Last summer I met a woman at a comic drawing workshop. She told me she was studying at the local university, and I said that I studied there, but got kicked out because of mental illness. She thought that was weird, because so many of her fellow students were mentally ill, and they weren’t kicked out. The university felt like a place that accepted mental health problems.
And I realized that she and I had very different experiences of mental illness and neurodivergence. I was literally having autistic meltdowns from the stress of university studies, and my fellow students were disturbed and told the university to kick me out, and they did.
It was clear that this woman’s mentally ill fellow students didn’t do anything like that. They might occasionally mention suffering from depression, but it’s not severe enough that they act out like I did with my meltdowns. It’s a mental illness that is not noticeable, it doesn’t disturb other people. And that’s the kind of mental illness that is accepted by the people who love talking about accepting mental illness. The type they can ignore, the type that doesn’t inconvenience or disturb them. They only want to accept and sympathize with the mentally ill people who it’s easy to sympathize and accept.
This kind of acceptance of mental illness or neurodivergence leaves no room for autistic people like me who have serious meltdowns, or for people with schizophrenia or any condition that makes people act in ways that other perceive as disturbing or frightening. And that isn’t really acceptance, is it? If you only accept neurodivergence when it’s easy for you, you don’t accept it. That’s not good enough.
I believe that we should actually treat people with “difficult” forms of mental illness and neurodivergence with kindness and understanding. And I’m not just asking this for myself, out of my own selfish interest, because like many autistic people, I’ve had to handle other people having meltdowns or mental health crisises. And I know there are ways to react to such things with understanding and kindness instead of punishing the person and trying to get rid of them, because I have done it.
Here is another personal story, and the reason I’m writing this now. Earlier this week I was the co-host of a meatspace trans meeting. Most of that is simple tasks like opening the door for people, making coffee, introducing newcomers to how things work around here, and so on.
But last night an autistic participant was having a meltdown, getting angry and upset over their past traumatic experiences. My reaction was not to throw them out, but sit down and listen to their troubles. This person became scared of scaring other people with their meltdown and anger, and we went off to another room to sit in privacy. We sat there and I listened while they talked about their difficult feelings. Eventually this person calmed down, we hugged and went back to the main room and played a card game.
Sitting through someone’s meltdown and them being upset about their trauma isn’t fun, but it is something that you have to do if you care about other people’s well-being. And my handling of the situation wasn’t skillful at all. I don’t have the gift of gab, and my contributions to the conversation weren’t that helpful or intelligent. But I did my best, I listened and didn’t berate them, and it worked out.
I dare say that I acted better that evening than a lot of neurotypical people I’ve seen confronted with an autistic meltdown. Remember that my fellow students saw me suffering in such a way and decided to report me to the authorities to get me kicked out. If someone as emotionally sensitive as me can handle that situation, a lot of people could if they just tried. They could be kind, if only they saw autistic or mentally ill people as humans worthy of kindness instead of scary things to be done away with because they are uncomfortable. But that’s precisely the problem we have.
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