Shawn Maxam tells a story of how his mental illness was used as a reason to treat him like a criminal instead of  a human being in need.

ARCHIVED POST: Originally written August 2012

*Before we start criminalizing  and dehumanizing people with mental illnesses let’s remember they often need society’s help not stigma and scorn.

My fellow GMP blogger Ozy Frantz linked to an interesting article today The Criminalization of Mental Illness in Black America.

The emphasis on locking up versus treatment, the focus on making people disappear instead of making people healthy, and the power of a white racial frame that sees black bodies as criminal and dangerous contributes to mental health disparities.

-David J. Leonard

Much of the information and perspectives shared are wholly familiar to me. Just like Delonte West I used the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel. Can you imagine telling your friends and family you have to take a drug that prevents you from having symptoms associated with psychosis? Shit, I didn’t even want to take my medication because I associated the word psychotic with serial killers and mass murders. But this is another example of where the popular media meaning of a word has little or no connection to its real medical meaning.

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Just like Delonte West, I had a episode with the cops while experiencing an episode. I was having a depression-induced panic attack while at a public gathering. I decided to run outside. Unfortunately, I was running in Harlem. I was immediately stopped by four police officers who pointed their guns in my face. I had no weapons and I didn’t realize running in America was a crime but I was a Black man running in Harlem at night so obviously I had done something wrong.

The officers were actually engaged in the stop and search of vehicle when they spotted me. I was quickly handcuffed with face on the ground. I was still in the throes of a full-blown panic attack. Luckily several of my friends who were with me decided to pursue me when I exited the restaurant. They quickly tried to explain to the officers what had happened. I guess the officers heard the words bipolar disorder and believed I was dangerous because they wouldn’t remove the handcuffs.

My friends eventually convinced the cops to take me to a local hospital. They pleaded with the officers to remove the handcuffs, but they said it be best I remained handcuffed for both my safety and the safety of the officers. I was writhing in pain because the handcuffs were too tight. The officers after much prodding decided to put a second pair of handcuffs on my wrist to help alleviate the pain. I sat on the concrete with tears running down my cheeks with my hands behind my back for over twenty minutes until the ambulance arrived.

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I was embarrassed because at least a dozen of my colleagues and friends were standing around me. I knew they were there out of concern for my well-being but I still felt like crap. I was their Black friend who was being arrested. Talk about fulfilling stereotypes. Two of the officers said they would accompany me to the hospital and decided to ride with me in the back of the ambulance. The paramedics asked if I was under arrest. The officers said I was not but explained the handcuffs had to remain. Luckily I had a colleague riding along with me in the ambulance since I was in lucid enough state to advocate for myself.

We finally arrived at the hospital and as we entered, every single person in the lobby stared at me. I assumed they were afraid, because who other than a criminal would need two police officers to escort them to the hospital, right? As I sat down to have my vitals taken by the nurse I was still in handcuffs. More than an hour had gone by and was being treated like I had committed a crime. The nurse asked the officers if I was under arrest and he was told I was not. He echoed the sentiments of everyone before him in wondering why was I in handcuffs then.

Finally I was taken to the psychiatric ward to see  a doctor. After the heavy metal door closed behind me, the officers finally removed the handcuffs. This taught me, as a Black man suffering from mental illness, that I had to be secured at all times. That I was considered dangerous. The psychiatrists asked the officers who were still present if they were going to arrest me and they said no. He said they could leave. I guess they were not aware of doctor-patient confidentiality. I explained my story to the doctor, who corroborated it with several of my colleagues and friends who had followed me to the hospital.

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I didn’t want to spend several days in the hospital, but my fate was in the hands of others. Yes, these were people who cared about me, but I was a grown man and didn’t like that I had to cede control to so many other individuals. Finally the doctor decided to give me a few pills to calm me down and decided to let me go. The key words there are “let me go”. The events of that night have left me traumatized.

I was having a medical emergency but I was treated like a criminal. Can you imagine putting handcuffs on someone while they were experiencing a diabetic seizure or a cancer patient having a reaction to their chemotherapy treatment. My story is similar to many people who have a mental illness and have an unfortunate run-in with law enforcement due to their symptoms manifesting themselves publicly. But when you have a history of mistrust between a whole community and the police, how am I supposed to believe the police have my best interests at heart? I was being harassed and brutalized when I didn’t have diagnosis. I am already seen as a criminal in America because of my skin color, and now that I have bipolar disorder, I am considered a dual threat. Black men are dangerous and scary. People (especially men) who have mental illnesses are dangerous and scary. So what’s a Black man with a mental illness?

Read more Shawn Maxam here.

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R.I.P. SKH

Flickr image via MSVG

Shawn Maxam is tired of being afraid for his life just because he happens to be a man of color.

The Jordan Davis story probably got lost in the shuffle of the Thanksgiving holiday and also because there was a rapid appropriate response by law enforcement. I won’t go into specific details about the case except to say that a 17 year old unarmed African-American male was killed again.

Michael David Dunn is charged with murder and attempted murder in the Nov. 23 shooting at a Jacksonville, Fla., gas station. The 45-year-old Dunn parked beside the sport utility vehicle occupied by (Jordan) Davis and three other young men and told them to turn the music down, police said. Dunn exchanged words with Davis, who was in the back seat, and started firing.

I am heading into NYC in a few hours, specifically Brooklyn, and I can honestly say I am experiencing anxiety about the trip. I am constantly afraid whenever I am outside of my apartment. I experience fear when I am driving my car to graduate school in Pennsylvania, when I am riding the subway in New York and when I am walking around the small town of Princeton, NJ. I am constantly afraid of being the victim of gun violence. Both the cases of  Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis illustrate that this isn’t some irrational paranoid fear that I have. Whether it is my own personal experiences of racial profiling or the larger issue of societal stereotyping of men, specifically Black men, we need a have a honest conversation about why I feel a sense of accomplishment by reaching the age of 31 years old.

Read more Shawn Maxam here.

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R.I.P. SKH

Shawn Maxam asks are social workers change agents or social control agents?

The concept of street-level bureaucracy was first coined by Michael Lipsky in 1980, who argued that “policy implementation in the end comes down to the people who actually implement it”. He argued that state employees such as police and social workers should be seen as part of the “policy-making community” and as exercisers of political power.

