact psychological warfare at best. I was 60 years old before I could talk honestly about the horrors of my childhood and begin to heal from the damage. Both of my parents passed away during the time I was seeing a counselor; and for the first time in my life I felt safe from my parents. In death I felt they could no longer hurt me... The true healing began for me at this late stage in life, and only with the help of a really good counselor that could just listen to me and reflect back what I was saying. She couldn’t believe that I held it together as an adult after hearing my horror stories of both physical and mental abuse. I leaned on my faith and relied on a few good friends and relatives to make life bearable. OPEN - MENTAL HEALTH
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18, female It took me far too long to realize that feeling dead all the time wasn’t normal. That dragging my feet through each day wasn’t normal. That being completely drained for years on end wasn’t normal. That being a lifeless floating blob wasn’t normal. Every time I reflected as to why I felt like this, I was confused because I came up short — I had nothing to be sad about. There was no reason for this feeling. But yet I still felt dead all the time. I finally realized that my body reacts to how I am feeling, and the key to understanding was to let it feel. To let it react. To not limit my emotions. To let myself feel more. To not limit the array of emotions to just “happy” and “sad”— there are so many more emotions hidden in between the cracks. Over the past few months, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’ve learned what things make me genuinely happy and what things make my heart tear into shreds. I think that getting to know yourself really helps the process of nurturing your mind; if you know how to cheer yourself up and what makes you feel good then you’ll be better prepared for when you’re feeling like the world is ending and you’re down in the dumps. Mental health is so bizarre, because one day you feel so good and happy and the next you feel like your heavy brain just took a bath in a bucket of wet cement. It comes in waves. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s bad. I think it’s important to realize that when you feel like shit, you’re not permanently stuck in that headspace — you can dig yourself out.
60, male
I was bullied as a child because of my weight, which led to self-esteem issues. Those experiences actually inspired me to improve myself so that I felt comfortable standing up for myself. Life has always been full of challenges... a difficult relationship with my father... failed marriages... ebbs and flows with my own self-esteem... etc. Over the years I’ve worked through bouts of depression with the help of counseling and by learning to accept responsibility for my own happiness without casting blame on others. Through it all, I’ve gained enough confidence to realize that we are all responsible for our own state of mind. 20
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21, male My mental health has always been bad but not awful. I found out I had chronic depression in high school and a lot of things started to make sense. It’s not exactly how people think of depression. Major depressive episodes aside, it’s just a constant drag. I constantly think about killing myself but I’ve never acted on it because there’s no reason to. For as long as I can remember I’ve fantasized about killing myself, just to avoid being bored for a bit. And I do mean as long as I can remember, at least since I was 10. The biggest thing that I feel is apathy. These big problems and great causes present themselves, and I just can’t care for any of it. I’ve always seen it as a blessing, because time and time again I watch people who care so much ultimately accomplish nothing because they’re driven by feelings of outrage or justice and they abandon their ability to think things through or see things from a different perspective. Part of that is the minor autism too though, because good things come in pairs. It’s funny though because the autistic part of my brain makes life easy. Math, science, philosophy, etc. I’ve never struggled in school, I think it’s funny that people are afraid of autism. Granted the whole touch thing and social aspect can be rough, and I’m sure much rougher for others, but it’s just so useful. I wouldn’t trade my mental “illnesses” for anything because they make up who I am. Everyday fucking hurts but I can get through that and be fucking brilliant as a result so I really can’t complain.
