Buzzfeed and Parents: A Child's Panic is NOT Funny

I always hate when I see these videos or photos that make fun of "overdramatic" kids who clearly are either panicking or over their threshold of being able to function because they just don't understand or can not handle what is going on around them.

I just saw this video of Buzzfeed called: Little Girl Deserves An Oscar For Her Performance While Getting a Flu Shot. In the video, a young girl, maybe eight to ten years old, is getting a flu shot. Unfortunately before the shot, her brother told her "It's worse than you think - way worse," and the girl then has a panic attack. The post comes complete with video and then captioned .gif's of the girl's terrified face with comments underneath such as: "Someone get this girl an agent."

I am a parent, I get the absurd humor that comes when you child is freaking out over something that is not a big deal, and we accidentally laugh. However, I have seriously tried to keep my accidental laughter or my judgement that my son's reaction is not valid to myself. It's real and valid to him, and I can either shame him and make fun of him, or, help him work through it so he knows how to deal with fear, frustration, anger, and overwhelm on his own in the future. This is an important life skill.

In the video, the little girl actually is actively trying to keep it together. She does not fight off the nurse, she is saying "Yeah, yeah, ok," indicating that she understands that she needs the shot. At one point she even says "I just can't help myself!" She follows the advice to press a button to distract herself (good idea from the nurse), but she is clearly still panicking. She is "laugh/crying," which some people think means the person is fine. It does not! Laugh/crying is a response to fear or stress. She is trying her hardest to get through a triggering situation yet everyone in the room is laughing at her. Then her parents and the world post it on the internet and joke that she is "dramatic," as if her visceral response is unwarranted and invalid. Tell the next adult who starts jumping around and screaming because of spider on the floor that their reaction is dramatic and not valid.

As the nurse is putting the bandaid on the girl's arm, you can see her shaking her head "yes," trying to get it together while at the same time her eyes roll back in her head and she looks like she might faint. If you know people who faint while getting blood drawn or for other reasons, you know that they don't just decide "Hey, I want to be dramatic, I shall faint, right now." Then, if you look at the screen shots of the video, the look on the girls face is sheer panic and terror, which I do not think is funny, at all. She's not acting.

I am hoping that this girl's parents also talked to her about the amazing amount of bravery she showed in getting this shot and trying to manage a terrifying situation. She cooperates, she tries to distract and sooth herself, and she even thanks the nurse at the end. She does all the right things that will help her foster the ability to handle panic in the future, as long as she is not shamed for it and is taught that she needs to hide it and that fear is not normal.

When we make fun of children for being scared or overwhelmed, we teach them that such reactions are to be hidden and not dealt with, which means they never learn coping mechanisms. This can contribute to developing a panic disorder in the future for many people. It also teaches kids to not have empathy for other people. Sure, some of us have inappropriate responses to accidents, like laughing, but people with empathy catch their response and then comfort and help the other person. If we continually laugh at and invalidate a child who is panicking, then they learn that when they have a friend or family member who is scared, that they should make fun of them as well, which does not help the situation diffuse and does not foster healing. It fosters an inability to emotional connect with others, which can lead to violence and oppression.

I am not saying that we all will have perfect responses to kids, or adults, when they panic or something bad happens. Part of human nature is often inappropriate responses due to trauma and surprise. What I am saying is that we should not promote making fun of other people's fear, it is very shaming and makes people feel bad about themselves and their emotions.

P.S. My husband pointed out the question: why was the mother filming this? What prompted her to start filming? Why would you randomly film your kids getting flu shots?

Blessings,

Rev. Katie

Disney's "Frozen": Why Elsa Matters

I have a few posts planned in reflection on the new Disney movie, "Frozen." For this post though, I want to talk a bit about why I identify with the character of Elsa in "Frozen" and why characters like her matter.  (Note: while I do not tell you exactly what happens in the movie, there are spoilers and the ending will not be a surprise.) Simply, I like her because she shows how scary it is to be taught to fear yourself and be told you might hurt the people you love just by being who you are. This happens when you live through abuse and trauma in many different forms.

My son says Elsa is like me because: "She is scared of herself, that she might hurt someone she loves with her power. She has to learn to love and trust herself, and then she is ok."

Photo from Disney's blog.

For me, Elsa is an important character not just because she needs to learn to accept herself the way she is, but because the writers show through her just how devastating and terrifying it is to fear your own soul. There is no terror and sadness like that of thinking you are bad when you do not want to be. It leads to a type of self-sacrifice and shame that actually makes you unable to heal. On accident, Elsa's parents taught her to be afraid of herself and taught her that the only way to protect others was to sacrifice herself. They shut her off from the world and gave her the mantra "conceal, don't feel, don't let it show." She becomes filled with fear, never learns to have compassion for herself, never learns to control her power, and thus she never knows love and belonging. This is a trauma for Elsa that makes her use the only survival she has ever been taught, that of shutting herself away and attempting to shut off her own emotions. No one trusts that she can be safe and thus she never learns how to control her own emotions or use her gifts well.