I am currently in my first semester of social work graduate studies and not only is social work aka one of the helping professions vastly different from my lay person notions but the work done in my future profession has vast implications for our society in how the work I do perpetuates power and privilege in our society.  Every week I have been experiencing a “professional existential crisis” and decided to see what the public thought about what social workers do. Below is an excerpt from my social media virtual round-table discussion:

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Me: I assume we engage in “public service” professions because we want to craft transformative change but often the status quo only allows transactional change to occur. We then become older and the market economy forces us to become administrators and bureaucrats where rules and procedure take precedent over innovation and risks. Revolutions are steeped in taking chances. Not playing it safe. Of course I’m stating this within a macro framework. Everyone has agency within the structure. But systemic oppression and inequality doesn’t continue to exist by accident.

JG: They’re the overlapping area on the Venn Diagram… Sort of like educators.

NB: Captain America’s partner the Falcon was a social worker. If that’s the moral field you’re playing on, you’re in the clear.

Me: Yeah. Highly medicalized today though and much less social justice informed practice. Important work but neoliberal policies…

CZ: (Highly) Subjective.

KM: I’m with CZ. You also can’t lump the entire profession together…

Damn you Che, Malcolm, Fanon and Harriet Beecher Stowe!

JC: Depends on the social worker, doesn’t it. I meet enough of the former variety to be heartened.

Me: agreed JC. I was thinking more from a macro-structure-systemic perspective.

AT: I think it depends but anyone working for (a) gov’t organization has difficulty affecting real social change.  So I vote the latter

JC: From a macro perspective, aren’t we all screwed into working for agents of social control?

JS: My mom was a social worker in a hospital, and she really was the one who helped people through things. She took people in to identify bodies, sat with them to help figure out funeral arrangements, went with doctors to tell people their loved ones had passed… She was the one sent in to a patient’s room in Maternity because she wanted to name her daughter “Latrine” – my mom was like, “It is a lovely name, but do you know that it means toilet?” and the lady was like, “nobody knows that!” and my mom explained it’s the word they use in the military and the lady went with Latrine anyway (it does have a pretty ring, you gotta admit).

So that being said, a gentle supporting Social Worker can be an agent to help someone make positive, informed choices. Someone with an agenda is going to be more of a social control agent…

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I think I agree with most respondents that it is highly subjective but Michael Lipsky’s Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Service does present some of the structural constraints that prevents even the most well-intentioned individual from doing great work. Fortunately we can all help to  change things.

Read more Shawn Maxam here.

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R.I.P. SKH

Shawn Maxam discusses the difference between a few volatile words.

It must be remembered that in those great days I was considered to be an “integrationist” – this was never, quite, my own idea of myself – and Malcolm was considered to be a “racist in reverse.” This formulation, in terms of power – and power is the arena in which racism is acted out – means absolutely nothing: it may even be described as a cowardly formulation. The powerless, by definition, can never be “racists,” for they can never make the world pay for what they feel or fear except by the suicidal endeavor which makes them fanatics or revolutionaries, or both.

― James Baldwin, No Name in the Street

Every single time we discuss any  ism (race or sex) folks get dismissive or defensive because they don’t “see” it or experience it on an individual level. In 2005 I personally didn’t know anyone with HIV/AIDS but that didn’t many the disease didn’t exist. Granted that is a crappy analogy because in this example “the disease” is the villain not other human beings or the larger society.

In conversations about abstract ideas and socially constructed theories we tend to dismiss the macro generalities in favor of specific micro examples. I live in New Jersey and it’s a part of the United States of America. Without the other forty-nine states America doesn’t exist as we citizens have constructed it. Racism is a similar idea. Prejudice, bigotry and discrimination all happen but it is when they occur together consistently for generations (systemically) to a whole race (a social construct) do we get the magical elixir of racism.

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“As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

― Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Letters

This isn’t about why racism happens. That is another post all together. This is moreso about what racism is and what it is not.

One tree doesn’t make a forest so I won’t be focusing on what individuals do but what societies, communities and groups of people do. This gets murky because these larger systems consists of individuals but just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. We send rovers to Mars so our collective intellectual capacity to do this does exist.

Prejudice: (1) : preconceived judgment or opinion (2) :an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge OR any preconceived opinion or feeling, either favorable or unfavorable

Bigotry: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance OR stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one’s own

Discrimination: treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit OR the act, practice, or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually

Oppression: (a) unjust or cruel exercise of authority or power (b) something that oppresses especially in being an unjust or excessive exercise of power

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Racism rests upon and functions as a kind of seesaw: the persecutor rises by debasing and inferiorizing his victim

-Albert Memmi, Racism

Returning to my analogy of one tree doesn’t make a forest or one state doesn’t make America it is the same thing with racism. It isn’t just one type of  ”bad” treatment of people that is racism. While I despise individuals engaging in racist behavior, a lone jerk doesn’t create a social problem. Social problems are societal in scope. This is big-picture stuff. Slavery, Jim Crow, Segregation, Inter-generational Urban Poverty and so forth.

Most folks say that racism is over. Well look at police profiling, the War on Drugs and Mass Imprisonment. This dis-proportionally affects people of color. Especially Black and Brown men. Yeah we have successful men i.e. Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Wayne Brady and some guy writing this blog. These men have seemed to avoided the grip of racism but again these individual examples don’t disprove systematic oppression. It gives us hope but it doesn’t mean the ugly reality doesn’t exist.

If you have some system-talk feedback I would love to hear it. Let’s try to avoid the individual talk for one post today. Thanks for reading.

Read more Shawn Maxam here.

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R.I.P. SKH

Shawn Maxam wonders why Black characters don’t speak on  cable television’s most popular show.

I’m the one black guy. You realize how precarious that makes my situation?

-T-Dog (Season 2, Episode 2: Bloodletting)

First I am trying to create a coherent argument about a zombie TV show. This isn’t based on any sound logic or reality. Second there are a ton of spoilers below (from the TV show only) so read at your own peril.

Last season T-Dog barely had any lines. Half the time I didn’t even remember he was still on the damn show. Now they killed him off. I should have realized this once he started being more present in the show’s narrative. His death wouldn’t have had any emotional weight if he never spoke. I see what you are doing AMC and Glen Mazzara (the current show-runner).

The other Black male character of  Morgan Jones (who with his son Duane) who assisted Rick in the beginning of the Zombie apocalypse during the show’s first season hasn’t been back, but racist redneck Merle has returned. They killed off Jacqui, the black woman from the original group, at the end of season 1. By the way, why can’t most of the Black characters have regular names? (I’m joking—sorta). Somehow Rick and the crew didn’t find any more Black people—even though they came from Atlanta—until they show up at the prison in season three. Really!

