In his book Disordered World, scholar Amin Maalouf puts the world under a thorough dissection of the modern era with its natural disasters, moral tragedies, and societal ruptures. He says: “There are no longer any strangers in this century; there are only travelling companions.” We go through life as if going on a journey in search of a companionship that will ease the hardships of travel, the horrid sights, and the evil turns. We crave companionship even more depending on our life circumstances. This is especially true for those living with mental illness. Many mental illnesses are congenital, but recent years have seen a rise in these conditions. Modern systems seem to be failing us, creating cracks in human connection. The COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated this issue, causing a deeper spiritual disconnect than physical distancing ever could. Capitalism also plays a role. It deludes people with the idea of equal opportunity, raising expectations for the modern man. These very expectations can become a burden when one realizes they lack the potential to achieve them. This feeling perfectly captures the essence of Herman Melville’s quote: “Beneath those stars is a universe of gliding monsters.”
In a time where socializing and interacting with others is not so common, isolation has become the best solution for many people, as people need a low-cost companionship that is not demanding, where one would not feel embarrassed to be themselves, so books were the best choice for both parties: 1) The author, who reveals his secrets, worries, and concerns. 2) The reader who seeks help for his crisis and worries and wishes to ease his fears. Books come in different shapes and sizes, from covers, to content, but among the books, the most helpful in taking the role of a therapist in a psychoanalytical journey, are the autobiographies.
We read autobiographies to dive deep into our own selves through the journeys of others to get a better understanding of our lives, and to comfort and console ourselves upon seeing that we are not alone in our experiences, and that much of what we view as the end of the world is seen by others as a more ordinary and gentle experience.
And we read Psychobiography books to anticipate the illness and its symptoms, the way it takes form and its stages, that way we are aware of how to interact with someone who suffers from the illness, with their family, and the demons that try to sneak in; we read them to build bridges of coexistence, rather than indulging in them and obsessing over them.
Touching on Madness
Syrian writer Mamdouh Adwan opened his book In defense of Madness with a saying, “We need courage to be mad, and we need courage to admit to being mad,” referring to the Syrian modern artist Louay Kayali, who was really diagnosed with madness. But, in my opinion, it is the Palestinian poet Hussein Barghouthi who is really worth highlighting, especially since Kayali’s inner world was far too chaotic and violent to find an external art alternative, where Barghouthi was able to question his madness in his biography and take advantage of it through his work, which is what prompted me to open his book.
Hussein Barghouthi’s autobiography, titled The Blue Light, is a fresh start. The title draws not only from the imagery of adventure maps, but also creates a unique Sufi system. This system is charged with expressions of madness, yet possesses a philosophical core that stimulates the mind. Barghouthi doesn’t make it easy for readers to decipher his title choice in the opening pages. He reveals the multifaceted nature of blue: “the soul that incites evil” in Naqshbandi Sufism, while in Tibetan Buddhism, it represents “the energy of creation within us.” Finally, he unveils his own personal connection to the color, a connection that stretches back to childhood: “for me, blue is the color of estrangement, the unknown, and of the childhood sky.” And he even composed a short musical piece, which he used to constantly play, he did not know why he was attached to it, but later realized the link when he read that every musical note has a color specific to it, and when he looked for the note that bewitched him, he found that it was blue. The writer’s passion for blue pushed him to look deeper and find its meaning in different myths and folk tales; his findings made one thing clear: blue and him were two different expressions of the same mask.
The biography unravels in the form of a story following a mad teacher or guide and a murid (disciple) whose personality is on the brink of splitting. Madness was the guiding compass for communication in a text that tells the story of a disciple who coincidentally found a teacher for the spiritual path he was on, where they discover that life is the language of “a broad imagination in a narrow world.” Language is a mindful building tool that can take the form of many identities until mankind reaches an answer for the question: Can the mind redefine itself and differentiate between “the mind” and “the content”?
