Mid Term Thought Paper

Over the first half semester of this course, this class has discussed many topics, from the science of the brain to how we see our voices. So far we have discussed how people look at feeling and healing through techniques like journals, community memorials, and the classroom. Our conversations sporadically go from idea to idea, and some get lost between everyone’s different focuses. A topic I would like to focus on is having privilege to feel.

In out textbook, Writing & Healing, academics discuss what they have found about feeling and how they teach it, mostly through writing. Some articles are simply retelling their experiences or a scope of people’s experiences. Something we have to read in the book yet is the idea of having the privilege to take time to work these feelings out.

Troubling thoughts and feelings can happen to anybody, no matter their socioeconomic or cultural status. However, the resources available to people on how to handle the issues differs. Most students luckily have the school system to provide some help. But even that could depend upon the school. There could be a range of what is deemed worth a therapist or counselor’s time. A psychiatrist in a “struggling” high school with a fifth of the student population living with someone other than their parents and every student knowing at least one relative who has been in jail may be busier than one in an “average” suburban school. A kid dealing with a tough break-up may have to wait in line behind the fourth girl so far this year to get pregnant.

 And what if a person is not a student? In order to have the luxury of going to a therapist or a group, they need the money. Under the parity law, many insurance companies offer copays for mental health issues, but not all therapists accept all types of insurance and the copay may not be ideal. Twenty dollars for a session could also be spent for kids’ jeans or two meals for a family or four. If you’re a single parent juggling two jobs and three kids, you may have to think about these costs dearly. And more so, the issue could be time. You may feel guilty for leaving your kids with your sister and holding off on night classes for a nursing degree.

Besides money, time, and availability, there is also the issue of social acceptance. As a writing major at Ithaca College it wouldn’t be unusual if I used creative assignments as an outlet for whatever personal issue I was grappling, and if it’s written well, have people be supportive to me in return. It wouldn’t even be super out of the ordinary if I saw a therapist from CAPS. If my stress and anxiety got so bad I could e-mail my professors and push back my due dates one time without much of a judgement from them, because I do not work from them. I’m so lucky that there are ways that I can deal with the issue that won’t drastically change how I am viewed in my working environment.

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How can we reach those who feel they don’t have the time or money to deal with their issues? How can we provide information on accessible means of healing? How can we encourage people to invest in their mental and emotional health?

Chapter 14

Writing about Suicide was about the class Literary Suicide.

What I found peculiar was that Jeff chose Jon's entries as one to co-write with. I'm still unsure why. Jon's entries were vague and a times a little forced in the metaphors. Am I mean to say that about a personal journal? Yes. I am. I don't know, maybe from the title of the chapter I wasn't expecting to hear about a kid who had a bottle of poison in his garage. There were too many other unanswered questions, like why the hell was the bottle there? Who the hell would let a bottle of poison be next to the extra key?
Not to say that what Jon wrote about wasn't helpful to him, or interesting to see how a mind heals without much edit. But for such an important subject I can' understand why Jeff would choose such an outsider to it. A fascination with suicide has nothing on actually being suicidal. Everyone has pain, everyone could use healing, but there are some points where I personally delegate what to pay more attention to because it's what's more important. All those statistics in the beginning seemed so distant from the focus on Jon.

Who knows, I'm super hungry right now so maybe I missed a couple things.

On another note, this passage:
"In a sense I now consider reading Darkness Visible as a kind of inoculation against depression. You know the way inoculations work: you get injected with a little bit of the virus and your body develops a resistance to it that protects you from it in the future. In doing so, however, you may come down with some symptoms of the disease you're being immunized against. So I suppose in this analogy, my evanescent depression was simply a side-effect of the inoculation."

I've experienced that and I think this was an example of literature and art allowing a space for someone to feel stuff they probably wanted to for a while-- they just now have a guide to feel less lonely.

Chapter 12

A lot of Jerome Bump's essay talked about how to manage feelings. How does one separate thinking, feeling, and thinking about feelings. I can relate to much of what he said-- I, too, tend to focus on thinking about my feelings because there is more control. Or is there? It all depends on how I am managing them. Not necessarily thinking, or trying to put logic to them, but simply understanding what the hell to do with them.

I admire his attempt to have the red-side and the left-side work together in one space -- because let's be honest, we're always feeling. So at some point we should try to hear what is going on. I think balance, too, plays a large part. Because one can easily overthink a feeling and turn it into something else. I think it's dangerous to try to manipulate a feeling or consistently ignoring it. Feelings come and go-- it is you that has changed. Not them.

Clothesline Project

The Clothesline project allows for space to heal for many on a public level by having women decorate shirts that show "their personal experience of violence" as well as "to celebrate their transformation from victim to survivor in a powerful statement of solidarity."