This season has introduced the fan favorite character of Michonne. On a positive note we have a dark-skinned woman of color who has natural hair on one of television’s most popular shows. I guess that’s a win. Unfortunately she barely speaks. This isn’t just a racial issue but gender too. The women on this show are poorly written and very one-note. I think everyone is distracted by the mere fact of seeing pretty women shoot guns and being “Bad-ass”.

Fan-boys are primarily by definition white men. Based on the Kevin Smith show Comic Book Men, I wouldn’t expect the non-white male characters  of The Walking Dead to be nuanced and complex. My wife also noted how Michonne is functioning as a protector of Andrea (which wasn’t her role the graphic novel). Hopefully the character development will gain momentum in the upcoming episodes.

The good news is that even though T-Dog died last week, we now have Oscar (the other black guy) to replace him. Yeah for tokenism!

Enjoy tonight’s episode.

Read more Shawn Maxam here.

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R.I.P. SKH

Shawn Maxam explains how being “normal” with the aid of medication has taken away the advantages of being Bipolar.

Creativity – like human life itself – begins in darkness. 

-Julia Cameron 

ARCHIVED POST: Originally written summer 2011

The collapse of my talent bridge has been catastrophic ever since I have gone baseline (aka psychologically normal) because of the daily medications I take for survival. As an artist, of the mentally unhinged persuasion, you can either die a physical death or a metaphysical death where your creative inspiration goes kaput.

I have spoken to many individuals like myself who struggle with mental illness and who are now in a “stable” place. There are many side-effects to taking psychotropic drugs yet the a major side-effect that is rarely discussed is the lost of your creative self. I’m not arguing that only sleeping for two hours a day while spending the other twenty-two writing a whole book of poetry or composing an album worth of songs is healthy or sustainable. But problematic as though these artistic marathons of activity may be they do become the norm and the daily reality for the bipolar artist. The inability to access the well that watered your artistic ambitions especially when your art is what defines you is very jarring to your sense of self. It’s akin to the photographer who loses his sight or the composer who loses his hearing. I would argue the medication induced loss is far more traumatic because technically one is still in possession of the tools that were used to create the art you dearly love.

The list of artists with some form of mental illness who have lost their lives (mainly by their own hands) is long. Here are just a few:

David Foster Wallace

Virginia Wolf

Sylvia Path

Vincent Van Gogh

Ernest Hemingway

Paul Hunter Thompson

Kurt Cobain

Ryunosuke Akutagawa

I haven’t written a poem into four plus months. I haven’t played guitar and composed a song in over half a year. I have scripts for short films that need my attention. I am still getting use to actually having to work at being creative. My faucet of ideas is barely leaking anymore. The only reassuring aspect of this whole ordeal is that I know I am not the first and won’t be the last bipolar artist to have to confront this issue. If you’re in a similar boat as I am in how do you deal with the stop-gap in your creative juices flowing?

Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament a book by Kay Redfield Jamison discusses the issue of mental illness and creativity with interesting clarity. I highly recommend it.

Read more Shawn Maxam here.

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R.I.P. SKH

Image by Kauserali via Wikipedia

AP Photo.

Shawn Maxam responds to The Atlantic article ‘Fear of a Black President’

“The thing is, a black man can’t be president in America, given the racial aversion and history that’s still out there,” Cornell Belcher, a pollster for Obama, told the journalist Gwen Ifill after the 2008 election. “However, an extraordinary, gifted, and talented young man who happens to be black can be president.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates’  Fear of a Black President piece illustrates the complexity of race in this country. He touches on racism, Black rage, white supremacy and Trayvon Martin. The component of Coates’ piece I want to expand upon is the idea that the election of Barack Hussein Obama signified a transcendence of race in America. For so long race has the been the proverbial black eye this country has attempted to disguise with a mask of accepting “assimilated” black folks in the modern era – see the overused Cosby family as an example.

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The election of a Black president seemed to symbolize two things in this country. To people of African descent it created a temporary sense of euphoria and hope. A hope that the plight of the African-American would actually matter in American politics. For generations Democrats have given lip-service to Black communities. African-Americans faced with the lesser of two evils haved forged an uneasy alliance with the more “progressive” party. For white Americans voting for Obama signified a collective reassurance that racism no longer existed as universal belief system. Yes there were outliers who harbored racist beliefs but they represented  an evil of yesteryear.

I think we misinterpret tolerance or acceptance for respect. The nation’s psyche compartmentalizes the various aspects of successful Black men’s identities. Michael Jordan is respected as an athlete who happens to be Black but he isn’t considered a Black athlete. Muhammad Ali is an example of what happens when history, time, old-age or bad health neuters  brashness and bravado of Black athletes. The non-cocky negro can be revered or respected in America but outspokenness is frowned upon. The Angry Black man is still a scary sight in America and the white-washing of a strong black identity is a necessity. It is of vital importance to have one’s race overlooked to reach the pinnacle of your chosen profession.

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(Image Credit: Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP Photo)

Acceptance depends not just on being twice as good but on being half as black. The community in which Obama is rooted sees this fraudulent equality and seethes.

I myself have felt this tension of needing to dial down my blackness. I am large dark-skinned black male who has experienced police harassment dozens of times. The death of Trayvon Martin is a tangible fear for many men of color I know. Separating abstract ideals from lived realities is important when we have discussions about the desires we have for this country. Living in a country where race doesn’t matter is unnecessary goal because if culture is synonymous with race in the United States then that is an impossibility for most minorities. Our quest shouldn’t be for a post-racial America but rather for a post-racist America. Let’s see if we can get there.

Read more Shawn Maxam here.

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R.I.P. SKH

Shawn Maxam begins his Culture of Chronic Unhappiness series by discussing our collective obsession with creating false catastrophes in our personal lives.

If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.

-Lord Acton

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The worst-possible scenario is the lens we are socialized to view the world through. Hyperbole and superlatives are necessary to discuss the most trivial situation in media, pop culture, politics, sport and our daily lives. This tendency to overreact is apart of the larger ‘culture of chronic unhappiness’ that we are now all participating in. Perspective and nuance is a necessity so we don’t all don’t collapse from stress and to ensure we maintain solid emotional and mental health.

Bad things happen but tragedy is fortunately rare in most of our lives.We need to separate the concept of tragedy from basic modern life discomforts aka first world problems. Let’s see if we can use some language to view our personal lives outside of the pervasive culture of chronic unhappiness. Time for resilience building.

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Complaining or Venting & Processing or Problem-Solving:

Complaining is revisiting a situation repeatedly that has had minor impact on your life. Venting is discussing a (negative) situation once or twice. Processing is talking through the situation where you discuss your feelings and why he you felt that way. Problem-solving is figuring out how to resolve the situation or issue and preventing some of the more negative feelings about the experience from reoccurring.