In the autobiographical story, the murid disciple is the character representing Barghouthi, who is on a journey to find himself and his identity in light of what he lost as a human being, and a Palestinian, whereas the teacher/sheikh character in Barghouthi’s biography is the Turkish Sufi named “Barry.” He is a salesman, a cook, a mad homeless student, and a master of insanity that Hussein wanted to learn ‘The art of oscillation between sanity and insanity’ from. He describes his childhood with a description that I believe has accompanied him throughout his life: “it did not matter that I was a foolish child, or an idiot, or a genius, but it is that I was always unusual, never belonging to anyone or anything, peculiar and strange, and living in the margins of life.” In his childhood, he went through a traumatic experience that he has not been able to overcome after almost drifting away in the sea. He says: “I was in fear of splitting because I already had a split personality! The ocean was chasing me because it was the deepest, widest, and most truthful shape known to my anger, and it had the intention to destroy the world” he formulated his philosophy based on his fears, “This is the concept: your goldfish in its nature is bound to swim in each theory and experience, and each body of water, and it remains the same: a goldfish. And your mind, in its nature, is supposed to understand itself just how the fish swims. But where does the mind swim? Within itself! It is both the waterfall, and the fish swimming within it. Do you understand what it means to: be the waterfall and the fish?”
The timeframe of his autobiography is the period he spent studying in America for his post graduate education, and the settings of these events are in the bars, apartments, and mainly the coffee shops, “it is strange how similar these places are to mousetraps… sometimes I would find myself wandering around between the three cafes I frequented, searching withing myself instead of the books. I grew tired of books, but found myself in the cafes, where the madmen went, with the queers and vagrants, where the maps were more detailed, clear, and exciting.” He went there to learn, and he did not deny himself any experience while seeking knowledge, as was told in the book “sometimes, the depth of one’s singing, stems from the depth of their pain; just how the golden laughter sometimes comes after crossing many labyrinths.” Though, he did not write to educate us, he wrote so we could question ourselves, which we certainly need to do, because “to reflect on yourself means to understand what you have always known but not understood.”
After studying the mentality of suicidal people and reflecting on the question of: “How does the creative mind work?” he reached an idea that would send his whole life into a spiral, and it is that “Like any other entity in this universe, the brain has its own design; it is an entity that has the ability to redesign itself and its world.” He sees that the dilemma of the ‘Arab mind’ is that it lost this very thing, its ability to create. I do not specifically mean the ability to ‘create its own world’ and ‘design’ the world in which it lives. What I mean is to create something new every single night, and every mind that lost its ability to redesign itself will have another to redesign it. He tries to understand the state he is in, but he fails to, “all I have concluded in ‘rationalizing’ my ‘madness’ is that it is some sort of dismissal of (a certain and inevitable knowledge) something I am aware of, something that is deep within my heart, but I refuse to see, I don’t dare to see, and I simply cannot bear to see.”
Hussein Barghouthi’s madness was one that was hard to define, even for Hussein himself who said: “To me, my madness was like a God, a lily of some kind. I know it exists, and it was what it was, it is what it is, and it will continue to be. I knew nothing of it, except that it existed.” Despite it being difficult to know the diagnosis of what mental illnesses he had, one could say that it was a case of ‘creativity madness’ which is hard to define. He says that “in art, you must touch on madness without completely awakening it, but I would touch on it and awaken it in life, which is more dangerous.” And what prompted him to do that is that he believed that “madness is a weakness, and to overcome it, you must believe that you are not the prey; you are the tiger, or the dangerous tiger hunter.”
Hussein’s autobiography is filled with symbolism and heritage, as well as philosophical and imaginative notions in an intertwined linguistic fabric that moves from poetry to prose, and from novel to autobiography. Renowned poet Mahmoud Darwish who was given the title of Palestine’s national poet stated that: “Hussein Barghouthi’s true poeticism culminated in The Blue Light in a way that was never achieved in any of his poetry attempts. It is a text that cannot be confined to one genre of literature, it is not an autobiography in the way that one would know it to be, nor is it a novel; it reminds us of the storytelling aspect of novels, and the intimacy of autobiographies… it is a peculiar blend of personal revelations and mental reflections.”
Drowning in Joy
American novelist William Styron documented his personal experience with mental illness, describing the struggle of his life under the dark cloud of depression as a ‘Darkness Visible,’ taking inspiration from the English poet John Milton when he said, “No light, but rather darkness visible,” referring to depression as a black shadowy ghost, a darkness that overshadows every detail in your life.