Julier gives an explanation of the project and the differences between it and other memorial projects. Unlike the Vietnam Memorial, the Clothesline Project includes individuality. This gives so much power to the survivors and those affected by the events by giving them control over what they want to share and what they don't. The Clothesline Project also  provides an active event of creating the space. The article did not touch too much on this, but I wonder how much community is there prior to the display and after.

Julier also gave text and some pictures of shirts. She breaks them down into categories to show the variety. I found that this article is one that we actually get to participate within the feeling while also academically learning about it. Each shirt required its own specific attention, as there were in different styles. Some were vague and focused on the feeling, and some included specifics. Either way, I felt for each one. 

Chapter 8

Alice G. Brand's essay on science of the brain concluded this way: healing is a form of learning. Any gain we make with our minds if technically an alteration-- that's how we might feel confusion about something, and then once we write it out it becomes more clear, or at least easier to handle emotionally.

This reminded me of a book I read in a class called Decisions Decisions Decisions. I forget the name of the book, but the whole argument was that emotion was crucial to making decisions. Humans are can barely objectify fully. Pretty everything we think and say have some sort of feeling towards it. It also explains why some science findings get skewed-- there is the political climate, backed by money and feelings, that can sway us. Sometimes memory (and feeling) can be forgotten, but either way, it has made an impact.

Personally, I've been told to not try to figure out why I feel the complicated feelings I feel. It's too much time and effort and it's full of dissappointment. I should move forward and do what's best for me. Sometimes I feel that as humans we are full of formulas and the one we always try to reach for is to be happy-- read a book, go outside, eat good food, spend time with friends. But is that just a distraction from the real thing? What if we write and we don't feel great about what he taught ourselves? Not to mention that trying to figure out the happy formula or always trying to live up to it is exhausting for many.

Uncomfortable Complicity

I can’t think of any. I know that’s bullshitty to say, but it’s true. All I can think about are going along with a group of friends’ idea, what a restaurant to eat at or a what ride to go on first. Most of these times didn’t feel uncomfortable. If they did, there would be a little feeling of constraint or waiting for an “I told you so” moment while I calculated that staying with the group was better than not. Or if someone was talking shit about somebody, I would add in other qualifiers, “yeah, but he’s generally a good guy. He’s just trying.” I always use “just trying.” I use that because most people can’t make sense of the world they’re in or want to get out so all they can do is try. The result, however, may be mostly out of their hands. I wouldn’t be happy if someone was talking about me so objectively, and I know I do stuff that could bring it up.  The Golden Rule and the “if they jumped off a cliff would you do the same? No, you would not” thing was highly instilled in me from my parents. I watched so much Full House and Step by Step that I don’t have any after school specials of my own for this category. Situations like these are pretty simple—just look at the scene from the camera’s view, and you’ll see yourself looking like an asshole then feeling guilt in Act 2. Guilt for not pointing out what you think should be said and guilt for lying to yourself. You are supposed to be your best friend, after all, and if you lie to your best friend, what kind of person are you?

Who knows, maybe I do have a couple moments deep in my mind. I like to compartmentalize my bad memories. I have a set of them, each with a story arch, and that’s what I tell. So there could be some moment perfect for this prompt somewhere in my history, but I’m too lazy to—or maybe don’t feel it’s personally necessary to—dig up a bad memory at this time.

Chapter 3

On pages 34 and 35 Warnock says, “Indirection is the way we find direction; only rarely do we live by the straight and narrow, travel the direct route, or know where we're going before we begin.” I know everyone has heard something like this before, but I still find it comforting to hear because this happens in life and in writing. And in the case of personal, the story is probably a little messy. The only thing you can clean up is the non-quoted diction and syntax. 

I also highly enjoyed this section on page 36, “You never have to start writing because you are always writing, and you never have to stop writing because you're always working on many things at once. In addition, you're always learning, figuring, and doing rhetoric; your work is never done.” For one, it gives me an excuse to not be someone who is always writing a novel or writes five pages every day or something. I’m a worker writing when I write for school or online, and then I am also a passive writer when I tuck away ideas for later. Either way, there is the constant question to life events or ideas: "how am I going to arch this?" Isn't there a story everywhere?

Another quote on page 37 sticks out, “Our arguments do not rely on claims to truth or on logical absolutes. Rather, our arguments rely on common grounds between writers and readers who are willing to give a little in order to come to terms, since that is the aim of their rhetoric.” This really speaks to the relationship between writer and reader and allows the writer to tell his/her point of view. Many of what we write is about how we feel, and though it is not fact, within the POV lies a certain truth in which the reader can choose to accept, empathize, sympathize, and/or reject.