Our general behavior is maximizing in a negative manner not only the feelings we have about an issue or situation but turning the most trivial discomforts and minor annoying life experiences into a crisis i.e. in the words of comedian Louis CK – waiting on the airport tarmac before take-off is a problem now.

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The Difference between Problems, Issues and a Crisis:

Problems are resolvable.
Issues are specific underlying emotional experiences that are still have an impact on how you behave or how you think about the world.
Crisis is a current or past situation that is life-altering in scope and needs or needed immediate attention.

Cultivating a optimistic attitude is essentially crafting an armor of positive protection against the constant negativity and criticisms of  basic modern life circumstances. This is the cornerstone to building a bit of resilience and surviving the ubiquitous culture of chronic unhappiness.

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Happy Halloween!

Read more Shawn Maxam here.

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R.I.P. SKH

Flickr image by Ludo29

Shawn Maxam discusses how unrealistic it is to expect everyone to know about absolutely everything.

It is not that I’m so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.

―Albert Einstein

In our modern society we have all agreed there are several various types of intelligence. We are all either more competent or less competent in certain niches of intelligence than other people. Also our own levels of intelligence aren’t static and can fluctuate due to a myriad of intrinsic and extrinsic factors.  Below are a few quick examples of the different types of intelligence. It is definitely not a definitive list:

Emotional Intelligence – related to emotions, feelings and self-awareness of emotions

Professional Intelligence -  related to a particular job, career or profession

Social Intelligence – related to social and group interactions

Civic Intelligence – related to government, politics and democratic participation

Academic Intelligence – related to school, the academy and traditional educational

Parental Intelligence – related to family and child-rearing

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Our expectation of the average person or professional  having multidisciplinary expertise and intelligence shows up constantly in our daily lives.  We usually assume the medical doctor who has specific esoteric knowledge  about a specialty of medicine should also be really smart about politics or be a great parent or be engaging and have wonderful bedside manner. I am a fairly decent writer but I am horrible at changing tires or hanging drywall. No one can be good at everything or even be mediocre at everything. It’s impressive when people have an adequate working knowledge of several complex areas of expertise. I don’t and I can admit this. What perplexes me is when people want to wax poetic about a particular topic they are clearly misinformed about.

It is okay to say “I don’t now much about that and can you tell me more”. Every conversation doesn’t need to be a debate or a squabble over who is right. It frightens me to think about the level of ignorance expressed when we have a resource like the Internet that makes information more accessible. Granted having access to information doesn’t teach you how to think critically.

This is connected to what I believe are our perceptions of self and projections of self. We never want to feel inadequate or lesser than in any situation so we project expertise or expect universal expertise. We leave no room for learning, no opportunity for ourselves or others to make mistakes and we chastise each other if we change our minds or admit ineptitude.

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We generally talk in absolutes and create perfection-laden expectations of self and others  i.e. once your child is born you are supposed to be the best parent. Once you get married you have to be the best spouse. Once you enter political office you are supposed to fix every issue right now. Once you graduate from college you have to get a great job and be the best worker at that job as soon as you begin. These are ludicrous and emotional destructive expectations. We are committing psychic suicide with such a unrealistic belief system of  self and others.

I think if we focus less on fostering an impression of being impressive than I believe we all  can become better listeners and a more constructive dialogues can possibly happen between individuals and groups.

Then again what the heck do I know.

Read more Shawn Maxam here.

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Thank you so much for reading, sharing and commenting.

R.I.P. SKH

Shawn Maxam believes we need to contextualize statements made by political figures if we really want to understand what is at stake.

Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

-George Orwell

We Americans can be so reductionist sometimes. We want to breakdown a ninety-minute presidential debate into a nine-second remark. As hilarious as everyone finds Romney’s “binders full of women” gaffe/comment  I think it is more important to note the conservative discourse about women’s reproductive rights, access to equal pay and notions of workplace equity.

The same thing occurred when Romney said he loved PBS and Big Bird but wanted to cut funding for public television. Instead of looking at the substance or meaning behind politicians say we become so enamored with their slip-ups, mistakes and gaffes. We are all flawed when it comes to using language but if we become distracted by one silly comment by a presidential candidate we do a disservice to the messiness and complexity that is policy.

I am not saying everyone has to become an expert in political punditry but being an engaged citizen requires effort especially when our elected officials make decisions that not only affects us personally but the entire sociopolitical Eco-system. We know what Romney’s politics and policies are. Doing just a few minutes of research will illustrate this.

As a good friend of mine stated “At the very heart of modern conservative ideology is the belief that people should be free to discriminate, and that includes paying women whatever the hell they want. I wish more people, especially women, understood this”.

There isn’t just a “war on women” but a difference of ideologies and policy here. I am not a feminist but I don’t need to hear a politician say something trivial to understand his policies are unfair and detrimental to women. These women include my wife, my mother and my sisters. Context is always important but it is also confusing and complicated. Unfortunately soundbites don’t offer us much room for contextualizing.

Read more Shawn Maxam here.

Please share this with friends, enemies and temporary allies alike.

Thank you so much for reading, sharing and commenting.

R.I.P. SKH

Shawn Maxam recaps racist stories from this year’s presidential election.

I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust…We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.

― Thurgood Marshall

This list highlights not just examples of bigotry or prejudice but the permutation of systemic oppression through institutionalized racism (macro) to microaggressions - even within the supposedly respectful realm of presidential electoral politics.

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I haven’t been able to do these recaps as often as I would like but non-violent symbolic racism just doesn’t stop because I’m now a very busy graduate student. Just to clarify a person’s first amendment right allows them to express their opinions and my first amendment rights allow me to acknowledge how racist how the expressed opinion really is. Let’s dive in.

• George Will and the Affirmative Action of President Obama’s Presidency - Washington Post columnist George Will makes the argument that Pres. Obama is our nation’s political version of Jackie Robinson and this historical blindness is giving him an unfair chance to being elected again because Americans don’t want to “…especially reluctant not to give up on the first African American president.” -In my opinion Will’s collective armchair psychological diagnosis of our nation is quite ridiculous.

An excerpt from the column below:

Obama’s administration is in shambles, yet he is prospering politically. This may not, however, entirely be evidence of the irrationality of the electorate. Something more benign may be at work.

A significant date in the nation’s civil rights progress involved an African American baseball player named Robinson, but not Jackie. The date was Oct. 3, 1974, when Frank Robinson, one the greatest players in history, was hired by the Cleveland Indians as the major leagues’ first black manager. But an even more important milestone of progress occurred June 19, 1977, when the Indians fired him. That was colorblind equality.