Styron was at his lowest mental state when he arrived in Paris to receive the prestigious Prix Mondial Cino Del Duca literary award. As he was giving his speech, the shadowy ghost of depression had already taken over his mental state. His appearance could be described, as the poets say, “his face showed the joy of weddings, whereas in his heart was a funeral.” When this award was expected to boost his self-esteem, the lack only worsened. After that incident, he began to retrace the history of his illness from the starting point to the end, trying to discover what caused it, and the easiest analysis of the situation to him stemmed from when he put an end to drinking alcohol as it was causing him nausea and revulsion. But by the end of his book, he revisits the older initial causes of his illness, and he credits his depression to ‘unresolved grief,’ which is an incomplete mourning that one may experience after loss, especially the loss of one’s mother at such a young age which creates an unbearable burden, one that is filled with hatred, anger and guilt rather than just a deep sadness, all of which resulting in a deep self-destruction.
In Styron’s opinion, the term ‘Depression’ is not the most suitable title for the fatal illness, and he tried tirelessly to suggest a different name for it, but in the end, he decided to accept it until the language so kindly presents a more suitable description. He believed that the modern times have contributed to the terminology surrounding mental illnesses, but in a moment of honesty with his readers, he went on to say: “you must not doubt for a moment that depression, in its most severe forms, is nothing but madness.” Which is the same reason he sub-titled his autobiography A Memoir of Madness. He also writes about his bad experience with a psychiatrist that almost led him to commit suicide because of his relentless insistence on medicinal treatment for his depression, and advising Styron against institutional treatments, while prescribing medications that neither suited his age, nor his medical condition, all of which were things that he was able to remedy after checking himself into a hospital. This cements the importance of visiting more than one doctor and getting different diagnostic opinions to ensure the validity of your diagnosis, especially in the case of escalating symptoms.
Styron was at a point where he seriously considered committing suicide, so he visited his lawyer to attempt to write his will only to discover: “Writing a suicide note is the most difficult task I’ve had as a writer.” And in one evening where his wife went to bed prior to him, leaving him to watch a play, he realized that he could not bear to give up his life no matter how controlled it was by misery and hardships, and so he woke her up and told her to take him to the hospital. Styron talks about how someone dealing with depression might feel when he is pressured by others’ commands to hold onto the rope of life, comparing them to a man standing at a beach and commanding a drowning person to drown smiling with joy!
William Styron writes to document his experience, and to help others to face their own pains. When we write, we write to ensure the sanity of the mind, to maintain whatever is left of it so that it is not clawed away by the difficult days. In his diaries titled On the Path of Madness, The Egyptian novelist Waguih Ghali wrote an introduction: “On the path of madness, which is the path I’m on, perhaps it is better to write my journals, even if it was just to cling onto my sanity.”
The Absurdity of Irrationality
The brothers Joel and Ian Gold caused a bang in Psychology with their thesis. Their thesis says that madness is shaped by culture, and that saying that people who suffer from psychiatric illnesses do not represent us, and that they are an ‘other’ is not inherently correct; on the contrary, they assert that mental illnesses are just a fragile, weakened version of mental health, and that the line between sanity and insanity is an extremely fine line. Here and there, we might find a genetic weakness, or a childhood trauma, which may reverse some roles. Each of us has their psychotic tendencies and non-psychotic tendencies, but the bigger challenge lies in keeping madness in its critical state and fragile image and observing the more rational aspects of ourselves. It does not take a lot to say that someone –including you and I— is on the verge of madness.
The brothers’ book, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness, goes through a strenuous journey into the delusions of madness. The first part of the book is titled “The Sleep of Reason” and it goes into the short history of madness, and then one hundred years of delusions. The second part of the book is in search of “The Social Life of Madness,” illustrating the flaws within psychiatry when it comes to relying on biological analyses for mental illnesses. The book is concluded with the brothers expressing their aspirations for a better future for the field of psychiatry and psychology. Their claims are summarized in the conclusion of the book: “In this book we’ve presented the evidence that delusions are symptoms of a cognitive system whose purpose is to detect social threats and motivate one to defend against them. That is to say, the function of the brain parts that do the job of the Suspicion System can be understood only with reference to the social world. If we are right, then a future theory of delusion could be a purely biological theory only if it can translate the social description of the Suspicion System into biological terms.”