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22, male My journey with mental health has always been a roller coaster. As a guy, I’ve never felt safe to open up about my struggles with mental health. I feel that my inability to talk about past traumas and my current struggles creates a wall between me and others in my life. I feel that even the people closest to me don’t even know me very well, and if they did, they wouldn’t see or treat me the same... 24, male I’ve dealt with a myriad of diagnoses throughout my life since I was six. Since that age until I was 18, I was forced to take an ever-evolving cocktail of prescription drugs for ADHD, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and aggression. They left me dazed, foggy, and underweight; despite relentless appeals to my parents and a long string of psychiatrists, psychologists, and behavioral therapists, I was never allowed to be rid of them. I couldn’t even stay awake during school, and though I routinely failed my classes, this state of catatonia was seen as preferable to my parents compared to who I was naturally. I attempted suicide several times as an underclassman in high school with different opioids, each occasion resulting in a visit to the ER for a stomach pump. As an upperclassman at a new school, I got in a bunch of fights and had to take the school to court to graduate with a diploma. During my freshman year of college, I stole almost $20,000 from the university in a severe manic episode and spent it all in 2 days. My experience with mental illness has been nothing short of traumatic. Most of the time I alternate between feeling like my mind is a prisoner in my body and like my mind is a parasite to my body. However, one thing that echoes true across the entirety of it all is that I couldn’t and wouldn’t have made it through any of it without the support of my friends and family. Without fail, when I was down, no matter what I’d done, they’d helped me back up. Right now, it feels like it’s always going to be a work in progress, but I’ve been in a much much better place for the past 6 months than I’ve been my entire life.
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33, male As a first gen Latinx American, my culture has historically upheld a very gendered persona where men must be emotionless and show no weaknesses. Over the years I have learned to outgrow this false stigma on how men should act and feel but that has been a process that many do not have the opportunity or space to evolve into.
26, trans-masculine / nonbinary
I am a queer, non-binary, trans-masculine person who grew up in a conservative Montana town. I have struggled with my identity since I was 11 years old. To make matters worse, I was bullied at school, raped by a family member, and raised by parents who were verbally, emotionally, and physically abusive. These factors fueled anxiety and depression and ultimately resulted in an attempt to take my own life at age 14. I was a child who lacked love and support. I suffered in silence until I was in college and had a panic attack so severe that it sent me to the emergency room. This was my first time receiving help for my mental health despite anguishing from my depression and anxiety for over 10 years. It was a monumental moment for me. I started therapy; I began taking medication, and I learned how to be a functioning human being. After college, I moved out of Montana and into a liberal city. Managing my mental health and living in a diverse and accepting culture afforded me the comfort of exploring my sexuality and gender. Over the past few years, with the support of my therapist and LGBTQ community, I have come out as a queer, non-binary human who receives Hormone Replacement Therapy (I take testosterone). I still struggle with my mental health, and I probably will for the rest of my life, but I finally feel like I am making progress towards becoming my truest and happiest self. I’m lucky I survived my suicide attempt and even luckier that I was able to afford medical and psychological treatment as an adult. Too many people are not as lucky as me. Thank you for creating this space for folks like me to share their experiences. Talking about mental health is critical to raising awareness and eliminating the stigma around asking for help — help that I wish I had received much sooner in my own life. OPEN - MENTAL HEALTH
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22, female I’ve always dealt with some amount of social anxiety. It’s not to the point that I isolate myself or can’t talk to people, but I get very drained trying to keep up with my appearance and I’m always feeling like I’m being judged over the smallest things (even when I know I’m not). Moreso, most of my anxiety has come from some pretty toxic/ emotionally/sexually abusive relationships I’ve had. It makes it hard to trust others’ genuine/true intentions, and it leads to a lot of jumping to conclusions and unnecessary planning ahead. But when that’s all you’ve known how to be treated by others, it’s hard to break that cycle. I’ve seen a therapist, but it’s hard to find someone you click with that makes you feel understood. Besides that, I’ve noticed I have codependent tendencies in friendships/relationships because of what I’ve been through. I’m such an independent person in certain aspects of my life, so to recognize I’ve become codependent on certain things is almost disgusting to me. A lot of my anxiety further comes from needing validation from people. Loving yourself is SUCH a long process and I’ve gotten so much better. It’s been a glimpse into just how fragile and malleable the human soul can be. 22, female I’ve struggled with PTSD, anxiety and depression for half a decade. In the last two years I’ve started going to therapy. I made such great progress and have overcome years worth of issues. Yet, this pandemic has significantly slowed and even regressed my progress. All of the work I put in to overcome my debilitating social anxiety has really suffered with the stay at home orders and regulations on going out and social distancing. I’m also a hypochondriac, which has also taken a toll during the pandemic because even now that people are starting to get back out and try to go back to a sense of normalcy, my paranoia and fear (irrational or not) keeps me inside. I’ve continued with tele-therapy throughout the pandemic but without being able to sit with my therapist, read her body language and get a hug at the end of a hard session, I can’t leave to do real work outside of therapy. I went from being so much more independent and confident with how I dealt with my mental health to feeling like I need more support. I’ve relapsed with my coping mechanisms that weren’t always the healthiest. I feel like I’ve gone back into survival mode (just as I was in the height of my trauma).
