A lot of my work over the past few years has been focused on improving access to mental and behavioral health care for youth and families who need it. I deal with occasional depression and PTSD-related anxiety myself, so this has been a natural interest for me. I created my Facebook page, Positively Mental, during a period of agonizing professional transition when I felt that the people who most needed to understand this as a priority, do not. I knew that whatever the end result of this transition was, that I wanted to be more open and honest as a complex trauma survivor, to fight the stigma against mental illness and bring hope to more people who desperately need it.
I love to read and explore the internet in search of all things mental health. I want to learn and connect the dots in my own mind about some of the many gaps that exist between the popular understanding of the brain and behavior (which is really in its infancy), and the real life experience of someone living with a mental condition that presents obstacles to daily living and thriving. There is so much about the brain and behavior that we don’t understand, but in the meantime, millions of people must somehow cope with mental illness in order to function and belong in modern American society.
One of the many little gems I have come across in my quest for understanding is one of the RSAnimates, the videos that pair the audio of someone’s talk on a complex subject with concise illustrations that make it easier to visualize and process the content. This one, The Empathic Civilization, had one statement in particular that really struck me. “The first drive is the drive to actually belong.” It’s not that this is a new idea or one I hadn’t known before. We know, for example, that the drive to belong is a powerful factor in gang culture: young people without strong family and community ties are easy pickings for gang recruiters because they so long for that fundamental human need to belong.
However, I began thinking more about how the drive to belong affects many of the major issues that impact young people. Although most people feel a strong inner drive to belong and actively seek to do so, there are some who struggle with the interpersonal skills needed to connect with others, though they do want to. For some, the desire to belong, to connect with a group or community that welcomes them is powerful, yet their way of relating to the world is not consistent with what the world expects. They want to belong, but don’t know how. The world also hasn’t learned how to accept and relate to them; this, to me, seems to be the greater problem.
Our society actively sends the message that “social misfits”, people who don’t naturally know how to fit in and belong, are somehow defective, and to be ostracized.
I think ensuring that odd-seeming young people with awkward or abrasive interpersonal characteristics are assisted in their attempts to belong, and doing everything we can to ensure that they do, is one of the most important changes needed to prevent tragedy and pain for youth. Think of all of those young people, trying to find their place in the world, and finding no welcoming arms. What does it do to the psyche of the individual, to feel so different that there is no place for you? How does that affect the way you see yourself and how you value other people? How often do disconnected young people devalue others as a method of self-preservation?
There are many labels that we put on people who may not relate to others in the expected way, who may not easily connect to others emotionally: sociopathy, antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, autism and Asperger’s, and many others. Yet when we look deeper we often find that what we have interpreted as a disinterest in connection is actually a difference in how they attempt to connect. These people may not go about it in the typical way, but they do want to connect, they do want to belong. And if they no longer want to belong, it’s often because they became conditioned to believe at an early age that connection and belonging was impossible for them. The more we begin to understand this, the more we learn that people with a lot to give are in pain for the lack of belonging.
The ramifications of our failure to meet our young people halfway in their natural desire to belong are huge. In fact, I would make the case that most of the violence perpetrated by young people toward themselves or others can directly linked to a preventable lack of healthy connection and belonging. The gang violence I mentioned earlier is a complex issue with several causes, but the lure of the gang as a substitute family is known to be a powerful one. Young people who are vulnerable to suicide are often tipped over the edge by an episode of humiliation and ostracism by their peers: the polar opposite of belonging. And the growing problem of mass school violence by young males has a clear link to this breakdown: these are often severely troubled young men who have lost all sense of connection; they often have come to believe that it is their destiny to carry out this devastation. They have come to believe that their only place of belonging is in the brotherhood of destruction and infamy. Many of these young men were known by their therapists and counselors to be deeply troubled and disconnected, but the traditional therapeutic methods attempted were not effective. Some, like the Virginia Tech shooter, were rejected even by the educators they had come to for belonging.
Access to affordable, effective therapy is a crucial, unmet need in our country, but there is a difference between talking to a therapist who is there to clinically evaluate you, and connecting to a peer, family member, or safe adult who genuinely accepts and understands you. We have to do better on both.
Imagine a world where all children and young people who struggle with belonging have a mentor or a guide to help them forge the connections they need to gain that sense of acceptance? We all know people who cannot easily connect with others. Putting some thought and effort into what could help them truly belong to something good can make all the difference: for them, for you, and for the world.
