Shedding Light on Your Inner Asylum

"The Monster Behind Me" by Bella Moon

Most everyone I know with mental health struggles has at some point been told those struggles weren’t real. Dismissing mental illness is unfortunately very common and rooted in stigma and shame and fear. It’s also gaslighting.

It’s really difficult to explain to someone who’s never had these struggles just how real they are despite not being visible, tangible things. It’s my hope that these examples and parallels from various stories can help everyone understand it a little better, both those of us living with mental illness, and those not.

The mental hospital is surprisingly prevalent in sci-fi/fantasy. Called "Cuckoo's Nest" by TV Tropes, it shows up in Buffy ("Normal Again"), Warehouse 13 ("Don't Hate the Player"), Charmed ("Brain Drain"), Smallville ("Labyrinth"), and The Magicians ("The World in the Walls") to name just a few. In each of these cases, the character finds themselves in a mental hospital being told the last months or years of their lives were all hallucinations, and that if they just accept this and follow the prescribed treatment, they can have the "normal life" they've craved. 

Buffy alternates between her two realities, seeing the friends and family of her supernatural world juxtaposed with the hospital environment where her dead mother and estranged father are there, together, wishing for her to "get better" and go home with them. Piper (Charmed) finds her lifelong home being used as a mental hospital where her sisters are fellow patients and her husband is one of her doctors. The demon who put her there poses as another doctor trying to convince her to let go of the ideas of magic and her life as a witch, telling her, just as the doctor did with Buffy, that all those struggles and battles she'd faced and all those victories she'd celebrated and losses she'd mourned were not real. The “patient” is told that their belief in those things is the only thing still keeping them from “getting better.”

More recently, The Magicians used this trope, but instead of four or six seasons in, it's a mere four episodes into the story. Quentin began the series in a hospital, and in this episode, he’s put under a spell which gives him hallucinations of being institutionalized again. Like in Charmed, this "hospital" is a familiar place, Brakebills. Quentin's hospital room is his dorm room at the magical school, but everyone is telling him those memories of the paranormal world are just hallucinations.

When looking at the demons, monsters, and spells these characters are fighting as metaphors for mental illness, the attempts to convince each character their monsters aren’t real is the same as the message from society and even some medical personnel that our experiences regarding our mental health struggles aren't real. Personally, considering the number of chronic illnesses that went undiagnosed for years and years, those episodes feel like my mental and physical struggles being represented by fake doctors in fake hospitals telling strong people not to believe their own experiences. It's mental health gaslighting, and it's something so many people face when they struggle with mental health challenges and various hard to diagnose invisible illnesses. The stigma surrounding mental health causes a lot of people to dismiss the realities we face. The ability to fake ‘okay’ in public causes others to declare that our struggles must not be real. But there are ways to fight back. 

Some characters needed the help of a friend or family member, some needed a boost from a counter-spell, but ultimately, all these characters have to take the final step themselves. They each have to decide if the monsters they're used to facing are real, and if they're willing to face them again despite having to leave behind the promise of peace and safety, and sometimes even loved ones dead in the paranormal reality. Each of these characters struggles to learn the same lesson. Life is not about a promise of peace and safety. It's about ups and downs.

The key that lets Quentin finally wake up was listening to Jane's questions and reading about The Madness Maker who could only do game magic. "The real curse was he only played when he could win, which cut him off from the surprise, horror, sadness, and wonder of life." To which Quentin responds, "stop playing and start living” and swipes the chess board which finally wakes him up. Buffy's mother probably sums it up the best, though. "You're too good to give in. You can beat this thing. Be strong, baby. Okay? I know you're afraid. I know the world feels like a hard place sometimes, but you've got people who love you. Your dad and I, we have all the faith in the world in you. We'll always be with you. You've got a world of strength in your heart; I know you do. You just have to find it again. Believe in yourself."

Buffy's reality is a hard place sometimes, quite often in fact, but her loved ones anchor her and support her. Believing in herself means recognizing her reality, the truth of her life, the validity of her struggles, even in the face of her own mother telling her it's all in her head (a poignant realization for me considering how often my mother told me the symptoms that were later identified as part of several mental and physical illnesses were “all in my head” too). But Buffy was able to take those words at face value. Her parents will always be with her in her memories, in the way they raised her, in her genetics, and (depending on one's beliefs) in spirit, despite her mother's passing and her father's absence.  

All the rest of Joyce's words, strength in her heart, too good to give in, they stir in Buffy the power to face her demons once again. In Buffy's case, there's no clear expectation of what would have happened to Buffy had she chosen to stay in the other world (and in fact, a final scene suggests that she's still in that hospital, now catatonic as we continue to watch her hallucinations for another season and a half). 

