Learning to See Beyond the “Other”

One must be honest with themselves and their feelings if they are interested in having fruitful conversation. Fruitful, meaning to move forward. How often is moving forward our goal in conversation? How often do we talk and come out as different people? Most conversations follow familiar paths. We know the roles, expectations, and assumptions involved. We talk to assert ourselves — to make it that our opinions can exist somewhere outside our heads. We also have a natural ear for what we know or understand, so therefore we fall over and over into natural conversations.

However, encountering an unnatural conversation, what you’ll notice most is feeling — because our brains don’t know what to make of it yet. Feelings happen regardless of if we intend them to, and they are a real piece of understanding the context of our character. I am interested in this realm of things. Who we are before our brain catches up to us.

Before joining City Voices, I had not had any experiences with people with Serious Mental Illnesses. I have not had many conversations about people with SMI, and I also rarely thought about it. But if the question is to answer how my perspective has changed before and after City Voices, I need to explore how my thoughts have passively engaged with this topic.

For many people like myself with a lack of experience, our entire opinions on people with SMI are fully made up by this passive engagement. And because we are human, even in the absence of knowledge there is always feeling. Thinking about what feelings would arise around this topic, I believe it was mostly discomfort. Discomfort, meaning a subtle urge to turn away. When my brain catches up to this feeling, I rationalize that I feel discomfort because I do not have the tools to have a good, respectful conversation.

However, when we examine this with the full context of my impression, a more nuanced idea comes to light, and I came to confront that I believed this topic, at the time, was too hard, or stressful, too out of my league to learn. Because I had “othered” them, I operated with the impression that I could not naturally fall into conversation with them or about them.

The reason why I go into this detail is because I believe many of us have good wills in our hearts and believe that people with SMI deserve to be talked about, supported, and cared for. However, we live in a society that builds on a system of in-groups and therefore has conditioned a need for familiarity in order for us to be the most comfortable. Once someone is in the category of “other,” conversation feels like crossing a border rather than meeting another person.

I don’t believe the conversation about people with SMI is a “topic” as much as it is a reminder that categories are often poor substitutes for relationships. My experience with City Voices has made this much clearer to me, and gave me the courage to confront my subconscious in a way I was not previously ready to.