During the process of writing the book, they relied on many of the cases that they had encountered, as well as the biographies of those that are described as mad, and although I disagree with them in determining who holds the most knowledge about the mentally ill, whom they would consider to be the psychiatrists who has sat across many patients and listened to them, I believe that the patient who possesses a good degree of knowledge and insight is far more useful in describing— not diagnosing, the state of his condition than the doctor will ever be, which is the exact case of the following biography.
At 24 years old, American writer Clifford Whittingham Beers was admitted to a private mental institution where he would spend the three following years battling with his mental illnesses, only for him to come out and later release his Autobiography A Mind that Found Itself. Within the book, the readers are exposed to the ‘mental civil wars’ that raged through his mind, ending with many failed suicide attempts and successful experiences in tasting the bitterness of despair, pain, and leading an aimless life.
Upon its initial release in 1904, the book created havoc and panic as it made room for many questions regarding our mental health, and it criticized various governmental and private health institutes that Clifford W. Beers himself went to. It ended with the rise of the mental health movement in The United States. The book received a warm welcome from some of the major psychologists at the time, such as the pioneer or psychology and philosophy, William James, who reviewed the manuscript and gave it lavish praise. Yet despite all this, Beers’s vision did not succeed in ridding his mind from the cannons of the mental wars that he was waging against himself, and so once again, he ended up being admitted to a psychiatric institute where he spent the rest of his life in seclusion until he died, leaving many questions unanswered.
In his childhood, Clifford was an ordinary child who suffered from psychological distress and anxiety, which worsened after his brother, who had been healthy, was suddenly stricken with epilepsy. This increased the anxious wandering of his mind: if his brother, who had shown no signs of illness got stricken with this disease then what prevented him from getting epilepsy as well? His brother struggled with epilepsy for six years, and Clifford struggled alongside him with the debilitating fear of his brother suffering from an epileptic attack during the day. Clifford’s fear of the illness made him sick. His suffering began in college. He graduated and worked as a clerk in the tax office. Then, he worked as a writer at a company before quitting entirely to ‘steady his shattered nerves’ and stay at a farm in the White Mountains. After his suicide attempt, he was admitted once again, and his delusions and paranoia reached a stage that made him believe that everything was against him. Bars were installed on the windows, and his injured leg was shaved to apply a cast, but he interpreted it as a sign of shame, like some of the tribes in barbarian countries. He spoke about his fears and said: “my fear was certainly absurd, but when it came to irrationality, absurdity does not exist.”
“My only wish was to write,” He says, “My fingers were yearning to hold a pen, and my desire to write was irresistible, just like a drunkard for his drink. The mere act of writing was enough to give me the pleasure of intoxication that consisted of an incomprehensible blend of emotions.” The book remained loyal to its writer because it was written during his moments of madness, not his sanity. Out of despair, he found an entrance to writing and out of hope, he found a window to reading, and his mind became a professional who knew how to lead its victims, just like it led Clifford to write this book, making him the first victim.
Delusions have always been a symptom of madness, and they remain the center of the dilemma that health professionals have when they try to classify the symptoms, and find their starting points, to find its technicality and take it back to certain illusions, and upon reading the book, you will become familiar with these delusions as you will enter them, and will be introduced to how their owner thinks, and how he interprets each glance and action with his negative and conspiratorial paranoia. And if you wanted to picture something inside that mind, you will find that Styron described his disorder as the following: “my mind is similar to an old telephone switchboard from a small town, slowly flooding with water; one by one, the circuits start sinking which gradually halts the functions of the rest of the body, and almost all of the brain and instinctual functions.” But when it came to Clifford Beers, he said: “It seemed as if my nerves had snapped, like so many minute bands of rubber stretched beyond their elastic limit.”
