Choosing a Better Sort of Friend

The sort of friend whom you should not encourage is a person you met on the psychiatric hospital ward, or during the experiences that had led up to the police having been called out to bring you to that ward. Such a person would only underscore your sense of yourself as being tainted with stigma.

You need instead someone more cheerful than you, a man or woman who reaches out because he or she recognizes the good within you. A person whom you have met while you were engaged in an activity that involved giving to others or praising the Good L-rd is that kind of man or woman. As an example, a person whom you meet while you are in your house of worship is ideal. He or she may be interested in helping you out with requests you might make, as an act of charity, and you have a common denominator to provide a subject for both initial and fall-bak conversations.

"Tack" with Your Strongest Suit

As with saying “Hello! How are you?” with a smile of welcome, your conversations should be full of references to the interests of the person with whom you’re speaking. But sometimes that person will ask about you.

I’ve cautioned you before not to talk about your psychiatric disability. But what can you talk about? Sailors maintain good direction on the waves by leaning away from what seems to be the wind’s inclination. So, lean away from what would bring conversation to a half.

Whatever is your strongest suit should be your choice for conversation. Maybe it’s learning, either secular or religious. Bring up an anecdote that you recently read and ask the person whom you’re talking with how she or he feels about it. Possibly this will get a conversational ball rolling. More likely, you will simply learn from his or her reaction the arena from which to choose another anecdote….

Maybe you have a hobby that is your strongest suit. A cook can always give a recipe, for example, and sports fans can engage in long repartee.

Use your new acquaintance’s response as a springboard for drawing her or him out. Turn the spotlight back on him or her! That is the surest way to give her or him the surety that you are a caring person, who is worth getting to know better.

How to "Crash" A Party--Enjoying Yourself at a Gathering

The first step needs to take place long before you go to the place where you have been invited. Undertake to establish an introduction for yourself that emphasizes your hobbies, your education, and any occupational licenses that you have. Practice the introduction in front of a mirror or with the feedback of a member of your family. Make the introduction so familiar to you that you can say it in a number of different ways, so that it will sound natural and unrehearsed.

Now, you are there at the party, function, or get-together. The cardinal rule is: Divide and conquer. You cannot make friends with a group. One at a time will be your motto. 

With each person you talk with, ask questions to draw him or her out. Everyone is most interested in his or her own life, and will feel engaged to have you care—or at least, seem to care. Indeed, by seeming to care, you will likely find that indeed you become interested in the person with whom you are speaking.

Ask such questions as—

How do you know our host?

How did you spend your weekend? Or, what are your plans for the weekend to come?

Avoid talking or asking questions about politics. Unless everyone at the gathering is of the same religion and the same level of observance of it, avoid talking or asking questions about religion as well.

When your conversation partner asks about you, stick to your prepared introduction and be circumspect beyond that. Do not start to speak about your psychiatric disability. (If this gathering is after all focused on disability issues, of course your symptoms and history are open to be spoken about—but it is still best to focus on the other person, not yourself.)

Fancy, you Aced that party, function, or get-together! You did not need to “crash” it at all!

False Friends and True

[There are two posts today. Next week, with G-d's help, I will be moving house, so next week's designated essay is being posted today.]

If my experience is any guide, your family will be the only “carry-over” people upon whom you can count if you have had bouts of severe mental illness. It is only the friends you make during the course of your recovery whom (speaking for myself,) I have been able to count on to be enduring—and this may be true for you as well. 

My best friend I met through work with NAMI, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (of the United States.) She is a family member of three diagnosed people. No matter how close prior friends had been to me, they all fell to the wayside as being “false” during the course of my recovery. My “true” friends outside my family never had to put up with the acutely-ill me. Thanks be to the Good L-rd, I have found a number of them.....

"A friend in need is a friend indeed." Few people other than those doing religious charity or professional clinical work will be there for you in acute illness as will be your family, and the latter will be true to you on-going.

Lonely, Impaired Young People Are at a Disadvantage Throughout Their Careers

The extracurricular activities that people who become disabled with a psychiatric disability that is severe had engaged in during high school and college may tend to be less social than those of their peers. Thus, they may have fewer friends at that time, and will in later life have fewer old friends.

If such a person is an exception to the above generalization, because (s)he became severely disabled in his or her thirties instead of twenties, he or she would have amassed time to blossom. But even an outgoing soul like this may find that former friends fall away upon diagnosis and relapses. Other people don’t know how to strike up a conversation, or more to the point keep it going, with a person who is severely impaired. It’s a turn-off to see suffering up close. (This sentence is true of all tragic life events, from a death in the family to a criminal conviction, but there is less social acceptance for a mental illness than for other vagaries of life.)

The few “replacement” friends one is able to make tend to be in the disability community, either that generally or specific to psychiatric issues. If a truly “normal” person befriends one, G-d has smiled. (I have enjoyed the friendship of Ruan Frenette, met through mental health advocacy, for two decades. She is really stable and free of any psychiatric symptoms. Almost all my other “replacement” friends have been closet depressives—or remain at arm’s length from me. Of course, as a person with both physical and psychiatric disabilities, I am rather a “downer,” sunny smile notwithstanding!)

In the last decade, diagnosis of psychiatric disabilities has undergone a quantum shift, with adolescents and even children found to meet diagnostic categorization, far more than in previous generations. Youngsters and young people receive labels today that tell them that they are at best, “special,” and at worst, “crippled.” Who would not withdraw? And thus make fewer friends than their age-mates.

There will be no one to seek them out in later days to reminisce about shared sports, clubs, and competitions. They (like their peers) may engage mega-minutes with their screens, but they (unlike their peers) make fewer friends from shared life activities in those years of formation.

Skills of getting along with others are fundamental in employment of almost any sort. The situation of having had few good friends to practice with does not bode well for career success.