Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today we take a close look at one reason some folks have a low level of respect for people who are viewed as having a mental illness–the belief that such people are avoiding responsibilities.
There are two other main reasons for the stigma associated with being labelled mentally ill that we won’t dive into today, but I’ll just briefly mention. 
One has to do with the fact that some people at a gut level look down upon anyone who acts a little different than the norm. The other is the belief that people labelled mentally ill are prone to be violent. In actuality, the vast number of these people are not any more violent than the average Joe or Jill (see HERE for a review of the research). The misperception about this type of violence is fed by a media that has learned it has an increased viewership whenever it provides stories of particularly gruesome killings by people presumed to be mentally ill.
So, recognizing that acting differently and perceptions about an increased risk of violence are significant reasons for the stigmatizing of those labelled mentally ill, let’s now put them aside, so we can more thoroughly focus on the responsibility issue.
An Early Incident Of Someone Bringing Up The Responsibility Issue
William James, during his youth, and well before his amazing career as a psychologist and philosopher, experienced what he viewed as a mental disorder. He initially felt it was hopeless to do anything about it because he believed all mental disorders are completely due to some biological defect. Then, after coming upon some ideas that suggested will and effort can be helpful, James changed his mind, and managed to overcome his turmoil by taking on the responsibility of actively making some significant changes in his life.
Shortly afterwards, James discovered that despite his own success in reacting positively to suggestions about taking some responsibility for handling one’s psychological concerns, other people responded dramatically different. We vividly see this in an 1865 letter that James wrote to his younger brother, Henry, that reads in part:
To suggest personal will and effort to one “all sicklied o’er” with the sense of weakness, of helpless failure, and of fear, is to suggest the most horrible of things to him. What he craves is to be consoled in his very impotence, to feel the Powers of the Universe recognize and secure him, all passive and failing as he is.
Many years have gone by since James wrote that letter, and yet I have found it just as relevant in our own time. In recent years I have become acquainted with many who become angry at any suggestion regarding the value of seeking within, and to be open from others, for suggestions on how they may actively deal with these types of concerns. Rather, they choose to passively respond to what they view as a mental illness, while insisting that something like the “Powers of the Universe” is the only thing that could secure them. Although “The Powers of the Universe” sometimes is viewed by them as some religious figure, more and more in today’s world, filling this role are often psychiatrists prescribing drugs.
Another Situation In Which People Bring Up the Responsibility Issue
Approximately 2 million individuals classified as having a mental illness manage to receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). Some find this infuriating. I have personally heard many folks make remarks such as, “These recipients should go to work like the rest of us, damn it!”
This attitude is a simplification of a very complicated issue and causes, in my opinion, far more harm than good. Although there is little doubt that there are some SSDI recipients out in our society who are deliberately scamming taxpayers, others are not. Unless those criticizing the SSDI recipients have some specific suggestion on how to identify the cheaters, then the criticism unfairly tarnishes the respect of many who are doing the best they can under deeply trying circumstances.
The only reasonable proposal that I have heard to address this type of attack on responsibility is “Universal Basic Income” (see HERE). Under this proposal, everyone would get a check from the federal government that is sufficient to meet a person’s basic needs, and without a work requirement. Thus, it eliminates the giant, costly bureaucracies that run social security, unemployment benefits, and SSDI. Moreover, everyone gets these checks, so it can ameliorate the resentment that comes from thoughts that there are folks scamming the SSDI system
And Yet Another Situation In Which People Bring Up the Responsibility Issue
Anxiety is typically experienced as a type of fear about something that might occur in the future. Grief is a feeling of sadness about a loss of something or someone we value.
In our society, many folks are taught, and come to accept, the idea that experiencing fear or sadness are signs of weakness and cowardliness. This leads to feelings of guilt whenever such experiences arise. All of this occur despite the fact that pretty much all of us regularly experience anxiety and grief, including folks who act in the most courageous manner. Moreover, anxiety and grief experiences are actually enormously helpful, for they are an essential part of the process that helps us to avoid or minimize danger and to figure out how to best move forward after a significant loss.
Now many people think that feeling guilty can provoke people to act responsibly. Confusion abounds on this point. There are indeed instances in which people report that upon feeling guilty about something, it did lead to making a useful change. But, when they say this, often they are confusing feeling guilty with experiencing a sense of responsibility.