Styron expressed his gratitude for his wife and praised her for her company and patience with him in his moments of depression, and similarly, Clifford asserted in his book that “what the insane most need is a friend!” In the journey of healing, one cannot dismiss the importance of support from relatives and loved ones. Although the person suffering from the mental illness will initially feel resentful and passive towards the support, it is important to assure them of your gratitude towards their presence and to deny their reoccurring illusions and paranoia of abandonment and rejection, and support coming from people who suffer from the same mental illnesses is even more important. Styron says that friends and loved ones should “show great love and support to those in their lives who suffer from depression in order to convince them of the importance of life, which is a notion that usually clashes with their sense of lack of value, this kind of love has saved so many victims of these illnesses from committing suicide.”
Although the consensus towards mental illness would see it as a shortcoming, it is sometimes considered a blessing. Of course, the aim is not to give mental illnesses more importance and to celebrate them, but to rightfully give them the weight they deserve to have as an illness, similar to physical illnesses, by accepting them and removing the stigma around them so that people with these illnesses can go through their lives without being subjected to looks and judgements that would only worsen their conditions and their will to live.
An Unquiet Silence
“Within a month of signing my appointment papers to become an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California, I was well on my way to madness.” This was the introduction to a book that is considered one of the most influential biographies in the psychiatry field, An Unquiet Mind by Doctor Kay Redfield Jamison, who authored the book as an autobiography about her mania, depression, and madness.
It is not necessary to beautify the beast before we conquer it; all we need to do is to understand it to our best extent, and to realize its ugliness and where its dangers lie. This was exactly what Dr. Kay Jamison believed after her diagnosis of Manic-Depressive illness, which is now called Bipolar disorder. She researched the illness knowing that she “should know it by all of its blends and masks, to understand its true and imaginary powers.” A person suffering from bipolar disorder is constantly moving between two opposite states of mind, the first is a manic state in which the person experiences periods of abnormally elevated moods resembling an unregulated ecstatic state, whereas the other state is a state of acute depression that feels like a desert blackout. Without the help of medication, the person suffering from this disorder is rarely in a median state of normalcy.
In the first chapter of her book, Dr. Kay shares the story of her childhood, and family history that is filled with mental illnesses, as well as the beginning of her entry into the dark tunnels starting with adolescence, and the difficulties stemming from her father’s military background, the broken family relationships, and emotional turmoil. She said that “The long and important years of childhood and early adolescence were, for the most part, very happy ones for me, and they afforded me a solid base of warmth, friendship, and confidence. They were to be an extremely powerful amulet, a potent and positive countervailing force against future unhappiness.”
The pains and sorrows that we hide from people allow us to grow faster than them, and we gain maturity from it. Jamison went to medical school but was unable to complete the long duration with her mental state that people were not aware of, so she decided to switch to the study of clinical psychology to discover the fate that lay ahead of her, and how to manage her condition. The only way she could ease the agitation caused by her condition was to run along the beach or to pace back and forth across her room like a polar bear at the zoo. She had no idea what was going on with herself, but it never occurred to her that she was mentally ill. After listening to a lecture about depression, she went to the student health service with the intention to see a psychiatrist, she went all the way to the building only to sit outside the clinic like she was paralyzed, she could not go inside and ask for help; she felt shame and fear. She sat there for an hour, sobbing before she eventually left.
She ended the first chapter with the events of her discussing her dissertation, and her appointment as faculty in the university and then opened the second chapter with the phrase: “I didn’t wake up one day to find myself mad,” and went on to narrate her journey with the illness in horrifying chronological detail that contrasted with the apparent frivolity of her life; her personal struggle, along with her academic journey helped her to express the most accurate description of the condition and to enter the bipolar mind and wander through it as if it was a path lit with festival lights, rather than just a solitary oil lantern. The effects of this illness vary from one person to another in some aspects, but fester similarly in other aspects like the suffering it causes, and through Jamison’s autobiography, as well as Omar Alrediny’s that we will venture into, we come to know how “engaging in unrestrained buying sprees” is a classic part of mania, and it almost got her in trouble with the bank after draining her credit cards to the last penny on things that she would regret buying the next day.
