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Building Belonging for the Broken

7 years ago1,802 words

On a whim, I made a small social website specifically for students at my university with mental health issues to connect with one another, but I really can't decide if it's a good idea to actually announce its existence or not.

I'm back at university now, in the halls of residence, and I've met a couple of my new housemates (which means there are five I've yet to meet). One of them knocked on my door to get me out of my room, and I really appreciate it because I probably would have just avoided them otherwise.

The two I talked to seem very much like okay people. One's a girl who likes anime and writes Star Wars fanfiction, the other's a guy who does at least a bit of programming. So perhaps it'll be promising.

But everyone's into going out to nightclubs, drinking, having fun in that kind of way, and it makes me feel like an alien for not being into that as well. Like they'd not really want to be around me if I'm not one of them in that way, if I don't seem fun or sufficiently outgoing or laid back.

I'm also concerned about my poor social skills. While I tried my best and I don't think my interaction with them went terribly, there are little bits that keep coming to mind which I feel made it clear I'm not used to talking to people. I just hope I'll be tolerated enough to be able to get more experience and improve, though I can't help imagining that I'll become the recluse again before long.

I went to bed at 7pm and I think I missed out on them spending time with one another, meeting some of the others, and I'm lying in bed now at 4am dreading the interactions in the day to come. It's so much easier to just spend entire days alone, without the threat of uncomfortable exchanges where I'll potentially make a fool of myself and dwell on that excessively later. I wonder whether these things fade with experience, or always remain to some degree, in a mind with social anxiety. I never worried about what I said to familiar people like B (though recent things make me think I should have worried more), so perhaps it really is all about unfamiliarity...

Anyway. What little human contact I did have got me out of my head a bit, out of the deep despair and self-loathing. People need to be around others to calibrate their own thought processes.



It seems though that it's not uncommon for students to feel isolated, especially because of mental health reasons like anxiety or depression. There's my own situation, of course, and I've heard stories from others too about how they've hated the university experience because they spent it trapped in their bedrooms, ranting tearfully to their mothers each week on the phone.

There are systems in place to help with this. Couselling is the main one, and there's a hotline you can ring whenever you want and talk to for as long as you like.

But from my own experience with counselling, it's just talking to one older, out-of-touch person for an hour a week, and there's a power discrepancy; you are being helped by them (or at least that's the aim). The hotline is anonymous, so you don't know who you're talking to and you'll never encounter them again.

Neither of these allow for the formation of supportive, understanding friendships with people who are struggling with the same things that you are, which I feel would be something particularly valuable and which I very much long for myself.

There's a book about mindfulness by a comedienne called Ruby Wax, which seemed to get a bit of popularity lately, at least here in the UK. I'm not a fan of her as a person, but she spoke candidly about her own mental health issues growing up, and how she only ever finally found 'her people' when she ended up in a mental institution, where people were going through the same things and shared them openly without the mask-wearing we're all expected to do usually. I watched a TED talk once by a young woman, a student, who said much the same thing. That the other deeply depressive people she met while institutionalised were just 'normal people', and knowing that she wasn't alone for being how she was, having these other sufferers to talk with, was the biggest step towards healing.

In the past, I've made a couple of websites which aimed to be safe havens for people who were introverted or needed a place to vent or things like that. Some of you who read this were members of at least one of them. I've been told that they were quite valuable to have, and that it's a shame that one of them in particular has been abandoned by me. The only audience I ever really had to gather members from though was the same one who played my games, so I feel that limited the kind and number of people who might actually have benefitted from such sites.

I've built a new site which is similar to those, but specifically for people from my university. I won't name or link to it here for that reason (I haven't uploaded it yet anyway).

I want to keep it restricted like this because I want it to be possible for people to physically meet up with others they form connections with on the site, if the desire arises. It's great being able to forge connections with kindred spirits all over the world, but it's a shame when those connections can't easily be transformed into real-world ones.

It's set up so that people can create anonymous profiles and post on some public feed, or they can send private messages to one another. It's fairly simple and straightforward.

My hope would be that people with mental health issues, specifically those like social anxiety that prevent them from going out and meeting other people at all, would know they're not alone, would be able to connect with others in text first in a safe environment where they won't be misunderstood, and that there'd always be somewhere for them to vent any time of the day or night where they might be heard by people who care and who they can form connections with.

It sounds to me like a great idea. It's definitely something I'd want myself. But I have so many fears and reservations about it...

One - probably the biggest - comes from the realisation I repeatedly have that what I think is a good idea is uncomfortably not from the positions of other people. I might think it's an amazing idea to let people with mental health issues connect, but others might see it as some taboo thing, or nobody would want to because everyone would rather vent in private to counsellors or something. Or perhaps they'd say that since it's not some officially, professionally run thing then some bureaucracy or rules would get in the way and make it not something that should be done.

I'm also concerned that it might end up with members who are... significantly less intelligent than I'm used to, or more aggressive, or generally difficult. I would, after all, be gathering together all those whose heads swarm with demons, and that seems like it might create more harm than good if people only hurt or get hurt by others. I dread having the commitment of running a site full of people I find stressful (again) on top of all the other stuff I have to worry about.

I plan to advertise it by way of an email sent to all students, but I don't know whether I'm even allowed to send one or not. I don't know who to contact, either. I need to think about it first though to be sure that's the right thing to do, rather than embarrassing myself publicly with something unanimously considered to be inappropriate.

I actually did do that with a similar idea back when I was at that other university about four years ago, but the counsellors ended up involved and we formed a small, awkward meet-up group for people with 'confidence issues' where we sat in a circle and took turns talking. It felt embarrassing, and only three other people even showed up. The counsellor herself was outgoing and didn't understand what it was like to be isolated, which is why she conceptualised it as the confidence deficiency, which she could understand (at least in the way we assume dogs see in 'black and white').

That's why I wouldn't want to get the well-meaning but oblivious official channels involved, since I feel they miss out on the genuine, mutual connection that I long so much for myself.

There's another thing that was set up to help people who are having difficulty making friends meet people... but I went to it once, and it was awful. The volunteers who were helping out with it were all confident and outgoing, of the "I'll try anything once!" mindset, and they couldn't begin to truly understand the loneliness of the awkward people they talked so painfully patronisingly to. It was that sweet kind of patronising, like you might use when talking to a young child, but it was obviously not the basis for any kind of meaningful connection. The desire to 'help' was such a one-sided thing, a desire to essentially feel good about themselves... They spent most of the time talking amongst themselves as normal people anyway while me and the two other oddballs sat there saying nothing, ignored.

(Unfortunately those oddballs were not the kind of people I'd have talked to either; I think they had some kind of learning disabilities? Just makes me sad though wondering whether such people can ever find truly mutual connections with others...)

Anyway. I'm adding finishing touches to this site (it only took a couple of days to build), but I'm still uncertain about whether to release it or not. Maybe nothing will come of it, maybe it'll expand my social connections and be good on my CV, maybe it'll be stressful or awkward or the thing that'll push me over the edge...

I'll just have to ask some people what they think, whether they think I should or not. Gather opinions. But then it's an awkward thing to mention because we're not supposed to admit we have mental health issues, and when we do people distance themselves from us. Hmm.

Using my skills to build myself some salvation from my pit feels better than just retreating into myself and wasting what little opportunity is left of the university experience, though.