People who feel guilty typically seek to punish themselves by either throwing insults at themselves, or actually physically hurting themselves. In contrast, taking responsibility for one’s anxiety and grief, in my opinion, involves welcoming these two experiences, kind of like you might a friend, for these experiences enrich our lives if handled responsibly. If you have something more pressing to take care of for a short period of time, it can make sense to gently delay your interaction with whatever anxiety and grief you have to deal with until a more convenient time. However, the responsible thing to do is to soon invite these experiences back so you can spend some time to work through these types of concerns. Daily meditation, quiet walks, and journal writing, are ideal ways to do this.
During these times of responsibly working through experiences of anxiety and grief, you recognize you have an important job to do. This job involves allowing yourself to fully experience the physical sensations that come, not as something awful, but as something useful and containing even some aspects of great beauty. It is like listening in a caring way to a good friend who is going through an anxiety or grief experience, and empathizing on a physical level with what he or she is experiencing. This experiencing leads naturally to seeking ways to address the concerns that bring about anxiety and grief.
Even if no immediate promising ideas come from a particular episode of spending time in this way, taking responsibility involves keeping hope alive. This means that you recognize that with particularly challenging situations, it takes an extended time to fully address such concerns. In the coming days, new, fresh ideas may yet come your way, or the situations that brought about the concerns may change in unexpected ways to your advantage. In contrast to acting responsibly, experiencing guilt when feeling anxious or grief becomes an aversive experience, and one way to avoid such negative experiences is by finding or creating distractions.
These distractions, when used too often are far from ideal. It is analogous to sleep. When people try to distract themselves from their sleepiness for too long, say by watching exciting TV shows, their sleepiness becomes stronger and stronger and more and more intense. If they continue to press on, avoiding getting enough sleep with various distractions, their functioning becomes compromised. A similar process happens when we keep avoiding providing sufficient time to work through our anxiety and grief concerns.
This deterioration of functioning can be observed with a variety of experiences that get labelled as mental illnesses. For example, John Neale, working out of the State University of New York, presents a fairly good case that people who are vulnerable to manic episodes are actively avoiding their fears and grief. According to Neale’s account, when events lead to increasing perceptions of anxiety and fear, mania is triggered either by the experience of the perceived negative mood, or perhaps the threat of negative mood.
Thus, mania may, in some cases, be a way to avoid responding responsibly to anxiety and grief because of the guilt that occurs over misunderstanding the nature of these useful experiences. This misunderstanding, along with not knowing how to respond responsibly when these experiences occur, may lead to reaching a point at which the person becomes overwhelmed by unprocessed concerns. It is at this point that creating grandiose ideas manage to further distract these folks from the distressing thoughts spinning out of control. It has been estimated that 47 per cent of people who experience what mental health professionals often refer to as psychotic delusions during their manic phase claim they have grandiose abilities. This often leads to friends, family, and community members, concluding such folks are behaving irresponsibly.Conclusion
We have just surveyed the three main reasons people may come to believe someone labelled as having a mental illness is escaping responsibility. First discussed was the belief that some labelled people, rather than taking responsibility for their experience, prefer to be consoled because of what they have come to believe is their impotence to deal constructively with their sense of weakness, helpless failure, and fear. We then discussed people who resent mentally ill labelled folks collecting SSDI benefits, believing they are irresponsibly scamming the system. And finally, we looked at the theory that some mentally ill labelled people have not learned how to responsibly deal with the experiences of anxiety and grief, instead feel guilty when they have such experiences, and consequently seek to avoid these feeling with the use of various distractions.
Now, having surveyed these main reasons, some may therefore jump to the conclusion that people labelled as mentally ill should be blamed for not acting responsibly. Blame, in my estimation, is typically counterproductive. Too often, it will provoke horror, total rejection of the blamer, and a hardening of whatever position the person who is being blamed holds.
Permit me to suggest an alternative. First, assess whether or not the person is capable, for a period of time, or even over a course of a lifetime, to process any suggestions from anyone. If not, blaming is not going to help. Just showing a little kindness from time to time, I think, is the best approach, and for lifting your own sense of being a person worthy of respect.
What about those people whom you assess as capable of making some meaningful changes? Perhaps most helpful is telling them a story from time to time about individuals who have learned the difference between guilt and responsibility when dealing with their anxiety and grief. The story would then go on to illustrate how this person, when practicing responsible behavior, discovered dramatic benefits. After telling the story, ask for their reaction, and then listen in an empathetic manner to what they have to say. Although you might be tempted to make counterarguments to what is being said, often it is better to stick to just listening in a caring manner.
My posts on Abraham Lincoln, Leo Tolstoy, and Joni Mitchell can be helpful in setting you along this path (see HERE, HERE, and HERE). 
