Pressure
Whenever days like World Mental Health Day pop up i always feel an immense pressure to speak up, express something eloquently and be part of that important network of dialogue. Often that is far from what actually happens. Usually i forget these things exists until the day comes around and i’m like… oh… well i’m not prepared for this… enter feelings of being overwhelmed, thinking others are waiting for me to say something or engage, thinking others will judge me if i don’t. This expectation just builds up and i inevitably fail to share or post anything original. Once i get to a point where i can rationalise my own thinking (to a certain extent anyway) i realise my inability to commit to days like these is centred around two notions; performance and unrelatability.
Let’s tackle what i mean by performance first. This idea that someone appears to care for a particular cause by posting about it (e.g. on social media) but in reality they are not turning up when there are calls for more action. In the case of World Mental Health Day, someone might post something on their Facebook in solidarity of raising awareness. But when that day is over they never post anything about it again or interact with the topic in any other way. That’s performative. And that’s the last thing i want to appear to be. I don’t want people to think i’m just jumping on a hashtag to get more likes, more attention for just me. I’ve not reached a position where i feel i can truly interact with these kinds of days without it feeling false. Plus it has that sense of being disposable - especially in the context of over-saturated digital spaces - and mental health awareness should never be associated with throw-away sentiments.
Moving on to unrelatability. I find the vast majority of visual resources made available to the public to share on days like World Mental Health Day lack creativity and so i personally find them difficult to engage with. One of the reasons i wanted to create this platform is because of similar reasons. Creativity is still not encouraged enough when it comes to expressing feelings and experiences linked to mental health. And it seems like a missed opportunity to not produce a wide diversity of imagery to appeal to different personalities and communities. I know in the future this is something Guy Cry Club could really get stuck into. Imagine more artist led resources that could be shared to raise awareness of mental health. A continuing collaborative series of material that allows freedom of expression as well as a clear message of support.
Of course my intention here is not to denounce the immense efforts which are made to continually bring about greater awareness for all things mental health. I do however want to make sure we all know that engaging on these days is not necessarily for everyone. I can imagine many of us find some of these days triggering, that they suddenly bring about feelings and memories which we might not want to interact with at that time. There are many intricacies to think about and the more we uncover about how mental health affects each individual the more we need to adapt our approach in engaging with the public.
All the loves,
abitofquirk