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22, female I have gone through both good and bad — highs and lows. In high school, my sister was diagnosed bipolar. When she was first finding medications, my entire family was down; she was erratic and hard to be around. I began to struggle with my own self image and depression around the same time. Getting to an ultimate low my freshman year of college, I dropped out. Today, I am happy and content with myself (Yay!), but I still struggle with anxiety and self image sometimes. I have come so far in the past 5 years but still have so far to go. Mental health has been a factor for me for so long, and I look forward to the day when I look back at myself now and can say I have overcome my difficulties.
58, female I raised a daughter whose mental health issues have changed from ADHD to full on bipolar. I remember thinking that I was the one with issues until she was hospitalized at the age of 18; she called me from the ward with the realization and diagnosis of bipolar disorder. She and I were almost relieved; I hung up and cried. My own emotions were mixed. It answered so many questions, and it validated how I had to handle her in her teens.
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18, female My mental health is always a work in progress but I’m definitely on a good uphill climb. I’m very much a perfectionist and what some would call a “type A” kind of person. My freshman year of high school, I really took a dive in my mental health. I felt as if I was not enough for the people around me and that I didn’t fulfill their expectations. I didn’t recognize myself, and I fell into a depressive state which in turn developed bad coping habits. It’s taken me about three years to build my mental health back up to where it was before high school and accept that I will never be perfect. But as of this summer, I can say I am happy where my mental health stands. I learned the valuable lesson 21, female I have always struggled with my mental health
can never be
growing up, but always quietly. I was a very self
achieved, only
conscious kid, always doubting myself resulted in a lot of
strived towards.
anxiety, mostly socially. Mental health was never talked about in my household, my parents were wonderfully warm people, but they have that “tough it out” attitude about a lot of things. That was until my cousin died by suicide my freshman year of high school. It devastated the family in so many ways, but a lot can be learned from death — one lesson being that we needed to be there for one another. So only after his death did it become a safe space where we could say how we were actually feeling, now we check up on one another all the time!
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that perfection
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65, male Personally my mental health is good. I think mental health basically comes from how you’re raised, your family, your friends, and your education. For the people that can cannot control their mental health they need a doctor or counselor. A good teacher can see the problems in school. If it was possible that is where the solutions can start.
20, female I have had such a rollercoaster when it comes to mental health. There are so many layers to it. I’ve had underlying depression since around 5th grade, and then my junior year of high school was one of the toughest years ever. My friend had passed away and I had a breakup with a boy, and so I felt like my entire world was crumbling. I saw a counselor senior year of high school, but I was never one to speak out about what I was feeling; I hated it. I didn’t feel like it was getting any better to talk about my feelings because there was just so much. I think abandonment issues play a big role in my mental health as well. Being adopted, having friends leave, breakups, deaths, etc., I felt like everyone was abandoning me. Although I do have my bad days, I also have my good ones. So that’s kind of why I think of my mental health as a rollercoaster. Mental health is so stigmatized, like going to therapy or seeking help because it’s seen as “attention seeking.” I really hope that people realize that everyone is going through something and to check up on our loved ones — even when they are smiling and laughing.