Managers get fired all the time. The fact that the Indians felt free to fire Robinson — who went on to have a distinguished career managing four other teams — showed that another racial barrier had fallen: Henceforth, African Americans, too, could enjoy the God-given right to be scapegoats for impatient team owners or incompetent team executives.

Perhaps a pleasant paradox defines this political season: That Obama is African American may be important, but in a way quite unlike that darkly suggested by, for example, MSNBC’s excitable boys and girls who, with their (at most) one-track minds and exquisitely sensitive olfactory receptors, sniff racism in any criticism of their pin-up. Instead, the nation, which is generally reluctant to declare a president a failure — thereby admitting that it made a mistake in choosing him — seems especially reluctant not to give up on the first African American president. If so, the 2012 election speaks well of the nation’s heart, if not its head.

image via Burnt Orange Report

• Hanging chairs not hanging chads – For a short while there were individuals openly lynching chairs with nooses in their front yard. The chair is meant to symbolize President Obama a la Clint Eastwood’s conversation with an empty chair representing President Obama. I’m sure Eastwood does not endorses such despicable behavior. This is another example of people taking a bad idea and making it not just worse but dehumanizing our President.

• I see niggers Black People – Gawker does a solid job of  summarizing several instances where people call President Obama the “n word”.

• Slavery was a blessing in disguise - Arkansas State Representative Jon Hubbard released his memoir titled ‘Letters to the Editor: Confessions of a Frustrated Conservative.’ He offers some insight about his opinion that the  slavery was really a positive for the descendants of enslaved Africans. Taken from Hubbard’s book:

…the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.

Lest you think this is an abhorrence on Hubbard’s racist views he double downs when he states the following “ Wouldn’t life for blacks in America today be more enjoyable and successful if they would only learn to appreciate the value of a good education?”. Boom goes the dynamite! Thank you for the positive reframing Jon.

• Racist Republican Party vs non-racist Republicans – Ron Rosenbaum does a good job of explaining with great care of how an organization, institution or political party can engage in systemic oppression even if all of its members don’t reflect those values. Rosenbaum explains GOP racism below:

No, I’m not saying all Republicans are racist. I’m saying that as a party, ever since Goldwater and Nixon concocted the benighted, openly racist “Southern Strategy” in the ’60s, the Republican Party has profited from overt and covert racism.

A perfect analogy are the Boy Scouts of America. Their policies are homophobic but that doesn’t mean all the young children and families who participate in the organization support the discrimination of LGBT groups. Multiple truths and ambiguities exist in our country. Let’s kill the simple black-and-white binary talk folks.

Thanks for reading this week.

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Read more Shawn Maxam here.

Please share this with friends, enemies and temporary allies alike.

Thank you so much for reading, sharing and commenting.

R.I.P. SKH

Shawn Maxam wants to resurrect the dead art of giving advice.

The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.

-Henry Ward Beecher

The art of giving advice is dead in America. There is now an industry of self-help which espouses the very important virtue of self-empowerment but that is totally different from giving actual advice. This also intersects with the our collective lack of respect of expertise and wisdom. We all can’t know how to do everything. 

Definition of advice - an opinion or recommendation offered as a guide to action,conduct, etc.

Advice-giving invokes risk on the part of both participating parties. If I am giving you advice I must accept that you will 1. totally ignore my advice or 2. my advice may not actually work. The person receiving the advice must accept that by doing what the “advisor” suggested that they must accept their compliance in the failure of the advice not working.

Why is advice dead in our country? Because people want to give every idea equal weight. This is the “false equivalency” problem aka everyone’s opinion is equally valid. Nope. Some ideas are just dumb. It is similar to our lack of conviction in calling out politicians when they lie. What kind of Orwellian language manipulation malarkey is that.

Exhibit A: We may define false equivalence as when when someone falsely equates an act or idea of one as being equally egregious to that of another without also considering the underlying differences which may make the comparison  invalid or unfair.

Facts are exactly that – facts. Your interpretation and implementation of the facts is your personal choice but let us not confuse the two.

Driving while intoxicated is a bad idea. Have thousands if not millions of people drove while inebriated – Yes. Have they gotten to their destination safely – Yes. Does that mean you should drink and drive – No.

Confusing freedom of choice with bad choices or bad advice isn’t sound logic. Also advice isn’t telling someone exactly what to do… good advice is just offering a alternative way of doing based on another hopefully more informed perspective.

Read more Shawn Maxam here.

Please share this with friends, enemies and temporary allies alike.

Thank you so much for reading, sharing and commenting.

R.I.P. SKH

Flickr image via Anderson Mancini

Shawn Maxam explains the rational optimism that helps him cope with the reoccurring trauma of  triumph and disappointment.

There are two ways of meeting difficulties: You alter the difficulties or you alter yourself to meet them.

-Phyllis Bottome

Life is a riddle that we all want to solve. Existence is filled with difficulties, ambiguities and complexities. A cycle of crisis and tragedy punctuated by blissful moments  and triumphant successes – a death follows a divorce, a graduation occurs the day before a diagnosis, a birth precedes a lay-off etc.

No matter how many times we see this happen the discomfort of disequilibrium never subsides. We never get use neither the bad times, the mad times or glad times. Our expectations remain unreasonable and our reactions irrational. We thus develop the “fixing syndrome”. We want to fix ourselves, fix others and fix the world. The problem is we can’t agree on what is exactly broken about any of us.

I get disappointed in myself and everyone else even though we all doing the best we can with the best we have at the  moment. I am slowly learning instead of trying to cure myself or the “sickness” of living I rather focus on treatment aka being healthy. The more knowledge we gain the more equipped we can become to cope with the worst of existence and to savor and appreciate the best as well. 

Read more Shawn Maxam here.

Please share this with friends, enemies and temporary allies alike.

Thanks for reading, sharing and commenting!

R.I.P. SKH

Flickr image via digikuva

D: Which wife? Her as a baby? A child? When you met her? Now? The dust she’ll become? Which wife? There is no fixed wife. She’s never the same. No one is. The lie you cling to is that people are perma-nent. Show me one that is.

S: But I love people.

D: What do you love? Memories? Images? Everyone you love is dying every second . Can’t you see that? Everything is dying every split second and you’re not screaming with grief over that . Only when I take their last second .

S: But when that last second comes it’s unbearable.

D: It’s just one last appearance you try to make permanent. The sun went down while we’ve been talking. Millions of things have died on this planet alone while we’ve been talking. Where’s your famous grief?