After she was appointed as a professor at the university, it became even harder to visit psychiatrists because of the relentless social and academic views towards mentally ill people; so how would they possible allow a person suffering from a mental illness to treat any patients? She only decided to go after she exhausted all the character-building chances at the expense of tranquility, stability, and normalcy. “I wasn’t just ill the first time I called for an appointment, I was also terrified and deeply embarrassed. I had never been to a psychiatrist or psychologist before. I had no choice. I had completely, but completely lost my mind; if I didn’t get professional help, I was quite likely to lose my job, my already precarious marriage, and my life as well.”
After her first visit to the psychiatrist, she reported that “slowly a tiny, very tiny, bit of light drifted into [her] dark and frightened mind.” And with weekly appointments over the next few years, Jamison stressed that the help she was getting from the psychiatrist “kept [her] alive a thousand times over. He saw me through the beginnings and endings of every aspect of my psychological and emotional life.” What she emphasized the most was the importance of patients consistently adhering to their prescribed medication, and that these psychotherapy sessions for this disorder without medication are not sufficient if the root cause of the illness is a biological disorder that needs rebalancing through medication. She explains the reasons for her initial rejection of the medication and the severe withdrawals she experienced, and it stems from her denial of being ill. Another reason, which is something she brings up more than once in her book, that could help us understand the behavior of many patients with bipolar disorder refusing to take their illness seriously and to ask for help, is what Jamison admitted to being her addiction to the mania and the high moods. She would become dependent on the temporary intensity, productivity, euphoria, and assuredness that the stage of mania supplies. Another important cause that prevented her from taking the medication was that she was terrified of the possibility of them not working for her, as she was keeping them as a last resort for her fears not to come to life.
After telling the story of her journey with mental illness in two thirds of her autobiography, Jamison titles the third part of her book ‘This Medicine, Love’ in which she affirms that love, while it is not sufficient to heal our illnesses, is still effective in helping us to accept them, and it is enough to convince us that life is worth living. Love is like a crutch; while it does not heal our broken bones, we still need it to move on.
Your life story, when told to the wrong person, can be taken the wrong way, and disrespected. Many people come and go and that was the case with Jamison as she went through her hardships. In her book, she documents their stories and reactions to being told about her disorder. Some were understanding, while others insulted her in their intentions to do good. Some other people had no morals and understanding and were put off by her illness as soon as they were told about it. This reaction caused her to be reluctant to tell people about her illness unless it was necessary to. Thanks to her telling the stories about these events and reactions, we learn lessons on how to interact with people dealing with mental illness and how important it is not to belittle their pain, because belittling someone’s pains and suffering hurts far more than the original pain itself!
Love kills any questionable thoughts you have regarding your right to life, to happiness, and a blissful living, and it kills the most sensitive doubts you have about yourself.
In the last chapter of her book, she discusses the issue with naming: is it better to replace ‘madness’ with a more considerate name? This is exactly what health organizations and social movements that promote mental health aim to do, but they see that changing a term does not erase the stigma that is associated with psychological illnesses, and that “it does not benefit the patients and their families to use fancy and expressive terms that are inaccurate and subjective,” stating that patients have the ultimate right in choosing the terms they are most comfortable with.
Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison lived 30 years with bipolar disorder, which exposed her to all sorts of limitations and possibilities that accompany the illness, as well as all the advantages that may come with it, and despite that she still refuses to stop her treatment and prescribed medications. She ends her autobiography by confirming finally that love is the exception in building the walls that protect her from the inconsistent waves of her disease, it keeps her safe from the horrors and desolation and allows her to keep living and appreciating beauty and her ability to stay alive. “This is a book about love: love as a sustainer, as an element of renewal, and as a protector. After each seeming death within my mind, or heart, love has returned to recreate hope and restore life.”
The Temptation of Writing
Among the first Saudi autobiographies that dealt with the treatment of mental illnesses was Ghuwa (غوى-Temptation) by Omar Alrediny who suffered from bipolar disorder. He reveals that the motive for writing his book is “a bashful attempt to following light; because I believe that we must course through life with lanterns in our hands to light up the way for other people whose paths are restricted. Shall I tell you what my dream in life is? My dream is to reach the furthest point in life and light it up before anyone reaches it.” His first attempts at recovery were amidst the neighborhoods of Madinah; through alternative traditional medicine with a folk healer who was believed to be able to exorcise jinn and spiritually heal people, but he only made things worse.