This can be seen in the song, "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?":


Many people can relate to this archetype, especially people who have been physically or emotionally abused and were told they deserved the abuse because they were "bad." I am glad we finally have a character in mainstream media that shows how trauma can effect you and that bad behavior does not mean you are a bad person. (Which is why I also love Elphaba from Wicked.) My son says the most important line in the movie Frozen is in the song "Fixer Upper," which the trolls sing. They say: "People make bad choices if they're mad or scared or stressed." For some people if they are scared enough, even their ability to make a choice and control the fear is compromised. I feel like this scene from the movie best shows Elsa's fear and how much she wants to never hurt anyone. However, she was never allowed to learn to work with her gifts and abilities, so they remain largely uncontrolled. Elsa assumes she is out of control because she is bad, but really, no one ever gave her the tools to be in control. ("For the First Time in Forever, Reprise.")


Frozen seems to also illustrate Dr. Brene Brown's research on vulnerability, fear, and shame. Shame, the belief that "I am bad," is what destroys people because it takes away the things we most need in life: love, belonging, and connection. I see Anna and Elsa both, in the end, as saving themselves by learning the components of true love. I am going to challenge the typical definition of true love (selfless love for another person, often a romantic love) and say that I think true love is radical compassion. Compassion for others and for yourself. Anna's love came from learning to have compassion for someone that was struggling, even though they hurt you. Elsa's love came from learning compassion for herself, which I do not think was only due to Anna's act of true love in the end of the movie. Elsa started on the path of self compassion when she chose to "let it go" and be herself. She then needed the act of love (compassion) on Anna's part to round out that self compassion. She had to learn that she could be herself within a community of people, as long as that community was compassionate and did not vilify her. No one can live well and be healthy in a community that has no compassion for you. Anna's act of love taught the whole community to be loving and shame-free.

If you do not have compassion, you are unable to accept and truly love yourself or anyone else. Without compassion we engage in shaming and blaming ourselves and others, rather than seeing life as fluid and full of mistakes and success. Shame, blame, and fear keep us from healing. How could Elsa ever even think she could control her emotions if she believed she was inherently bad?

I find that in treatment for mental illness, compassion is frequently left out of the equation, and shame is the norm. No one ever learns to heal themselves and understand their mind when other people shame them and tell them they are a bad person.

Trauma is a main contributor to mental illness for most of us (and trauma looks different for every person.) We did whatever we had to do to survive, and sometimes those survival skills don't work well in the rest of our life, but they are the only skills we know and they are the only response our brains are programmed to go to. Compassionate treatment tells us that we are not bad and that our brains just have not learned yet how to survive in other ways now that the trauma is gone or now that we have some agency in how we interact with that trauma due to being an adult. Sadly, most treatment focuses on shaming us for our behavior rather than getting to the reasons behind the behavior and teaching us how to reprogram our brain from old survival responses to new, more healthy survival responses. Bad therapy and treatment is basically what Elsa's parents accidentally did to her. Good therapy and treatment looks more like the relationship between Elsa and Anna. Anna did not continue to shame and blame Elsa, but rather saw that Elsa was struggling and helped lead her to self compassion and better ways to survive.

Blessings,

Rev. Katie

I Am Not a Monster Even If the NRA Says I Might Be

According to the National Rifle Association's (NRA) executive vice president Wayne LaPierre concerning the issue of mass shootings:

"The truth is, that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters. People that are so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons, that no sane person can ever possibly comprehend them. They walk among us every single day and does anybody really believe that the next Adam Lanza isn’t planning his attack on a school, he’s already identified at this very moment? How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame from a national media machine that rewards them with wall-to-wall attention and a sense of identity that they crave, while provoking others to try to make their mark. A dozen more killers, a hundred more? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?" (highlighted emphasis mine.)

X-Men: Wolverine. Photo by Jeff Norris

I just have no idea what to say to this. I am pretty sure I, and thousands of other people with mental illness, just got pegged as evil monsters who should be put into a database so that our country can watch us. Really? I mean, this is so ludicrous to me that I can't even believe someone said this. I feel like I am watching X-Men and I just got put on the mutant registration.

We mental health advocates have talked until we are blue in the face about how studies show mentally ill people are not violent and that not all mass shooters have a mental illness. As NAMI states "One in four American adults experience a mental health problem in any given year, yet the U.S. Surgeon General determined over a decade ago that 'the overall contribution of mental disorders to the total level of violence in society is exceptionally small.'" Do people not read scientific studies? Do they not believe them? I could write another post like my previous one about not assuming all people with mental illness are violent, but for the people who really need to hear it, they will never listen. (Read NAMI's official response to the NRA here.)