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24, female I have had periods of time in my young adult life during which I have struggled with my mental health. College and working on campus provided me with some of my best and happiest years. Grad school kicked my ass, and it was super frustrating to see my peers around me also struggling. My program did little to nothing to support us, and I had some resentment towards the culture of struggling in order to succeed. I took time away from school and have returned with a hugely improved headspace. 21, female I would say that my mental health has been a wild ride. Ever since I was about 12 I have had mood and anxiety issues. It wasn’t until I was a sophomore in highschool that I actually got a diagnosis of ~major depressive disorder~ and was prescribed Zoloft. That sucked, and I quit taking it a week after I started. My junior year of highschool was interesting, and I nearly killed myself multiple times. I never followed completely through, and today I am happy about that, but man it was hard. My mental health was okay for the most part until I had a bad acid trip in the winter of my sophomore year of college. The months following were hell and I made plans to kill myself and very nearly followed through. My boyfriend at the time convinced me to go see a psychiatrist, and she put me on some medications that did wonders for me. I’m still taking those today and I haven’t gotten as low as I had in awhile. Today my mental health actually took another dip again, but luckily I know coping mechanisms and ways to keep myself off the cliff’s edge for now. I think I will always struggle with suicidal ideation and depression, but right now I am okay with being alive.
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22, female I felt like up until about a year ago I was always very content to wake up in the morning. I was excited for the day ahead of me and never felt like I fell too far down, but I didn’t necessarily rise very high either. Then as the days went by, I started to feel like I was not only falling, but also spiraling and sinking and I didn’t know what was going on. My stomach was a fluttery mess, and I honest to god felt like there wasn’t enough air to breath in the world. I felt angry, sad, upset, depressed, and about as far from my center as I could be most days. I took it out on everyone around me and those who love me the most. My loving support team never gave up on me, and they helped me get into therapy where I learned I have anxiety. I am someone who lives with anxiety every day. I struggle with parking lots and driving in them. I struggle with making eye contact with
23, female After I overcame my suicide attempt about 9 years ago I thought that was it. I had finished taking medications and thought I didn’t need therapy anymore. Apparently that’s not how it works.
people. New people scare the shit out me, and I refuse to go to house parties. I’m learning to see my anxiety with curiosity and I’m beginning to rise up again. Honestly I feel more alive than ever.
To this day, even though I manage my symptoms, I have suicidal thoughts from time to time. If I didn’t have the family support I had/have I would likely be another tragic suicide story in the news. So many times I’ve wished I wasn’t born with this brain, but in the end it’s made me a stronger and more empathetic person. Keeping the bad thoughts at bay is going to take a lifetime, but it’s a silent war I’ve been preparing for.
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21, female I have always defined myself as someone who was bubbly, bright, hardworking, and felt sad and self-conscious at times but never faced true hardship or mental obstacles. When I was 18, my brother passed away, and I was shocked at the way I felt. Strangely, I was at peace not too long after his passing... while many of my friends and my parents were still ravaged by the onslaught of grief. I learned in the months following his death that I felt inspired and motivated by the trauma of my experience, that losing him lit a fire underneath me that I didn’t know I needed. But the more time that elapsed between his accident and the present day seemed to diminish that fuel bit by bit until I felt like more of a shell of my past self than ever before — and the worst part was that I couldn’t attribute this greyness to his passing but felt it was more of a personal failure, an unraveling. I spent a lot of time feeling depressed, anhedonic, and lost. But what I realized after a long time, a bit of therapy, and some self-reflection was that as hard as maintaining our mental health can be, we sometimes give in to the dark sides of ourselves; and we fail to see that we have the capacity to let light in through the cracks. Eventually if we are able to accept enough light, we can start to rebuild — not from the ashes per sé, but from the bleak normalcy that we have conditioned ourselves into believing is the only way ‘to be’. There is a more true and beautiful way ‘to be’, and mental illness wants to snatch it from our grasp. At the end of the day, we must understand we have the power to hold onto it or reclaim it if we have lost it. We have the power to hope.