S: That’s not fair.

D: It’s true. You couldn’t care less about death. Why don’t people grieve about whatever died so they could be born?

S: What did die?

D: NOTHING! Something changed. And your childish minds, your egos want to create terror around change. It’s pathetic and it’s dead wrong to be afraid .

S: Then what are we supposed to do about our fear of dying?

D: Forget about dying! What are you going to do about your fear of living? So few of you ever even give it a thought.

S: Then what are we supposed to do?

D: Suck the life out of every moment because it will never come back. That’s what you are supposed to do.

S: How do we do that?

D: Get rid of fear. Get rid of it! Look at it. You live and die every moment of your lives and you spend your whole life being afraid of that last tiny moment when I come. Believe me. You have already missed trillions of perfect moments while you were consumed by your fears. You’re sound asleep and you fear me? Human beings are narcissis-tic jokes.

AP Photo/David Goldman

Shawn Maxam on why our obsession with winners and losers in politics has negative consequences for all of us.

Ed Schultz and Chris Matthews nearly had heart attacks on MSNBC last night after the first presidential debate because President Obama didn’t attack Mitt Romney. Four years later and even the white liberal media doesn’t understand how mindful President Barack Hussein Obama has to be as a Black man about America’s perception of him.

The president has been incredibly calm and rational through his tenure as a presidential candidate and as POTUS and he has still had his legitimacy as a citizen questioned (the birther phenomenon), accusations of him being a secret Muslim (as if being an practitioner of Islam automatically equates to terrorism) and this belief that he wants to socialize every aspect of America. He is aware of the implicit and unacknowledged fear of a Black man being the leader of the free world.  Of course white political pundits aren’t aware of this duality or double consciousness as termed by W.E.B. Du Bois.

This “two-ness” of being African and as well as American leads to psycho-social tensions in which individuals or groups are forced into identifying themselves into two social worlds and viewing themselves as insider and outsider refers to their split consciousness and disadvantageous social position. Having such consciousness can harm the psyche of these black people as this dual existence is damaging to their sense of morality. “Double consciousnesses,” according to Du Bois, means a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others in the mirror.”[2] Du Bois views the history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. -via Wikipedia

He can’t be aggressive or temperamental because he will be accused of being an angry Black man. I find it perplexing that Mitt constantly interrupting and not being respectful of moderator Jim Lehrer is interpreted as strength and confidence. This is the traditional notion of masculinity that is still celebrated in the media and the 24 hour news cycle.

Were the debates boring? In my opinion – yes they were. But our expectation is that presidential debates should be entertaining with “gotcha” one liners, zingers and soundbites. Basically we prefer style over substance which is ridiculously ass-backwards. But when you are the first Black president, style and how you present yourself to a still very race-conscious (and in many regions racist) country is crucial. Getting loud and pushy just won’t be effective.

Read more Shawn Maxam here.

Please share this with friends, enemies and temporary allies alike.

Thank you so much for reading, sharing and commenting.

R.I.P. SKH

Shawn Maxam illustrates why developing our ability to be resilient helps fulfill our emotional sense-of-self and reaffirms our humanity.

A stone when struck resists.  If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered.  While the living thing may easily be crushed by a superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existences…  It is the very nature of life to strive to continue in being.  Since this continuance can be secured only by constant renewals, life is a self-renewing process. 

-John Dewey

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Resilience: the individual’s capacity  for adapting successfully and functioning competently despite experiencing chronic adversity or following exposure to prolonged or severe trauma -Dante Cicchetti

One of the most popular examples of resilience has been documented in Victor Frankl’s book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’. Frankl describes his time as an prisoner in a concentration camp during World War II and how he developed a method for finding a reason to live. Victor Frankl developed logotherapy as a result of this experience.

Logotherapy is defined as “the belief that it is the striving to find a meaning in one’s life that is the primary, most powerful motivating and driving force in humans.” A person need have an experience as profoundly transformative as surviving one of history’s worst genocides to become a resilient individual. Any circumstance can be an impetus for the deep self-reflection and existential analysis used by Victor Frankl.

I personally define resilience as using even minor crises or adversity to develop the emotional muscle memory to have the psychological reflex—aka the ability to bounce back—from emergencies and the stress of modern life. Recognizing emotions that become present when life presents difficulties and obstacles and developing an internal language to understand what is happening psychologically is vital to training yourself to becoming resilient.

“Psychological resilience refers to an individual’s capacity to withstand stressors and not manifest psychology dysfunction, such as mental illness or persistent negative mood.  This is the mainstream psychological view of resilience, that is, resilience is defined in terms a person’s capacity to avoid psychopathology despite difficult circumstances.”-1

Every person must realize that we can survive and thrive when challenged by life. Of course having the ability to communicate our emotions and feel validated is a valuable precursor to recognizing this ability. For men this means avoiding our socially constructed desire to minimize or ignore the spectrum of emotions that we may encounter when faced with a crisis.

Young boys (and young girls) need to be taught the importance of  engaging in proactive positive mental health. We have to replace our tendency to only be reactive, which means waiting for crisis or difficulty to happen before we apply emotional tourniquets. That means teaching ourselves and others that we can have emotional strength and realizing that acknowledging our emotions, especially during challenging times, is not a weakness.

It also means teaching ourselves and others that expressing strength and vulnerability without being “tough” or projecting a facade of being “okay” and that trauma and emotional scars don’t have to be interpreted only as emotional damage. No matter how negative our history or current circumstances are, we don’t have to discard prior experiences. Instead, we should use them as reminders of our ability to exhibit perseverance.

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Emotional resilience  for men specifically resides within the intersectionality of  several educational components which include literacy—the stories written about our humanity, vulnerability—the safe spaces created for expression of our humanity and masculinity—the spectrum of what it means to be a man, which runs from the antiquated to the ever-evolving progressive viewpoint supported and explored at literal and virtual venues like The Good Men Project.

Developing resilience begins with a robust empathy of self and compassionate self-reflection. Participating in this behavior psychologically and spiritually results in emotional maturity, which allows processing and thus resilience.

It is important to note that resilience or one’s “bounce-back factor” operates on a spectrum.  As men, we tend to invest in our external needs, wants and desires but neglect our  internal needs, self-care, mental health and emotional well-being.

In humanistic psychology, resilience refers to an individual’s capacity to thrive and fulfill potential despite or perhaps even because of such stressors.  Resilient individuals and communities are more inclined to see problems as opportunities for growth.  In other words, resilient individuals seem not only to cope well with unusual strains and stressors but actually to experience such challenges as learning and development opportunities. -1

Stress is assumed to only exist outside of ourselves but this is a mistake. Stressors can have intrinsic origins as well extrinsic. The resilient individual integrates this false dichotomy of experience to further his or her emotional growth.

