My thought for the day is how little any of us know about anyone else's experience. That's why emotional distress is so hard to understand and to treat, because we just don't know how much anyone is suffering. Especially if they choose not to speak about it and even if they do.
I have come to this conclusion while thinking about something that happened the other day while I was doing my food shopping. I was at Aldi, in what is generally considered to be the worst area in our town, although I used to live there and never encountered any real problems (apart from being burgled, once).
Anyway, I was at the checkout when suddenly there was a kerfuffle, lots of shouting. I didn't see what had actually happened, but the security guard was at the door, yelling and swearing at someone outside. I mean, effing and blinding, no holds barred. The man outside was saying that the security guard had broken his leg, the guard said he was going to effing break the other one. From the look of him, he could have done it easily.
Then the guard came over to the checkout and started sounding off at the cashier. 'I got him on the ground because he pushed me,' he said. 'He had this down his trousers.' ('This' was a bottle of something, it looked like ether vodka or gin.) The cashier shrugged and said that was fair enough. As I left the store the guard was back at the door, yelling at his victim again (if victim is the right word) who was limping off across the road.
Now, I think it's pretty clear that the security guard had gone over and above his necessary duty, even if the man had pushed him (which he might or might not have done. He looked very drunk, it wouldn't have been much of a push). I mean, getting the guy on the ground, causing him physical injury, getting so angry that he turned the air blue...it was all too much of a response. Disproportionate to the offence, definitely.
Well, it was over, and hopefully no permanent damage done. But what this made me think about is how addictive alcohol must be. Luckily for me, I don't drink (partly because I feel sometimes that if I started I'd never stop). But my mother was an alcoholic and several members of my family have substance abuse issues (although I doubt very much that they would think of themselves in this way). I know lots of people who are dependent to varying degrees on alcohol, I am sure I am not alone there.
I used to drink a bit when I was young. I don't miss it. I found it much harder to give up smoking. Alcohol was never really necessary to me. So I don't think I fully understand the issues involved in addiction to alcohol, the pull it can exert on a human being. Witnessing that awful situation yesterday made me think, my God, that man needed that drink. He was desperate enough to try to steal it, desperate enough to try to fight for it. It was only about ten o'clock in the morning.
What had happened to him? What had he been through in his life, to get to that degree of desperation?
And then I wondered whether my mother had needed alcohol to the same degree as that poor man. I think she probably did. I think I have perhaps judged her too harshly, by taking my own standards and applying them to her. I don't think she could have helped herself. I don't think she was ever actually capable of putting her children's needs before her own. I am very lucky never to have been in that situation.
Which is why, I think, emotional distress is so hard to understand. It is all so subjective. Even if we are very close to someone, we never really know what they are going through.
Which is why I am passionate about better treatment for emotional distress. We should not be judged, labelled and diagnosed by people who think they know the workings of our mind better than we do. Helping people in distress should be done compassionately and force should never be used, in any setting and for any reason.
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