Every February, the youth lead worship at my church on a designated Sunday. During this service, the youth do everything: the prelude, prayers, scripture readings, preaching, the benediction, writing texts for the worship service, selecting hymns and music, and more. This year, I am a preacher. As I prepare my sermon, I have been pondering the idea of finding joy, even amidst struggle.
After hearing a first draft of each of the sermons, a collective theme arose: God is present in all circumstances in our lives. After we all preached our rough drafts for the first time in the chilly, dimly lit chapel, Andy, the youth pastor, commented, “Why is it that each of you endures so much struggle in your lives? I need to talk to the adults in your life about this.”
Why he mentioned the adults in our lives, I don’t know. But he seemed to indicate that in previous generations, people our age did not struggle with the issues that we do now, especially surrounding mental health. Why? Why is our generation struggling so much? Why can’t we receive more help? Why am I a victim? Why didn’t anyone help me earlier? Why am I stuck dealing with my mental health issues now?
In reading my sermon for the group, I was annoyed that my sermon felt too long and too repetitive—this is normal for a first draft, or as my tenth-grade English teacher would say, a “trash draft.” As I read from the pulpit, I voiced some of these ideas aloud, and the youth pastor said, “Stop all of the negative self-talk, Peter!” with conviction. I have always done this, especially when confronted by my peers viewing my work. I find my flaws and ensure people are aware of them. I suppose it’s a form of self-defense, to make sure people are aware that it could be “better.” Or, it could be another form of “people pleasing.”
This idea of “people pleasing” is the subject of Katy Waldman’s New Yorker review “How to Recover from Caring Too Much.” The piece discusses the “fawn response,” an idea akin to that of “people pleasing.” My interpretation of the “fawn response” revealed in the article is a means of expressing oneself to others in a manner that is different from the true you in order to prevent conflict or unwanted tension in relationships. I imagine it could also be seen in my “self-defense” of my flaws.
Waldman shares that aone of the psychotherapistpsychotherapists studying this idea posted online a great reassurance for us fawners. A post read, “Your mind is lying to you because it’s scared. I know you may have this fear that you’re secretly a bad person and it’s just a matter of time before everyone finds out, but you’re actually safe.” The One psychotherapist quoted in the article reveals that fawning is the “belief that we need have to neglect ourselves for the comfort of other people.”
This is definitely true for me—working too hard on group projects to be sure it is clear I did my share, spending too much time on homework so the teacher knows I tried, etc. The result is that fawning can trigger some seriously negative effects on mental health. Waldman restates what a the clinical psychologist psychotherapist said, “for some people, fawning is about being more of who they are—smart, generous, successful, funny, or beautiful.”
Yet fawning is not limited to those traits, and can also be seen in the opposite way: toning down one’s normal, good qualities: “vocal, ethnic, creative, self-assured, or able to set boundaries.” If you must change the good qualities that make you you, then there’s probably something wrong. Waldman continues that fFawning also “wears various faces: perfectionism, promiscuity, self-depreciation, workaholism, and overspending.”
Some of these apply to me. I find myself working way too hard, spending much more time on schoolwork than I should, trying to ensure perfectionism all the time, all while I should be taking care of myself instead. Perfectionism can lead to even worse mental challenges, such as OCD, which I struggle with.
Andy’s question to the youth about our shared struggles struck me. An increase in mental health struggles correlates to young people’s experience within the COVID-19 pandemic. The National Institute of Mental Health explains that there is “an association between the COVID-19 pandemic and impaired mental health and maladaptive brain development among adolescents.”
So why aren’t more careful measures taken to improve mental health if, according to the World Health Organization, “one in seven 10 to 19-year-olds experience a mental disorder?” This means that there are likely two people in my roughly fifteen-person classes in school who struggle, too. Hypothetically, if I am one, then who are the others? Why don’t I know who they are so we can help each other out? Why can’t we help each other a little more with this?
The topic of mental health is such a crisis, yet it is so difficult to discuss because of the vulnerability behind it, so we just push it off to the side until it is too late. But there must be a better way.
“It can be so challenging to live with my OCD, yet what boggles my mind is that so few people know this about me—and I know nothing about any mental health struggles of my peers. This is the very nature of the problem.”
I have struggled with OCD for my whole life. I suppose that many of the people-pleasing, “fawn-response,” symptoms I experience are associated with my OCD—a desire to “make sure” everything is “okay” and that I did not do anything wrong to others. I began noticing symptoms back in middle school, likely due to the isolation of the pandemic. Every night, I found myself turning off my phone at night, walking away from it, then returning to the radiator where my phone sat and pushing the home button on my old iPhone 8 vigorously to be sure it was off. Or, once I was in bed, the lamp clicked off next to me, and I had to repeat the time displayed on the clock to myself over and over again, as if I had to memorize it. My OCD ebbs and flows. It moves on from issue to issue, so I grew out of the hand-washing phase, the phone-checking, the time-memorizing, and the latest phase has moved onto bigger, “real-world,” problems. Recently, it has prevented me from wanting to go out and do other things.
This winter, I have discovered that I actually need to get some help coping with this, and fortunately, I am getting it. I wish I had found help sooner. I live in fear of dishonesty, so I find myself constantly thinking I am being dishonest. This isn’t fun, as I constantly overthink my life choices and change up the experience, making myself think I have actually done something wrong. It’s about time to figure this out.
It can be so challenging to live with my OCD, yet what boggles my mind is that so few people know this about me—and I know nothing about any mental health struggles of my peers. This is the very nature of the problem.
It’s understandable not to want to constantly share these struggles aloud all the time, but a slightly greater awareness would be beneficial. If we could make one another aware, then we would collectively not have as great a challenge with mental health. While I am not saying that I want to discuss my mental struggles with everyone openly, if we were all a little bit more aware of the struggles surrounding our lives, then perhaps we would be able to cope with our mental struggles. I’m tired of my mental issues. I’m desperate for change. I’m ready to find a way out of these struggles.
To answer your question, Andy, we are struggling because we are not heard by one another enough. The world won’t listen to our struggles. They may hear about them and apologize, but the only way to prevent them is to take action and wholeheartedly listen and learn of others’ mental-health needs.
Instead of fawning all the time, trying to prevent others from dealing with our own personal struggles, we must bring them to the table. We must bring the plate closer and start gnawing on the bone instead of pushing it farther and farther away. We must let others know that we are struggling in hopes that it will help us. I can’t do it alone.