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Emma Burnell's avatar

The Emma I want to be: Has already read the New Yorker piece rather than adding it as an 'I will get to that tab'

The Emma I actually am: Has already watched the Tom Cruise clip twice.

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Nina Bloch's avatar

I do think an underrated part of mental health management is learning to distrust your own first instincts or impressions. In many cases, the way you understand people, pick up their social cues, react to their actions, can be misunderstood through the warping lens of mental illness. The modern solution of the world being more accommodating is important. But in the process the equal responsibility of the sufferer to acknowledge his impaired judgment, to second-guess himself, to apologize when misjudging, seems to have been absolved. It’s now referred to as “masking”, and the expectation is regarded as almost an abuse of the sufferer. But if you refuse to acknowledge where your behaviour has crossed a reasonable social norm, all you are doing is declaring a Victim Olympics, where the rules of engagement are always set by whoever is suffering the most.

The other day, I started crying when the cafeteria guy accidentally added sauce to my meat. I’m anxious, depressed, pregnant, heat-addled. I have every diagnostic justification for my reaction. But it was still an overreaction and a shitty way to treat a server, so I apologized. I don’t think mental-illness-indentitarian approaches encourage understanding where you have overstepped.

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