I went to a talk a couple of years ago by a woman who’d written a memoir about growing up poor, in an abusive home full of substance abuse, and then going on to get a PhD in English and to hold a position as a dean at an Ivy League institution. During the q&a, I asked her about whether she had struggled with feelings of shame in writing the book and said something about my own difficulties getting past that shame, and she and I talked for a couple of minutes about the issue. After the talk was finished, a colleague pulled me aside and thanked me for speaking up in that way and said she wished she could do the same, but that she wasn’t ready. I felt tremendously supported by her willingness to talk to me directly about it.

However, I may feel different when we get to the section of the class on disability – in that case, my experience is a tangible example of what we’re discussing, and may have value to those who would otherwise feel disconnected from the issue. I’ll have to think about that.

You fight it by blogging about it (which I do intermittently), which is necessary. You should *only* to do what you are comfortable with.

It’s hard to tell what a person’s motive is for revealing personal information, and perhaps she doesn’t know why she wants to talk about it in a school setting.

I didn’t mean to imply that you are being manipulative or inappropriate in what you reveal here. Obviously, because I keep coming back here, I think you are sharing just the right amount.

But here’s someone that used a diagnosis to get what he wanted: A fifth-grader I had in class last year began suddenly to behave very badly, was sent for evaluation, and diagnosed with bipolar disorder. After medication and therapy began, his wild behavior escalated, and one of his teachers asked him why he was acting out.

“I’m bipolar,” he replied.

“But your behavior was good earlier this year,” she countered.

“I didn’t know I was bipolar then.”

But you do what is good for you. :-)

That was their choice; this was yours.

Reading your post made me think of the debate in the military over whether or not soldiers mentally injured in combat are deserving of the Purple Heart medal.

The vast majority of humans easily comprehend physical injury and disability. We can empathize with the person with cancer or living in a wheelchair because we can imagine our own lives that way.

Brain illnesses, however, are not imaginable because we have no personally experienced mental state with which to compare our own to. We can’t get into someone else’s head.

I’ve wrestled with this myself struggling to understand and internalize that Clinical Depression is not being really really sad because a bad event occurred or a good event didn’t occur.

We can say things like: imagine your worst moment ever times one thousand spread across your every waking second, but that doesn’t get to what the person suffering from Depression actually experiences.

It’s like trying to describe color to a blind person. We can say that red is warm or hot, but that doesn’t really get to the heart of redness.

Another facet of the problem is that while we might expect a person with a brain illness to describe the difference between their state and what they might describe as normal, all too often there is no baseline for comparison.

That is one of the reasons that Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s experience with stroke is so amazing.

What does any of this have to do with your real-world question? Maybe nothing.

Because I, who do not have to make the real-world choice, want to think that I would be courageous and announce my affliction to the world and open its eyes is effrontery of the most cowardly kind.

In the aggregate I have to agree with Ahistorically: your life is best managed by you; you may be informed, but not governed, by what others think you ought to do.

My view is that by wrestling with this in this public way is, in of itself, courageous beyond what most people believe they are capable of.

B’shalom,

Jeff

I don’t see that you owe anyone anything. Your ability to function is your first priority, and you’ve decided — for good reasons, it sounds like — that public self-identification is not in your best interests.

If you self-identify and can’t function, how does that help your classmates?