Omar expands on the development of his illness, and his visits to hospitals and psychiatric institutions. He talks about how he felt this suffering and the words he would hear from people, saying things like “may god keep his plague away from us.” Omar says that “whoever experiences these obsessive disorders will know that these encouraging words are like adding fuel to a fire,” and he speaks for all people with mental illnesses when he describes the suffering and their needs: “all we ask is to be respected as human beings. I don’t want pity; we want to live peacefully like any other human being.”
He found comfort in philosophy and literature books, as they helped him overcome some difficult moments and hurdles in life, “the words I would read were like bandages to my mental wounds.” Thanks to that, Omar was able to use one of these books as an important part of recovery, and a heavy boost of the confidence he had lost.
“Living is a decision, and I took that decision.” It is the statement he wrote to end his autobiography. But according to Omar “Writing was like a secret drug that I was hooked on, and the words were my tears,” and thus, he continues talking about his struggle with mental health in his other book Junoon Latheeth (جنون لذيذ-Delicious Madness). At times, he conquers his illness, but there are other times where the illness conquers him, yet he remains faithful in his belief that writing is healing, and it is something he excels in. Omar Alrediny is a brave man who does not hide behind the experiences of others, or the sayings of academics, and as William Faulkner says: “A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.”
It is easy to notice that there are many differences between the two autobiographies, and the most prominent difference is that the first one is a narrative, direct, and demanding, whereas the second one is like a repertoire, it is a reflection on his life, and it is more poetic in its descriptions. Both books are around the same size, but the second one is just a little bit longer in the time it covers, as it was released five years after the first one and was not limited to the events covered in it; it went all the way to the beginning, confirming some things, and modifying some impressions. Omar’s autobiographical book is in the form of confessions, and that is something that many critics say is lacking in the world of Arab biographies. These are confessions that most would be embarrassed to reveal, but those critics are only in search of scandalous sexual confessions, they do not pay attention to such bold revelations.
After that, there was the Saudi dentist Maan Alsultan and his book Wijd La Ya’naam (وجد لا ينام-A Conscience that Doesn’t Sleep), he wrote about his depression while on his scholarship to New York to complete his post-grad studies in a way that merged reality with imagination, and he talked about his psychological experiences in a style that maintained the message of raising awareness towards mental health. He says, “I was lost in my subconsciousness for many years before this illness woke me up.” The illnesses we have often awaken us from trances and bring us back to reality to reassess our lives.
Maan’s autobiography is a good starting point to whoever wants to read similar stories, and it is a good book to dedicate to anyone who suffers from such mental illnesses; positive reinforcement and encouragement to keep on living is more important than other things, as he says “mankind; no one knows the battles you fought to reach your goal, no one knows how many times you have fallen and got back on your feet, and no one knows your ability and courage to go through a new battle, but you know it. It’s not important for others to know, only for you to know your potential and go till the end.”
The Margin’s Margin
The Egyptian writer Mina Nagy collected his writings of various kinds and combined them all in his book 33 An Al’faqd Wa Alrohab (33 عن الفقد والرُهاب-33 About Loss and Phobias). The number in the title ‘33’ refers to his age when he published the book, and the words refer to his experiences in life, and his suffering with phobias which can be described as his acute anxiety of being in unsafe environments and situations that are difficult to avoid. These situations can be in open spaces, tunnels, bridges, public transportation, theatres or cinemas, shopping centers and crowded spaces, etc. in severe cases, his anxiety would manifest if he were outside of his house, because ‘leaving the house was the most frightening and difficult task in the world.” Mina talks about when he first noticed his condition, and the response he got from the first person he told about it, which was his spiritual guide in the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt. His response was shocking and it reinforced the illness instead of supporting his recovery from it; he told him that this illness is a health condition that lessens the ego, and reminds the person of their need for God, but those were not the words that Mina needed to hear at that stage; he was looking for understanding, for an accurate diagnosis, and for the power to face life head on because a young man from a humble background could not possibly be self-sufficient staying at home. This story reinforces what I said earlier about not sharing our struggles with anybody: we do not have the mental capacity to face their negative reactions.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of people fearing the illness kept increasing with the number of people contracting it, and the curfews and isolation that were caused were akin to a punishment for some people, but for Mina it was the ideal situation; the fears that manifested outside of his environment made his own inner fears lessen, as sharing the struggle with other people brought a feeling of a shared experience.
