Welcome to From Insults to Respect.

This week I happened to watch on TV the play Next to Normal. It dramatically and musically brought forth a wealth of thoughtful and emotional reactions. I can’t, in a single post, express all of these, so here, I’m going to focus on just one–the issue of blaming those given a mental disorder label and their parents for how they are acting and experiencing.

The Play’s Main Plot

A woman who had a baby that died in infancy continued to grieve after four months. A psychiatrist, therefore, has classified her as having a mental disorder and has been prescribing psychiatric drugs for depression. Because his patient also imagines that the baby is still alive, and on birthdays she sees him growing up, and she regularly has conversations with him, the doctor has been prescribing an additional cocktail of drugs. As we enter the play, we see the drugs have certainly not relieved the woman from her or her family of the anguish that has come about. The imagined baby has grown to be a teenager. Her family, made up of her husband and teenaged daughter, are deeply concerned and support the psychiatrist’s treatment recommendations. Treatment during the play changes from drugs, followed by an hypnosis approach, and finally Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT), none of which lead to satisfactory results.

My Reaction To The Play

In my training as a psychologist, I learned to avoid blaming people who act in ways that lead to a mental disorder classification or their parents. Blame implies thinking someone is guilty of doing something wrong.

If I perceive that someone has done something wrong and I become frustrated and angry at the person and I begin to seek to punish the person, I view that person as guilty.

For example, if I make a wrong turn to go to my friend’s house and when I discover my error if I have a strong emotion of frustration that springs up in me and I cry out, “What an idiot I am for making that mistake,” I am feeling guilty that I made the mistake, and the reason I am calling myself an idiot is because it is my angry effort to punish myself.

I use that specific type of definition for “guilty” to distinguish it from how I define responsibility, which I view as a more mature response. When people act responsibly, they recognize that they did something wrong, experience a strong feeling of frustration, recognize at the same time that as long they are a human being they are going to make mistakes. They recognize that the strong feeling of frustration is a good thing because it leads them to focus on what they did wrong, and the emotionality helps spur a process that increases the possibility of fixing the error in the long term, decreasing the chance that they will make the same mistake. Part of this frustration reaction leads me to focus on what I can specifically do next time to prevent the mistake. This is a wonderful process, and I welcome the experience as I would a helpful friend. When I see guilt springing up in me, I have been getting more and more skillful at transforming it into my helpful friend.

It seems to me beneficial to keep the idea of angrily desiring punishment when someone does something wrong separate from the idea of learning from the experience of making a mistake by experiencing frustration in a friendly, non-punishing manner. If you see that your five-year old son has made a mistake when trying to add 7 plus 3 and he came up with 9, you may see that he has done something wrong, but you might experience this as somewhat different from when you feel someone is “guilty” of doing something wrong.  You may think that your son almost got the right answer, and he’s trying, and this is part of a useful learning process. You might not feel angry at him, nor think he deserves to be punished for his efforts. Perhaps you might gently correct him and give him a warm smile.

Although I am pretty good at avoiding the blaming game, from time to time I slip up and become angry at what I’m perceiving is happening with people dealing with mental health concerns. This play, so well done, has helped me to better reconnect with the habit of making the distinction between guilting and taking responsibility as I conceptualize them.

The music, singing, and dialogue blend together to avoid simplistic interpretations of events and filled me with empathy for the complexity of dealing with such challenging circumstances. I was left thinking that people embroiled in the types of situations that the play depict would do well to learn for themselves the difference between blame and responsibility. Moreover, it seems to me that it takes more than just noting the difference; it takes practice to turn this understanding into a useful habit. One useful practice is to identify five times when you found yourself employing guilting, and then see if you can write out a way to turn them into a response that better matches a responsibility response.

My Best,
Jeff

Blamingguiltingmental disordersmental health concernsNext to Normalresponsibility