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disability--like writing with learning disabilities--is a
challenge. Hell, just having a mental disorder is
challenge enough.
Mental disability writing is a challenge we fight, face,
confront, deal with, and learn to compensate for in
school, at home, and everywhere else we need writing
tasks done.
An even greater task is getting others to understand.
So I dedicate this page to all of us with challenges
(now also called psychiatric disabilities): we will now
add the challenge of coming up with a metaphor or two
that will help in the furthering of our/their
understanding.
And what I trust we will find is that we may be
mental, but we are also terribly gifted.
Understanding and Dealing with
a Mental Challenge by Writing about it
As a writer with adult ADD, I do not easily subscribe to
the term "disabilities." Not without a screaming, raging
resistance. You and I are not disabled, even if we are a bit
disheveled, even if we often feel broken, out of sorts, or
unable.
I want these pages of writing with disabilities--these
mental disability writings--to honor these stirrings of
restlessness as much as I want to provide good,
honorable sources and resources for writers with
disabilities. And I want come up with a better name or
label for those of us who identify with the differences that
have us feeling like a vase with no flowers, a race car with
no driver, an idiot savant with no savant.
This means an effort which will take a while, as I do my
traditional work in between bouts of research. In other
words, this part of my writing site will be under
construction for now, and maybe forever...eternally being
built, built upon, built up.
Please feel absolutely free to email me with any concerns,
comments, or complaints. Well, er, I could do without the
latter, but do what you will: these pages are for you...this
mental disability writing is for us.
What do You Compare it to?
Try to build a website with ADD.
Try to fly a plane with OCD.
To do simple, common tasks with a psychiatric disorder
is to be head colorist on a cartoon team at Disney
Studios when you're color blind. The simple becomes
complex. The intriguing becomes appalling. Creativity
turns into a demand. Play turns into work.
Slamming rain on a shield with crappy wipers. This is
representative of one of the metaphors for ADD. The
brilliant E. M. Hallowell, M.D., writes in “What’s It Like To
Have ADD?” that having this mental disorder is like
“driving in the rain with bad windshield wipers.” He and
others have used such metaphors, analogies, and
similes to define ADD in concrete terms:
It's “like listening to a radio station with a lot of static…”
(Hallowell 1)
It's “like trying to build a house of cards in a dust
storm.” (Hallowell 1)
“For…adults with ADD, life is directed by a hapless
stagehand who alters the set so often that it’s hard to
know where anything is or where it should be.” (Talan
18)
Being an ADDer is being a "dynamic and exciting”
Porsche that races about in a world of Toyotas.
(Ramundo and Kelly 124-46)
My descriptions of ADD are in an essay (which I'm
expanding into a book) titled "in this skin...", which you
can read here in a few months--after ACM returns
publications rights to me (after they have published it.
In the meantime, think about your own definitions and
descriptions. What would you compare your mental
disorder to? What characteristics of the concrete can
you apply to the abstract?
If you have bipolar disorder, do you feel like a MIG
fighter plane tethered to the earth by a giant rubber
band? If you have OCD, do you see yourself as a sailor
bailing with a teaspoon?
Try a list of details that match your symptoms.
Try conveying with sights, sounds, acts, smells.
Try for funny...by exaggerating.
And if you get stuck, try out reading a book or other
piece of disability writing about and/or by a person with
your particular disorder or mental disability.
And email me if you wish. We can check out the work
(s) together.
| Coming soon: sarcastic, sardonic scoffing and self-indulgent sulking .... Bet you can't wait! |
Mental Disability/Illness
Awareness, Acceptance, Action
Block.....things like popups
Create!
Do one thing at a time. My bookcase fell over one day. I
picked up one handful of books each day. They finally got
reshelved...a month later...and so what?
Early. Be early. This will help avoid crowds, traffic, waiting.
Find one small/easy task to start; then the momentum will
carry you through the rest of the larger tasks
Give in rather than fight depression. The more you fight,
my therapist used to suggest, the more in the face the
depression gets. Embrace it. Climb in bed, read, eat,
watch cartoons.
Have a bath. Once a month, whether you need it or not.
I. Come from the I. Speak for yourself. Stand up for
yourself. Take responsibility for yourself.
Joke about your own illness...but jezus, be very careful
about others'. They might not be as tough as you.
Keep it simple. Thoreau said it. Mathematicians apply it.
Computer geeks swear by it. 12-steppers (in recovery)
believe it, say it, and practice it.
Hallowell, Edward M., M.D.. “What’s it Like to Have ADD?”
National ADDA. 1992. add.org. 1 March 2000. <http://add.
org/content/ abc/hallowell/htm.
Kelly, Kate, and Peggy Mundo. You Mean I’m Not Lazy Stupid
or Crazy? New York: Fireside Books, 1993.
Talan, Jamie. “ADD and Your Brain: Why We Forget to do
Stuff.”
ADDitude Magazine. Jul/Aug 2002: 17-18+.
The pages of roxannewrites.com do not promote, sell, or have any professional connections with any
psychiatric institution or services. I am not a trained therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist, and I do not
purport to diagnose, advise or prescribe.
I am trained and experienced in writing and in teaching college writers, I promote writing with disabilities and
disability writing, and encourage creativity and art as it relates to our thinking, emotive, social, and creative
writing challenges and writing about those challenges. The only psychiatric experience I have is my own.
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