Seventeen years in the company of acute anxiety taught Mina many therapeutic strategies, and changed many internal convictions, and his self-awareness, and the ability to self-control and calm his anxiety and get rid of panic attacks. The only thing that allowed him to be patient was his knowledge and assurance of what was to come, believing that “the state of success will change the meaning of all the history of the past, and all the failed attempts.”
So the Days Won’t Get Harder
According to Jean-Paul Sartre, “Hell is other people.” But people suffering with mental illnesses do not share that sentiment, in fact, to them, each person is their own hell, and has a burning fire deep withing themselves. And to ensure that the days do not get harder, Wafaa Khalid wrote about her experience with depression in the form of direct advice without asking for sympathy in her book Heen Tosbih Alayam As’aab (حين تصبح الأيام أصعب-When the Days Become Harder) setting a simple daily guide to deal with depression, as the subtitle says. The importance of this book lies within its relatability in our lives, and the similar experiences we face, the honest experience of giving good news and bad news to psychiatric patients, and Psychiatrist Doctor Osama Aljami underlines the importance of this book in the introduction, stating that “this book deserves to be put in the Arab library with pride, as a powerful voice that tells the people suffering from despair: There is hope. I am here, and this is my story.”
Wafaa believes that the best time to ask for help from a doctor or a friend is when you feel like you are about to enter a depressive episode just on the outskirts of it. If you anticipate rain, you will carry an umbrella. Beware of letting others drown in the flood of your psychological problems, and that does not mean to hide your suffering from them, just “remember that your friend is not your therapist, so do not burden your friend with more than they can take, and save the heaviest of emotions for your therapist, otherwise, the two of you will end up depressed, instead of just one of you.” Fixing perceptions and erasing the stigma regarding mental illnesses does not mean that you should praise them and highlight the merits and benefits that some mentally ill people get; that simply moves from one extreme to another. What is required is to balance reality and to bring misconceptions down back to earth, it is important that we show that mental illnesses are just like physical illnesses. There is no moral right about romanticizing depression, and no good comes from revering it and considering it a special circumstance.
A Quiet Shore
Mental health is like a connected line that extends from the point of a good mental state at one end, all the way to the other end, which is the suffering from mental disorders, and each one of us stands on a different spot on this linear spectrum over the course of our lives. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health is defined as “a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community.” Therefore, a person with good mental health is sound in their feelings, thoughts, and comprehension and behavior. They perform well in work and studies, and they have positive relationships with those around them.
Whereas at the other end of the spectrum, mental disorders are defined by Doctor Nabeel Alqat in his book Hikayat Al’taab Wa Alshifaa (حكايات التعب والشفاء-Stories of Illness and Healing) as “A type of disorder in the conscience, thinking or behavior that leads to psychological pressure, to which a person is exposed, or to his disability from carrying out his daily activities, or an increase in his exposure to problems, or suffering in his normal life.”
Reaching a peaceful state of mind does not mean that your life will turn to eternal bliss, but it means the ability to reach a state in which the mind is in a state of tranquility amidst the chaos of life, to have your very own quiet shoreline to go to whenever you wish to.
The work of autobiography is something indulgent for both the writer and the reader because of the recounts of joyful memories which bring beauty to life, and the retelling of pains and sorrows long after they ended as a reminder of the bliss of their passing.
As long as you keep knocking, a new door will open, and light will shine at the end of the road the harder you work. Despair is death. And you must remember what Shams Tabrizi said; “Every night has a moon; even the night that is deep within you.” And that every dawn has a sun, even if it hides behind the clouds. The only advantage to depression is that it is a disease you can defeat and overcome, and most psychiatric patients recover even when the disease is in its worst form, and then live lives no less happily than their counterparts who have not been exposed to the disease.
T1674
