Freedom of Mind Blog: An Introduction
Across Summer 2020, different members of the LSE community will be writing about different aspects of their mental health at university. In this first installment, Jed Buckenham discusses the contradictions in talking about and understanding our mental health.
My life seems to be defined by contradiction, and for a long time that bothered me.
I grew up in a household where my religious beliefs were more controversial than my sexuality, and even by existing as a gay Christian, many people would say that my life does not make sense. I pride myself on being an open book, having almost no trouble expressing some quite personal things on a forum this public and yet romantic intimacy still activates my fight-or-flight response. I preach so many things about how to have better mental health — body positivity, going to therapy, not holding onto negative emotions, and still I struggle with practicing any of them.
Why is this? To me, the answer is unsatisfying but simple: people are complex. It is impossible to do what is right all of the time, primarily because we just aren’t wired to be perfectly rational (even though the economist in me wants to disagree), and because the lines we draw for ourselves on what is good and bad is largely personal or arbitrary. The classic example of this is with food; comfort eating can be good for our mental health, but can also make us feel physically worse. Where we draw the line on what is healthy for us is personal, and because we aren’t machines the judgement will always be somewhat arbitrary. It is a waste of time to torment ourselves over whether we have five or six oreos, however we must set some limit so as to not eat a whole packet everyday. This analysis isn’t groundbreaking, though it does provide some comfort, and is too easily forgotten.
Throughout my teenage years I saw myself as a hypocrite, or a liar even, for feeling the way I felt and making the decisions that I did while preaching the opposite. Realising that contradiction in this way is not hypocrisy was a milestone moment in my mental health journey. In the same way that every university student in history is not a hypocrite for procrastinating despite knowing they really should study, I am not a hypocrite for believing all bodies are beautiful despite finding it difficult to accept my own.
This could be interpreted as a loss of accountability, that we don’t have to practice what we preach. But this rebuttal misses the point: what we preach and believe is a goal we are all constantly working towards, not a standard we must reach daily. In fact, by defining our beliefs and actions in this way, we hold ourselves accountable more easily by asking, ‘is this working towards what I believe in?’, than by asking, ‘am I being perfectly infallible all of the time?’.
This brings me onto the blog, and why writing one is so important to me. LSE has been notoriously bad in its approach to mental health support, while many individuals in the faculty and the student body are well-meaning and are improving the situation, the management is yet to match the work done. On top of that we exist in a culture where a lucrative career seems to be placed above all else — I still can’t fathom why a job with sleepless nights, 100-hour work weeks and no personal life is the goal. Nevertheless, I’m trying just as hard as the rest of us to get one (another contradiction — noticing a theme yet?).
In my first year, I would’ve been comforted hugely by knowing an older student kept their head above water in this environment with a history of mental health problems. Not just that, but that this student wasn’t an outlier. Struggling is very common, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, nor is it a sign of weakness, but rather part of the human experience. I do want to make it clear that I thoroughly enjoy my time here, and don’t regret it one ounce, but I also recognise that to outsiders it can seem like people who aren’t a caricature of ‘the confident business person’ wouldn’t survive a degree at LSE. It seems obvious once you’ve spent more than a year here, but people really can be surprised when I describe my peers as equally complex, moral, kind, cruel, funny, and human, as those I know in other contexts.
Also, on a purely selfish level, writing this is cathartic, and has made it much easier to express how I’ve felt during my university experience, particularly throughout lockdown (seriously, writing your internal monologue down makes it much more rational, try it).
So, the plan for this blog is to explore these topics, dissecting my (and the other contributors’) experiences and using our fabulous education in the social sciences to contextualise them. Hopefully we’ll all learn something, get what we’re feeling off our chest and contribute towards making LSE a bit easier to navigate, which Freedom of Mind and other projects are doing such a great job of. I hope you’ll join me for the ride.
By Jed Buckenham
If you are struggling with your mental health, the Samaritans offer free and confidential support UK-wide on 116 123.
The charity Mind runs a signposting hotline which is open 9am-5pm Monday-Friday, and will help put you in touch with relevant services. You can contact them on 0300 123 3393.