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20, female Mental health has always been something my family spit on. If you were sad… Well, you weren’t sad; it wasn’t allowed. Eventually a relative decided to take his own life. Obviously my family was devastated, but they still put blame that he “shouldn’t have done that”. Now my family is still very negative towards mental health, and I no longer associate with them. My personal mental health has grown positively since. 21, female Mental health was always such a taboo topic in my house growing up that I never really realized that my mental health could decrease. After I started high school I began to suffer from depression, but I had never been taught the signs or symptoms outside of noticing suicidal tendencies in others. It wasn’t until my junior year when I thought, “hey, I should get some help.” I reached out to a school counselor who then directed me to a therapist that quite literally helped save my life. To this day I still struggle to find my worth and value in everyday life, but I’ve grown to appreciate where I am. Mental health for me is still something I actively assess on a daily basis. I’ve learned that sometimes my body and mind just need a break and that doesn’t make me weak. Rather, that makes me feel more in tune with what I need to be my best self. I assume that my journey with “mental health” will be a continuous and ongoing trip for the rest of my life. Do I wish depression and anxiety weren’t an everyday experience for me? Or course. But am I proud of who I’ve become through them and how I’ve handled my darkest moments? Absolutely. And for anyone who STILL doesn’t get it, mental health matters and mental health is real health.
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22, female The first time I went to counseling I cried so hard that I couldn’t get out any coherent statements. Years and several counselors later I can talk about it in a linear fashion but I still get that checking feeling in my throat. But at this rate, I just want the help. I don’t feel as ashamed or distressed as I used to but instead hear the faint hum of anxiety, fear and self-hatred in the back of my head as I go about my day. After the trauma, something I’m now able to call it, those same thoughts were screaming in my head, but in the voice of a stranger. I didn’t know who I was and I didn’t know how to tell anyone that I had lost everything that was me. I would look at pictures of myself and feel so distant from that person that it might as well have been a stock photo in a familiar frame. I was afraid no one would believe me, or they would think I was crazy. I still have to remind myself I’m not crazy but at least now I can say it quietly to myself with compassion instead of having to say it out loud in fear that if I didn’t, it would be true. I recently found myself looking at my writing class notebook from my freshman year of college, and I was convincing myself that I was real, that life was real, that emotions besides intense fear were real, and that one day I would feel them again. I feel them now but some days that fear/disassociation creeps back in and the record player of negative self-talk starts up on repeat. I was recently discussing my healing process with my best friend of almost a decade. I mentioned the night I called my mother because I couldn’t escape the screaming suicidal voices telling me how to find relief. And from the look on her face I could tell that this was the first she had heard of this. I didn’t even realize how much I had kept to myself in the first year after the trauma. She began to cry, and I felt relieved. I felt relieved because someone was taking it seriously and validating my experience, even if it was years later. I needed someone to understand how scared I was of my own potential actions. Words say so little when it comes to describing mental health. I could say “feeling bad”, but the intensity of emotion or lack thereof are squeezing my insides and my body floods with the worst sense of doom.
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I have had an unfortunate time trying to get into and stick with counseling for more than a couple months. Using the university counseling system was hard because there was a lack of consistency on both my and the counseling center’s part. I have had to tell my story so many times but haven’t had the opportunity to see things through with a professional yet. I hope to find affordable and consistent help in the future, but that’s something I suspect to be a long journey. I have found ways to find joy and peace in ways I never thought I would. I used to be skeptical of meditation, but when you feel so far from reality and lost in anxiety, you happily accept the strategies that bring you back to earth. Even as I write this, I realize how easy it is to focus on the hard parts of my healing process. But the truth is, I have endured and I have good things surrounding me and most of all, I am learning to be loving and compassionate with myself. Mental illness is a beast but the least I can do is love myself even when I hate myself. I know this little excerpt is all over the place, but honestly that’s the complexity of mental health. So many layers, so many facets.