For a more in-depth story of this kind, I recommend my novel, Fights In The Streets, Tears In The Sand (see HERE). It provides a heart warming tale of a young boy who has a particularly difficult time wrestling with his anxiety and grief. When his mother is pressured by a psychiatrist to have him involuntarily treated with psychiatric drugs known to have a number of severe side effects, family and friends fight in court to be permitted to seek an alternative, more humanistic approach.
Well, there you have it, a few of my ideas on this very challenging topic. I hope it provides some useful ideas.
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
Recently, I wrote a post titled, “The Nature of Anxiety” (see 
The point of view that I described is in stark contrast to the common view in our society that looks upon anxiety as a negative, destructive, “abnormal” experience, a symptom of mental illness, one which must be fought and if possible, drugged away and annihilated. Today, I make the case that the opposing view has something to do with misunderstanding the nature of guilt and responsibility. But before we get into all of that, let’s take a quick look at a little parable designed to be a helpful jumping off point for today’s topic.
Five-year-old Ken is playing in his family’s living room with his blocks while his seven-year-old sister, Jill, is working on a puzzle. Ken’s mom, comes in from the kitchen and says, “Ken, that’s a nice tower you are making with your blocks. Next week you start kindergarten. I heard they have a great set of blocks there.”
“There’s nothing to be scared about, Ken,” says his mom, “Don’t be a baby!”
Ken runs to his room. On his bed, tears stream down his cheeks. “I hate myself,” he cries out, feeling guilty for what he has been experiencing.
Of course, the answer depends on how you define anxiety. Here, consistent with many experts, anxiety is viewed as feeling fear about something that might happen in the future. Some people will use the words, “a sense of uneasiness” or “worry” to describe this feeling.
When we anticipate that we will be facing some event in the future that has the potential of harm, such as downhill skiing, it is possible to feel a wonderful exhilaration. This exhilaration occurs as long as our mind is focused on memories of when we were enjoying the experience and anticipating enjoying the experience once again. 
However, while thinking of this, if our mind drifts to the possibility of being harmed and we perceive that that harm could be significant, then the feeling of anxiety would accompany those thoughts.
Many people don’t make a clear distinction between experiencing anxiety, from such experiences as frustration, grief, being upset, depressed, or melancholy. They, therefore, may use these types of words rather interchangeably. There is some justification for doing so because when we look at specific examples of people having these types of experiences, we find that all of these challenging emotions can blend together, and it is not always easy to say which emotion is most apt for describing what is actually being experienced.
When seeking to understand anxiety, it is not only useful to know its definition, it is also crucial to know its function. What purpose does it serve for us human beings?
When we have managed to avoid working through a great many anxiety concerns, and we reach a point at which anxiety begins to burst into our consciousness even when we prefer to be dealing with something else, sometimes something strange happens. All of these concerns get so mixed up in our anxiety memory that they become a mishmash. This may result in our having the experience of anxiety, but we have difficulty pinpointing what we are anxious about. We might feel that we have become anxious about everything. We may experience a general sense of dread. In the writings by psychologists, they often refer to this as “free floating anxiety.” Its function remains the same, to motivate us to spend time addressing all of the concerns that have been stored up in our anxiety memory.
Some people, using a variety of strategies to desperately avoid dealing with these memories, can eventually have an experience sometimes referred to as an emotional breakdown. Today, psychiatrists typically prescribe drugs for this. Providing a place for rest and emotional support for working through all of the stored up anxiety was the main approach prior to the drug approach era. An extensive review of the available scientific evidence by
Daily meditation and walks are ideal activities to process our anxieties. Writing a journal about events that distress us can also produce heaps of rewards, for it lets one take a step back from what occurred as feelings are put into written form. Regularly discussing our concerns with a supportive friend or family member can also be of help. Sometimes it is better to discuss these issues with a supportive counselor because some of the issues that lead to anxiety may be less embarrassing when shared with a professional who has an ethical obligation of maintaining confidentiality. Professional counselors also often have knowledge that draws upon a variety of wisdom traditions to smooth out the processing of anxiety.
Ken’s mom yells at him for feeling fearful. She seeks to have him feel ashamed for having these feelings. His sister, joins in with the shaming.
To deal with his feelings, Ken goes to his room. There, while crying and feeling guilty, he experiences hating himself. Then he finds he can divert his attention from these feelings by playing an exciting video game.
Perhaps getting something to eat works to some degree as his mind focuses on the aroma and tastes of food, so he begins to eat in excess. As he gets older, he may find that alcohol and other drugs, at least initially, deadens these feelings. As tolerance of these drugs develop, he may have to do more and more of these drugs to get the same result. The side effects and negative health consequences make this approach less than ideal.
