Tuesday Check In: How's Everybody's Mental Health?

[u/MLModBot]

Good day, everyone and welcome to our weekly mental health check-in thread! Feel free to comment below with how you are doing, as well as any coping skills and self-care strategies others can try! For information on mental health resources and support, feel free to consult our resources wiki (also located in the sidebar!) (IMPORTANT NOTE RE: THE RESOURCES WIKI: As Reddit is a global community, we hope our list of resources are diverse enough to better serve our community. As such, if you live in a country and/or geographic region that is NOT listed/represented but know of a local resource you feel would be beneficial, then please don't hesitate to let us know!)

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[u/greyfox92404]

Look, it's tragic that you have an unmet desire for connection. I'm not going to downplay that. It also sucks that there aren't places to have these conversations outside of those hate spaces. On some level, I can understand the math of not everyone being statistically able to find a partner and that some people will be locked out of a common human experience. But identifying with being an incel means something.

Likewise, there are conversations that will happen in deeply racists places that may not be accessible outside of those spaces. But I won't go calling myself a nazi either.

Traditionally it just meant someone who was involuntary celibate.

What does "traditionally" mean here? Like in 1997 when it started as a facebook group that included women? Or by the mid 2000s when the misogyny already pushed women out of these groups?

Almost as soon as it started, the tradition was misogyny.

There's a reason that "femcel" became a term. The common understanding is that women can't be incels. Incel ideology was already exclusionary and misogynistic almost as far back as it goes.

My thinking is that most people didn't realize the hate baked into it as we first encounter these groups online. And that's just how most hate groups operate.

There's no harm in using extra words to describe your circumstances. There's no need to call ourselves incels. But the identity is a two-way street, people do it because calling yourself an identity means something. Even if all recognize the hate, a lot of people excuse that part because they want to feel apart of that identity. And again, that's how hate groups operate. Not every segregationist thought they hated black people, even if their actions promote hate.

[u/Spiritual_Message725 → u/greyfox92404]

Coming back to this a bit late. What do you think is a better way to identify/reframe this type of circumstance?

[u/greyfox92404 → u/Spiritual_Message725]

I think we can discuss how we feel and the challenges in our life without using those circumstances as a way to dehumanize other people. Or to use a core piece of our trauma to belong to an exclusionary group.

It's wildly shitty that you are in a position where you don't have companionship, but to define yourself from this aspect engages with the idea that your trauma is who you are. On top of that is the misogyny inherent to incel ideology.

And I'll attempt to draw a parallel using my trauma. I was physically, verbally and emotionally abused by my dad. At worst, he strangled me until I blacked out. I grew up watching me try to get my mom to kill herself, screaming and shoving things in her hands to get her to hit herself. And on and on it went.

If I were to come up with an identity based on those experience and my circumstances, I might use, "Involuntary Abused" or "InBused". And at the same time, we see that InBused use this identity to dehumanize women and others is a core piece of the identity.

My abuse was unique to my gender. My dad liked to use his hands on his boys. I was made to fight my brother for sport for the viewing pleasure of other people who would come over and watch. This didn't happen to the girls in my family.

Do you think it would be healthy for me to identity with this group? Shouldn't I find another group that doesn't dehumanize people? Or find another mechanism to process these complex feelings?

I'm not even saying that you can't identify with being lonely or romantically unsuccessful. The big point here is that we don't have to identify with hate groups. Right?

This is different than a trauma-based identity group that doesn't dehumanize people as part of it's core ideology. Alcoholics anon don't dehumanizing women as part of their core ideology. People haven't shot up schools because of AA meetings, you know? So even if a community along this trauma is beneficial to you, we don't have to pick the group that dehumanizes people.

[u/Spiritual_Message725 → u/greyfox92404]

How do you find a healthy group that you can still relate your unique experiences to? You are right of course but I feel like all the other groups don’t really relate in the same way.

I’m really sorry you went through that thank you for sharing it with me

[u/greyfox92404 → u/Spiritual_Message725]

Friend, this is the hard part. For all of us. How do we relate our traumatic experiences to others in a way that is fruitful and healthy?

In my experience, it's hard. It takes contextualizing and some self-coaching. Not everyone is able to understand broken people. I can't just bring up the deeply traumatic things in my life because people aren't always ready for it.

Last winter, we had a snow day and tons of people couldn't make it in. I was unusually cheerful and my boss asked why I'm so happy. I just briefly explained when things really break, I get a bit nostalgic and that's a good feeling for me. She asked me to elaborate (and we're just chatting), and I tell her. I had a deeply abusive childhood and when I see that level of stress around me, I feel like a kid again.

The room... didn't react very well. I silently reminded myself that most people don't grow up with that kind of trauma and can't brush it off as easily as I.

It used to be a very confusing feeling. But I've learned to embrace it. As I got older, I figured out I get to decide how I react to my feelings/trauma and I'm just going to use that trauma for good things going forward. I don't excuse what happened to me. I recognize how terrible it was. But now super stressful spots propel me forward.

So when I relate these experiences with other people, I do a tiny bit of ground work first because most people aren't ready. I say, "fair warning, I grew up in an abusive home. I've had a decade or two to process everything (or I might say instead that I'm still working on how I feel about it if I haven't processed it all in a healthy way). [insert my experiences]"

And it's been pretty successful. The people who can't relate can opt-out. The people who can, we can trauma-bond over it. I have a close friend that grew up in a very machismo household too. And he gets my trauma. I can have a super dark sense of humor with him in that one-on-one setting because we both get it.

But I didn't know that about him until I started opening it up in normal places.

Likewise with you, I can open up about the crazy things in my life with a little bit of prep. I can say, my dad is dying and it's been complex to deal with. We don't have a great relationship for obvious reasons and I live 2 states away. He's got mesothelioma, i think. And initially when i found out, I felt intense grief. I was surprised by that feeling. After some introspection, I learned that I was grieving for the loss of the opportunity to have a father I'm close with. I don't want a close relationship with my dad, he's still that same person and he's unapologetic about the abuse we faced (even though I think he feel remorse). But I've always wanted that relationship to a dad. And with my dad dying, I realized I'll never be able to have that relationship I've wanted since being a kid.

I still feel grief over that. That feeling doesn't go away. I've learned to use that feeling in building a relationship to my kids, so the feeling doesn't have to hurt me. But that feeling will always still be there. I know I still feel grief.

In a way, I relate to how people that can't find companionship feel like they won't have a common piece of the human experience. Or that it was just shit luck that I'm locked out of this experience. Not much I can do about who I was born as. But there's a lot that we can do with how we process that feeling and what we do with that feeling.

Even now, I feel like I can take that pain and use it as something positive. I hope that I can use my pain as a way to make you feel connected. And all of a sudden my pain doesn't have to hurt me, i think it can help me too.

So please feel free to share how you feel with me. I'm here for ya.