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22, female Mental health has been a bit of a struggle for me for a few years, and for the longest time, I didn’t have anyone to help me deal with it. I was always such a bubbly, happy child growing up, so when I sunk into depression as a senior in high school, it caught everyone I knew off guard. My declining mental state wasn’t exactly without an external cause — I had to deal with multiple different types of emotional trauma that year. My grandmother passed away before school started. My parents were getting divorced, and I was continually getting caught right in the middle of their conflict. After living in denial about my sexuality for my entire life, I developed a massive crush on my best friend while attending a homophobic religious school, and it was terrifying. Some memories of being sexually abused as a child resurfaced, and I wished they had just stayed buried. I lost my first and only dog to death that year, too. I thought about joining him. I was visibly not okay and missing school at least once a week. But instead of reaching out to me, the people around me just didn’t know what to do. The majority of them didn’t seem to understand why I couldn’t just pull myself together. In terms of functioning, I eventually did get better, but I still struggled intermittently with suicidal ideation. During my first few years of adulthood, I felt like I wasn’t allowed to fall apart again. So many people had reacted so poorly the first time around that I felt my only option was to pretend I was okay, and my life turned into a cycle of living in total denial that I was still hurting for weeks on end until everything got too big, then turning into a suicidal mess. I learned how to compartmentalize my struggles so well that I would lie in bed awake all night wanting to jump off a bridge, then get up and go to work in the morning and pretend I was fine again until my shift ended. I knew I wasn’t okay, but seeking the help of a doctor or therapist seemed out of the question. I was an uninsured college student living off a part-time retail position.
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At age 21, I really didn’t want to be alive anymore. In addition to carrying all my unresolved emotional trauma, I was living in constant physical pain due to an undiagnosed health problem that was getting worse and worse. I continued to pretend I was okay in my everyday life, but internally, I was really hoping that whatever was causing my physical symptoms would hurry up and kill me. Later that year, I finally started to open up to people. I grew really close to a group of people who genuinely cared about me, and I developed a habit of actually talking about what I was dealing with instead of enduring everything alone. I finally had people to help me process and heal instead of telling me to get over it and move on with my life. With their help, I grew stronger in my mental stability and in my faith. I began to realize how incredibly loved I was by both the people around me and by my God. As I opened up to people about who I was and what I had been through and let them love me, I learned how to love myself—my creative, bisexual, traumatized, hyperactive, brave, eccentric, executively dysfunctional self. I still have days where things weigh on me, but I’m not waiting to kick the bucket anymore. I’ve finally overcome the lie that my life isn’t worth more than a few thousand dollars in medical bills, and I got a diagnosis and treatment for the condition that’s been causing my physical pain, which is in turn improving my mental stability even further. At this point in time, I know I still have some recovering to do both physically and emotionally. But for the first time since my early high school years, I’m actually excited to see what my future holds, and I think that’s a good sign that I’m getting healthier.
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Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed the content in this issue, be sure to check out 0pen.zine (that’s a zero!) to follow up on the discussion forums monitored by me and created by you! I hope that this presents itself as an opportunity to cultivate an open-minded and caring community across borders, and any effort to spread the word would only increase the chances of establishing that community. And if you have the means or the interest in helping me in this effort, head to patreon.com/0pen — by making small contributions, you get access to merchandise designed by me and fellow artists who contribute to Open, and proceeds go towards the printing and hand-assembly of print issues, as well as the creation of content for you to represent the Open community with! Best wishes to all of the strangers out there; I hope I get the chance to meet you! — Rylee Dunn
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