As I mentioned, the anxiety memory has, as one of its characteristics, a tendency, when time is not set aside to address concerns, to enter consciousness with stronger and stronger feelings. When these feelings can no longer be kept suppressed or avoided, Ken may go to a psychiatrist who will translate his experience into a language of symptoms of mental illness and then prescribe a medication. Today, many psychologists and counselors may also view his experiences as symptoms of a mental illness, but will spend most of their time listening in a caring manner.
“I was scared too before my first day,” says Pete’s sister, Nancy, “but it turned out that the teacher was really nice, and we did a lot of fun stuff, and I made lots of friends.”
“Some of the kids could start calling me names.”
“First, I called the kid a name back, but my teacher caught me and said I shouldn’t do that. So then, the next time it happened, I told the teacher. The trouble with that is the kids called me names for being a tattletale. So now I just ignore name calling.”
“You’re stupid,” says Pete.
So, Pete tried it, and first when he looked into his mother’s eyes, he did it in an angry way, so his mother pointed this out to him. “You want to show the name caller that you are not scared. When you glare at him the way you did, you look like you want to challenge the kid to a fight. That’s not going to be helpful for making friends. Try to make it look friendly-like. You want to show that you heard what was said, you are not afraid, you are friendly, and you are ready to move on with playing.”
“Now, Pete, there is a lot more to learn about name calling, so we can’t learn it all in one sitting. For example, when you look down, before you look into the name caller’s eyes, I want you to ask yourself, ‘Why is this guy calling me this name?’ When you do that, let’s say you know he did it because you accidentally pushed him. If it was an accident, what could you say?”
“There are a lot more skills to learn about handling name calling, like, sometimes kids like to call each other names in a fun, playful way, just kidding around. That needs to be handled in a different way. Sometimes some kid will be calling you names over and over again, acting like a bully. That has to be handled in another way. But for now, we’ll just practice the set of skills we just worked on today for a few minutes each day until you start kindergarten. If you ask the name caller the reason he or she did it, whatever the kid says, just do the looking into the eyes, nod, and continue with what you were doing plan, but remember what the kid said. When you get home, we’ll discuss what to do depending on what was said.”
After all, suppose he has to go to war, or he has some other dangerous job. In those situations, being afraid won’t be tolerated. But, if you talk to our greatest war heroes, you find that they were very fearful when they acted out their heroic deed. They will say things like,
Guilt has you punishing yourself while trying to distract yourself from your anxiety, and/or suppressing it with drugs. When you take responsibility for your actions, you permit yourself some time to mindfully experience the anxiety you are feeling in your body. You think about what you have done in the past that might have been a mistake. From here, you begin to think about what you can do to deal as best as you can with the situation that you thought of that prompted the anxiety. Then you practice the skills that may be helpful. That’s acting responsibly. Being guilty is just wasting your time punishing yourself.
Now, sometimes you feel anxious about something and after pausing to consider it, you may feel that you are helpless to really do anything about it. When this happens, does it make sense to avoid and suppress your anxious feelings? The answer, in my opinion, is no.
They realized that no matter what they do, they will indeed die, but they could come up with some ideas that could extend their lives as long as possible. Eating better, getting exercise, and having rewarding, loving relationships are well documented to be effective health protective factors. Ideas about making the best of the time they have left came. So, you never know what ideas may come to someone despite how helpless a situation appears to be. Some of the most creative ideas came about while meditating on what to do about a situation that appeared helpless.
Now, sometimes we begin to feel anxious because we made a mistake that involves, not just ourselves, but other people with whom we interact. The fear comes from knowing that these other people are blaming us. We may also fear that when we interact with them, we will be rejected.
Those of us who have learned to suppress these feelings may try to put the blame on others for what happened. Perhaps there is some justification to think there is some shared responsibility in what had occurred. Is this the time to attack those who also made mistakes and seek to make them feel guilty?
Instead, I suggest modeling for the others what taking responsibility looks like. Thus, when you see them, consider making the following type of statement:
Now, of course, all of what I’ve been discussing takes time. If you are to adequately address your concerns, you might have to give up a few TV shows. Perhaps a social engagement where juicy gossiping occurs might have to be cut a little shorter. I say this fully understanding that people have come to enjoy all of the activities designed to distract them from responsibly addressing their anxiety. Nevertheless, I encourage you to devote several hours per week letting your mind dwell on all of those anxious issues that bubble up into your consciousness, for you will be far better having done so.