In most cases of this trope, there is risk of loss if they don't escape; at the very least a loss of power (Piper in Charmed) and often a potential loss of life (The Magicians). They have to move through a stage of self-empowerment to get out of it. It's a stage we all have to go through - accepting the problem as a real problem allows us to be better prepared to combat it. 

In our reality of mental illness and cultural/societal lessons that aggravate and exacerbate mental health challenges, the idea of accepting these messages that "all those struggles were just in your head and if you accept that, you won't struggle anymore" has a very "pull yourself up by your bootstraps and put on your big girl panties" feel to it. It’s blaming us for our own illnesses, dismissing our very real struggles, pushing toxic positivity, factually incorrect and impossible to do, and ultimately, it's a completely unhelpful message to us.

We all know that everyone has ups and downs throughout their life. But it's a very, very large sliding scale, and some have more ups or more downs, some have taller ups and some have lower downs, while some have longer ups or longer downs. What causes an up or down, the length and intensity of its effect, those things vary from one person to another, but overall, those of us dealing with chronic mental health challenges have deeper downs than your average neurotypical, untraumatized person. A mentally healthy person may be able to easily reach for their inner supply of extra gumption to go to work when worried about a loved one, when they've fought with their partner, or even when they're grieving a relationship or a person or pet. On the other hand, we who fight with our own brains during much of our waking hours find ourselves overwhelmed when stressed, triggered, or grieving, and this can legitimately result in serious slumps of being unable to "do it anyway".

"Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed." Mason Cooley, an American aphorist, said that. It's a witty aphorism, sure, but for those of us who struggle, it's actually kinda profound. Sometimes it's an achievement unto itself when our brains are overcome by the effects of mental illness. And considering the impact the brain has on the rest of the body, let’s remember Dumbledore’s words, “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” Internal struggles are real and valid.

Dr. Robin Sterns’ “The Gaslight Effect” describes three distinct stages of gaslighting: disbelief, defense and depression. “In other words, you first avoid accepting that the manipulation is occurring, you then try to fight against it and finally you are convinced there is a problem with you. By stage three, you may feel like you are, quite literally, ‘going crazy.’” (https://themighty.com/2017/01/mental-illness-and-gaslighting-thoughts/) This perfectly describes the process so many of the characters go through in their utopian dreams and imaginary sanitariums. Taking a closer look at just two of these examples, Buffy and Piper had seemingly similar experiences, but with a few important differences.

In both cases, the "doctors" (Buffy has strangers there, Piper has the demon and 'Leo') go through the aforementioned gaslighting stage. And in both cases, it was their connections to loved ones that pulled them out of the delusions, but in different ways. Where Buffy looks at not-Joyce and makes the conscious decision to face her reality, even if it doesn't sound like reality to others, Piper gets so lost in it that the real Leo and her real sisters have to find a way into her mind to pull her out and back to reality. It shows a lot in the different ways different people deal with mental illness and how the same fix won't work on everyone.

Buffy’s got a poison inside that makes her hallucinate, and she goes back and forth between worlds for most of the episode. “Normal Again” represents us fighting our internal voices that tell us we’re making it up/exaggerating/etc. It’s internalized ableism and learning to recognize it and counter it with our reality, to “believe” like Buffy did, is how we fight those voices. Piper, on the other hand, is being held in the underworld by a demon, and her mind is trapped in the fake hospital by his powers. All Piper’s stuff comes directly from the demon influencing her mind, the actual external voices that disbelieve the reality of mental illness. “Brain Drain” is society and dismissive medical personnel.

Piper: I was just upset that there was another demon in our house and in our lives. And I know I should stop fighting it and just accept it, but...

Paige: It's actually kind of good to know that I'm not the only one who struggles with being a witch.

It's always helpful to know we're not the only ones struggling against our own demons. When society and our doctors are denying our reality, it takes someone, even just one person, to validate us and allow us to move into healing. This is what Leo, Paige, and Phoebe represent in “Brain Drain.” On the other hand, Buffy struggled to find enough inner strength and faith in her connections to others to consciously choose to say goodbye to the delusions, and after her first step, she reached out to her friends for help (in the form of an antidote). When our own inner voices are the ones harming us, sometimes we have to find the strength or faith to take that first step, and then we can reach out and ask for the help we need. Buffy needs her connections with friends just as Piper needs her sisters and Leo, Quentin needed Penny and Julia and even Jane, just as we all need our own supportive and loving people whether they are our relatives, our misfit chosen family, or even our group therapy fellows.