Vulnerability: Admitting Mental Illness

Acknowledging the Various Hats We All Wear

“People love us for our vulnerability and authenticity, even if we fear the opposite will happen.”

“If there’s a silver lining to the emptiness, here it is: The unfillable is what brings people together. I’ve never made a friend by bragging about my strengths, but I’ve made countless by sharing my weakness and my emptiness.”

~Glennon Doyle

I have spent a lot of time dwelling on the ideas above, and thinking about the extensive work and research on vulnerability done by Brene Brown.

Both discuss the benefits and advantages that vulnerability affords us.

Vulnerability is indeed hard. It challenges us. It exposes us. It certainly doesn’t feel good; it feels icky. Scary.

And yet, both Doyle and Brown emphasize that it makes us authentic. People will be more likely to open up to us, we can make greater connections and form genuine relationships through vulnerability. Through it, we have more potential to bring people together, to help them, to help ourselves.

We also risk being made to be a fool. Exposed. Embarrassed. Judged. Ridiculed. I guess that’s the vulnerability part, the price we may have to pay.

It’s perhaps a paradox. Since most of us are so focused on trying to protect ourselves, to put our best foot forward. Many of us try to keep up appearance, to show others we are in control and have it all together, or at least we show that, we pretend to have our shit together. Is this outward display, this performance for others? Or for our own fragile sense of self worth? Maybe both.

Still, there really is an undeniable magic that takes place, that moment when this utterance happens:

“…Wait, really? you too?”

I’ve seen them. I’ve experienced them. (It’s always easier to be the receiving end of someone else’s vulnerability.)

Perhaps my favorite memory of this, my first introduction to vulnerability was at the tender age of seven. My best friend (now of 31 years) noticed the duct tape on my mother’s mini van that carefully held the window together.

She eyed it, and exclaimed, with great happiness and excitement, “You guys have duct tape on your car too!”

And voila! A lifelong friendship was formed. A bond made possible through this visual means: duct tape, a symbol of working class folks gerry-rigging a beater of a car, trying—through sheer will—to keep going for another ten thousand miles or so.

I remember being embarrassed by the state of my parents’ vehicles growing up. I remember wide eyed gapes of relatives when the muffler-less Toyota my dad had roared up to family gatherings.

So, I was tentative, scared, to reveal our car to this girl, my classmate. Ironically, it became a bonding point and it would open up a door to us sharing many many more relevant and relatable experiences for many years to come.

I bring this up in the context of this blog, which I’m happy to discuss with anyone, to self-disclose that my family members have many mental illnesses. I also struggle with depression, anxiety, PTSD.

But we all wear multiple hats. In recent years, I’ve thought a lot about to approach, and whether or not I ought to self-disclose my mental illnesses with my students. It’s one thing to advocate for mental health needs, mental illness, and to admit that there is a lot of mental illness prevalent in my family.

But it is a whole another realm to out yourself to students, in a large scale, public manner, such as in a class discussion or on a syllabus. (As opposed to private conversations one-on-one with select students, which I do pretty regularly.)

I know that some educators and parents would cringe in horror at the very thought that the adult, the professional, would do this. Share something so personal with students when they are not your equal.

And that’s only part of, right?

As I’ve mentioned before and is glaringly obvious: mental illnesses are still stigmatized, very misunderstood.

I would be lying if I didn’t admit that—even in academia—that I fear disclosing that I have a mental disability on a job application, for fear that it could/would be used against me. And truly, a university position, academia is probably a better, safer place to do so than many other sectors.

I also struggle with sharing this with students because there is also a level of professionalism you want to maintain, a distance. I’m not good at boundaries sometimes with students and I don’t want to open myself up more. I also think sometimes we delude ourselves and we should really admit that we are just comfortable with the power dynamic/hierarchy of professor-student, to make ourselves feel more protected, authoritative, in control.

But there are also the very real concerns that students would see this information as an invitation to overshare, to treat or regard you as a therapist, and it would make it harder to establish boundaries…boundaries not only because we educators need them to protect our time but also because we are not trained therapists, psychologists, counselors, social workers, mental health experts. We don’t want to do harm. I worry about that a lot with my students. I can only listen, validate, and encourage. I’m not a mental health expert…And you do need to differ to…a therapist…Direct your concerns to the university counseling center, please.

Still, I have colleagues who do this, are honest about their anxiety and ADHD, in hopes of being more honest, more real with students. They also see it as doing their part to prioritize mental health advocacy and to encourage students to take their ‘mental health absence’ days when they need them throughout the semester. I think it’s also part of that philosophy/approach to care about students as people rather than as simply laboring for the work in my class.

I admire these colleagues. I really do. And yet, I am not quite sure if I am there yet.

Disclosing this information to adults would be one thing. And though I completed the doctorate largely because I didn’t want to be an educator of children or youths, I also have to admit that many of my students are in that space where they’re not kids, but not quite adults yet. Sure, they can vote and fight and die for their country, most of them. But many can’t order a beer yet in a restaurant, and many of them struggle deeply with maintaining focus and discipline— with self, in structuring their schedule in college, many living apart from parents or family for the first time ever. They are fresh from high school.

And—I am short, young-looking and a woman professor. And quite frankly, because of this, I often times feel the struggle to get them to take me seriously enough for those reasons. (This isn’t, after all, Indonesia, where I was “Ibu Dosen” / madame lecturer and my position, education automatically garnered authority and respect in that culture, for better or for worse, and it was both). American culture is vastly different culture—even in the south—and I personally believe it is getting even more casual and informal between educators and students, many regarding us as equals.)

If I were working with adults, mature and disciplined, well into their 20’s, maybe graduate students, this decision would be easier, I think. I would more easily disclose my mental illnesses with my students. As it is, I’m not sure it would have the effect that I want and that it would help them; I fear it would make my position more challenging. I am reminded of what we English faculty often emphasize to our students in freshmen composition classes when we talk about the rhetorical triangle (effective communication means know your audience). Because it is true, it can vastly alter what you say, how you say it, etc.  

Any time any one is disclosing a disability there are always risks associated with it. You could be judged, ridiculed, mocked, disrespected. You could not get the job or have others see you as weak, lacking in faith, or too much of a hassle…too expensive, etc, etc.

Disclosure is scary. Raising awareness is important, de-stigmatizing is important. But self-disclosure—across the board among all and through the many hats that we all wear—can be frighteningly unchartered territory.