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Utilizing a personalized toolbox and unique skill-set as methods to engage in proactive self-care to develop resilience and overcome life obstacles.

Toolbox: 1) Therapy 2) Support group 3) Healthy coping mechanisms e.g. journaling, exercise, reading, cooking etc.

Skill-set: The methods we use to take care of yourselves. But we have to have the freedom and the ability to articulate the gamut of emotions we have as human beings. Men are usually are not taught how to discuss their emotions or given the safe spaces to express fear, doubt, glee, surprise and so forth.

A host of experiences can serve as a catalyst for fostering  resilience within ourselves. Using  and connecting extrinsic circumstances as intrinsic motivation.

Positive Experiences/Life transitions – 1. College 2. Moving  3. Job changes/promotion 

Crisis - 1. Divorce 2. Death 3. Loss of home 4. Abuse & Trauma 5. Being laid-off

Challenging emotions – 1. Fear 2. Doubt

Long-term endeavors – 1. Parenting 2. Marriage

If you need an expanded framework the book The Resilience Factor has methods and techniques by two expert psychologists that helps develop the skill that is resilience. Examples of what the system teaches includes:

• Cast off harsh self-criticisms and negative self-images
• Navigate through the fallout of any kind of crisis
• Cope with grief and anxiety
• Overcome obstacles in relationships, parenting, or on the job
• Achieve greater physical health
• Bolster optimism, take chances, and embrace life -2

The American Psychological Association has a free resource ‘The Road to Resilience’ that illustrates methods and techniques that helps individuals deal with difficult life-altering events. The brochure includes 10 ways to Build Resilience:

Make connections. Good relationships with close family members, friends, or others are important. Accepting help and support from those who care about you and will listen to you strengthens resilience. Some people find that being active in civic groups, faith-based organizations, or other local groups provides social support and can help with reclaiming hope. Assisting others in their time of need also can benefit the helper.

Avoid seeing crises as insurmountable problems. You can’t change the fact that highly stressful events happen, but you can change how you interpret and respond to these events. Try looking beyond the present to how future circumstances may be a little better. Note any subtle ways in which you might already feel somewhat better as you deal with difficult situations.

Accept that change is a part of living. Certain goals may no longer be attainable as a result of adverse situations. Accepting circumstances that cannot be changed can help you focus on circumstances that you can alter.

Move toward your goals. Develop some realistic goals. Do something regularly — even if it seems like a small accomplishment — that enables you to move toward your goals. Instead of focusing on tasks that seem unachievable, ask yourself, “What’s one thing I know I can accomplish today that helps me move in the direction I want to go?”

Take decisive actions. Act on adverse situations as much as you can. Take decisive actions, rather than detaching completely from problems and stresses and wishing they would just go away.

Look for opportunities for self-discovery. People often learn something about themselves and may find that they have grown in some respect as a result of their struggle with loss. Many people who have experienced tragedies and hardship have reported better relationships, greater sense of strength even while feeling vulnerable, increased sense of self-worth, a more developed spirituality, and heightened appreciation for life.

Nurture a positive view of yourself. Developing confidence in your ability to solve problems and trusting your instincts helps build resilience.

Keep things in perspective. Even when facing very painful events, try to consider the stressful situation in a broader context and keep a long-term perspective. Avoid blowing the event out of proportion.

Maintain a hopeful outlook. An optimistic outlook enables you to expect that good things will happen in your life. Try visualizing what you want, rather than worrying about what you fear.

Take care of yourself. Pay attention to your own needs and feelings. Engage in activities that you enjoy and find relaxing. Exercise regularly. Taking care of yourself helps to keep your mind and body primed to deal with situations that require resilience.

Additional ways of strengthening resilience may be helpful. For example, some people write about their deepest thoughts and feelings related to trauma or other stressful events in their life. Meditation and spiritual practices help some people build connections and restore hope.

The key is to identify ways that are likely to work well for you as part of your own personal strategy for fostering resilience. -3

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I like to internalize the concept of resilience into more nuanced form of the well-known cliches  of “positive thinking” or “bouncing back” as learned optimism. Based upon the school of positive psychology, it is the belief that anyone can cultivate positive re-framing as a skill or tool.

Learning optimism is done by consciously challenging self talk if it describes a negative event as a personal failure that permanently affects all areas of the person’s life. Reports of happiness have also been correlated with the general ability to “rationalize or explain” social and economic inequalities. -4

An additional method of framing resilience via positive conceptualization is J.B. MacKinnon‘s ‘Vertical Agitation’-5 which “according to MacKinnon, means focusing on only one portion of the problem at a time,  and holding oneself accountable for the solving of that problem”. This was primarily created to promote social change within eco-activism circles but in my opinion is wholly transferable to the realm of personal problem solving as well.

Read more Shawn Maxam here.

Please share this with friends, enemies and temporary allies alike.

Thank you so much for reading, sharing and commenting.

R.I.P. SKH

Flickr images via  chutme and miz_ginevra

Cited Links:

1- Psychological Resilience

2- Resilience Factor

3- Road to Resilience

4- Learned optimism

5- Sometimes Happiness is Two Kinds of Agitation

Shawn Maxam transforms the abstract art of dreaming into the tangible act of achievement.

Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet.

-Victor Hugo.

How do we practically chase our dreams in a society where surviving the Great Recession and making money seems to be the only viable option?

Well dreams need not be ethereal. Deliberate practice and mastering one’s craft is essential in building the necessary foundation for resilience when confronted by self-doubt, momentary failures and other existential obstacles.

Dream building is a top-down approach to achieving your goals. You work backwards from your ultimate goal or achievement. In-depth case study of individuals who may mirror your own dreams. Teasing out how these mentors can offer guidance and advice.

An grandiose example would be the ascendancy of Barack Obama. There are not only the president’s own books but other pieces of literature and films that showcase the techniques Obama used to achieve his dream of being a change agent.

Acquiring material assets, participating in social justice, pursuing artistic endeavors, furthering educational desires are all big dreams that can be broken down into incremental steps. Once these steps are broken down into tangible goals a person can begin to to attempt to achieve their dreams.

Seems simple enough. Now I have to go and do it.

Shawn Maxam recaps racist stories of the past two weeks.

You know, modern liberals are just, I think frankly, totally off the deep end… their only answer is to yell racism and hide.