We actually already have limits around mental stability and the ability to buy a gun with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System where they do not allow guns to be purchased "by any person who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution." This is an attempt to identify people who might be a danger to themselves or others if they had a gun. However, it is hard to define what "mental defective" means and many people who have ben in mental institutions might be perfectly safe with a gun. I mean is there a time limit on this list because if you were in a mental institution when you were a teen and now you are 50 years old and have had no recurrence of your illness, are you still "a mental defective," for life? That seems unreasonable to me and just increases fear and stigma. I am not arguing that any list like this is not a good idea, just that we have to be careful how we implement it and we don't add to it language such as LaPierre used to misrepresent what mental illness really is.

And that is what I want to focus on for this post, that statements like LaPierre's which use labeling and hateful language just increases violence in our world, in particular more violence against a group of people who are already more likely to be victims of violence than the general population.  

First of all, to me, the ultimate in violence is hatred and creating an us vs. them mentality. When we separate ourselves from all of humanity, saying we are different than another group of people, then we give ourselves permission to treat these "others" as less than human. Calling them monsters. Creating lists for them to make sure everyone can judge them. Casting them out and locking them up. Statements like LaPierre's encourage violence, oppression, stigma, and scapegoating.

Second, I feel like LaPierre's statement is a disgrace to the many people who own guns and don't act with such hatred and ignorance. I know many people who own guns for hunting or shooting at the range. My Dad used to go shooting once a week with his friends. I know parents who have the most fantastic kids ever, and they go shooting together. Guns are not something I would choose to have around because I think accidents can happen no matter how careful you are, but I do think there are many responsible and caring gun owners out there. None of these people would say such disgusting things about another group of people. LaPierre's statement is a bad representation of people who own guns and I hope that responsible gun carriers stand up against someone like LaPierre.

Third, statements like this, even if we don't end up with a database, once they are said, discourage many people with mental illness from seeking treatment because now we are branded as potentially being monsters, evil, and mass shooters. We know that most people do not understand mental illness enough, even many professionals, to be able to deem who might one day become violent enough to hurt another person. So no one, even people with mild depression or anxiety, is ever going to want to seek treatment when that might mean they are now seen the the eyes of our world as a monster. This means people are going to live in pain, fear, sadness, and never get help because they are scared that everyone will fear and hate them. Already people treat you differently once they find out you have a mental illness. LaPierre's statement, even though I assume he did not mean it to apply to every person with mental illness, was so broad and filled with vitriol and hate that it increased hysteria and has already made our world, with it's inadequate knowledge of mental illness, more unsafe for people like me.

As my eight year old son asked me "What would happen to you Mommy, if you were put on a list?" While we tried to explain to him that this probably won't happen and if I were on a list for gun control purposes, I don't even want a gun so it would probably not affect me, he knows that as soon as you are called out on a list as different and scary, you are at risk for violence.

I hope that more people speak up about the issue of using hateful language and increasing mass hysteria at times like these. I hope we talk about how wrong it is to promote the idea that violence in our country is always someone else's fault when really it is something that we all need to help take care of. We can't unjustly blame one group of people so that now we have a scapegoat whom we can persecute and harm.

Blessings,

Rev. Katie

Too Afraid to Share

I asked my husband to read over a potential blog post today. After he read it, he said, "This is not your style." He pointed out that my writing style for this blog is very different than my other blog, Moving in With Dementia, and my preaching style. Interestingly, Jeff said the problem with the posts on this blog is that they are too preachy. No one ever wants a preacher who is too preachy!

My style is storytelling. When I write a sermon, I need a story first. No story, no sermon. It's just who I am. So, why is my style for this blog so different?

I am afraid to share my story.

I am not afraid to tell people about my bipolar disorder, and even share a bit about it, but I realized I am afraid to say too much. People with mental illness are judged so harshly that our jobs, family life, and friendships are at risk if people know too much about us. That is why most of us don't speak up.

However, the purpose of this blog was to let other people with mental illness and their families know they are not alone. Sharing our stories is what connects us, not sticking to just intellectual, heady talk about what is going on.

From my experience, having mental illness makes you feel like a freak. Heck, other people actually call us freaks. It is lonely, not only for me but for my husband and son. Sometimes it feels like we are the only people dealing with this because very few people actually talk about it.


So today, part of our story included being lucky that I even got out of bed this morning. Jeff actually got me to go for a walk, which was a big deal. (I was supposed to go running and just couldn't do it.) One of my great therapists said we were working towards having days when I don't wake up and automatically think "I hate my life." I have very few of those mornings, but I will keep working for them.

Blessings,

Rev. Katie