-Newt Gingrich

This list highlights not just examples of bigotry or prejudice but the permutation of systemic oppression through institutionalized racism (macro) to microaggressions.

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• The Elephant in the GOP room – Good news from the Republican convention two weeks ago was the party’s desire to seem more inclusive. Unfortunately some delegates didn’t receive the memo. Patricia Carroll, an African-American and CNN camerawoman, was verbally assaulted and had peanuts thrown at her. Carroll did say “This situation could happen to me at the Democratic convention or standing on the street corner. Racism is a global issue,”. Damn she is sadly correct.

• First Amendment Death Threats – Several days ago an inappropriate photo was circulating on Facebook. The despicable picture altered the iconic image of Obama’s Hope poster and replaced it with words rope and had a noose around the president’s neck. WTF. GMP’s Jackie Summers explains why some Americans hate president Obama.

• Let Freedom Ring – The intersection of women’s reproductive issues, race and class in America. The Atlantic discusses how banning abortion affects non-white and low-income women.

• White on White crime – Edward Wyckoff  Williams explains how the recent Empire State shooting makes a compelling case on the inability of the NYPD’s Stop and Frisk initiative to prevent violence but to continue racism.

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Read more Shawn Maxam here.

Please share this with friends, enemies and temporary allies alike.

Thank you so much for reading, sharing and commenting.

R.I.P. SKH

Flickr image by Pug50

Shawn Maxam ruminates on the beautifully harsh realities of marriage and explains why he wouldn’t change a thing.

It is difficult for some people to accept that love is a choice. This seems to run counter to the generally accepted theory of romantic love which expounds that love is inborn and as such requires no more than to accept it.

- Leo F. Buscaglia

First off, Hollywood lied. Marriage isn’t a magical and wonderful union between two people. It’s messy, hard and emotionally challenging hard work. That is why I personally love marriage (and of course my wife). We need to move the away from the social paradigm where people expect marriages to be happy and constantly blissful and instead move towards the work of creating healthy marriages.

We can quantify health. We can create agreeable metrics on which to measure the health of couplings. Typical adjectives like happy and good are inadequate and too rigid conceptually to describe something as beautifully chaotic as a marriage or partnership.

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People aren’t static. So our contextualization of married life shouldn’t be either. Here’s an example of why I like to employ the term healthy. Is a healthy baby going to be measured with the same standards in which we measure a healthy middle-aged man or a pregnant woman or even a writer living with bipolar (wink wink)? Each of these individuals have different specialized needs. Their physiological bases are varied and thus in moments of distress they require different interventions. They are all human beings but what keeps them healthy is slightly different and nuanced.

Marriages are similar. How my marriage remains healthy will be different from even my closest friends. My wife  and I have to agree upon what constitutes healthy for us—the level of communication required, compromise needed and the desires we have.

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My post title refers to a mixture of states of emotional and psychological being that describes a healthy marriage for me at the moment. And even that is a gross over-simplification. But I know there will be moments where I bicker with my wife (annoyance), instances where I feel content (happiness) and then indescribable times of romantic bliss where our relationship feels perfect and is at its apex (love).

That’s how I see it today. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. But I’m incredibly excited to go on the ride with her. Wish us luck.

Read more Shawn Maxam here.

Please share this with friends, enemies and temporary allies alike.

Thank you so much for reading, sharing and commenting.

R.I.P. SKH

Flickr image by Lel4nd

Shawn Maxam shares a story about his struggle with being faithful while having a psychotic break.

Marriage requires a special talent, like acting. Monogamy requires genius.

-Warren Beatty

*Originally Published March 2011.

It is a peculiar thing checking the divorced box on the Census, other mandatory government and employment documents. Very Scarlet letter. Marital failure due to infidelity. I had an affair while I was experiencing a manic episode which later became an acutely depressed episode.

The whole thing was pretty epic. Especially the part where my ex-wife threw my cell phone at me in the hospital while I was recovering because I had spoken with my mistress at 4am. She was than banned from visiting by my doctor. God I was such a douchebag!

I felt guilty about engaging in behavior that I completely abhor and although my brain wasn’t being quite rational at the time I still take full responsibility. So here I am several years removed from that experience and I have all of these questions about the sustainability of my next partnership.

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The reality is that I’m a  young guy. I’ve only cheated once in my life but that’s akin to saying I only went to prison once. I still f*$ked up. Now there are many reasons why men will cheat. Sex being reason one through five for myself. Of course it’s more nuanced than that. Sex for me involved emotional expression and connection to my partner. It’s how I was taught/conditioned to express love even though I could have sex with women I don’t love. Confusing right?

Relationships are very difficult. Even the most well-intentioned, smartest and most determined individuals fail to make it work. So love is basically a game of Texas Hold’em Poker. You  have some control over how you play the cards you’re dealt but chance and circumstance still have a huge say over the outcome. Now bipolar is the drunken uncle who surprisingly shows up and either ruins a card game going fairly well or totally accelerates the destruction of game already going poorly.

Promiscuity and a heightened libido are symptoms of mania. But aren’t those just symptoms of being a man as well? So my biological AND neurological tendencies are to spread the wealth when it comes to my family jewels. Sociologically this isn’t seen as a bad thing either. So my body, mind and society are all supportive of non-monogamous behavior. Damn! I actually believe in monogamy and prefer to be married. I think the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. But we compromise our beliefs everyday.

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I wonder aloud (figuratively of course) if I can do it. Should I even attempt it. I’m only going to be thirty. I can have kids and a wife at fifty if I want. I haven’t discussed yet how many women actually are negative triggers. Honestly when you’re in a relationship you’re also managing the emotions of your partner. And who is more emotional than a your spouse or partner? A bipolar person. So now you have the exciting prospect of managing your unstable emotions and the emotions of your wife or significant other. We also haven’t even introduced periods of emotional volatility experienced by you or your partner. If I remarry then what about the hormonal upheaval of pregnancy? Postpartum depression? Am I the only person asking myself these questions?

I don’t have the answers. Hopefully if you’re a man with a mental illness you’ll be lucky enough to find a really awesome and supportive person who understands and appreciates your dilemma.

P.S. None of my Bipolar male friends are monogamous at the moment. Those that are in relationships they tend  to end very quickly.

UPDATE:

Today I am happily remarried. So a monogamous relationship was possible for me. I hope if it is your desire that if you are an individual living with a mental illness that you find a healthy lifelong commitment as well.

Read more from Shawn Maxam here.

Please share this with friends, enemies and temporary allies alike.

Thank you so much for reading, sharing and commenting.

R.I.P. SKH

Flickr image via by peasap