Saturday, May 11, 2013

Royce White and anxiety disorder

Just read a very good article on the basketball player Royce White, who has anxiety disorder, written by a sportswriter who also has dealt with it:

http://www.sbnation.com/longform/2013/5/9/4312406/royce-white-living-and-working-with-anxiety-disorder

For more background, here's another article on Royce White, written earlier, with a somewhat different perspective: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8890734/chuck-klosterman-royce-white

And here's his Wikipedia page, which outlines the many ups and downs of his life and career so far (and he's only 22): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royce_White


Royce White is a fascinating and polarizing figure in the NBA, and these articles explain his situation better than I could. He's apparently a hell of a basketball player when he's right - a player that good without White's disorder and past probably gets chosen in the top 10 picks, and everyone knew the Rockets were taking a risk drafting him. Strictly from the view of a team deciding whether to pick a player like this, I think you'd have to view the risk as similar to drafting someone with an extensive injury history. (This is also why most people who have these things know to never, ever mention them in a job interview or the early stages of employment.)

Though physical health issues and mental health issues, in many ways, *aren't* comparable, chiefly because of the body parts affected by them. Our legs are unique to us, as all our parts are, but the variance between legs isn't that wide - if you break your leg, the treatment plan, rehab and expectation of recovery will be roughly the same as if I broke mine.

Mental health issues are as far from that model as it gets. Our brains are unique and dizzyingly complex, billions of times more complex than our legs. It's amazing that we know even as much as we do about them, but what we know about how to treat psychological disorders is still in its infancy and will be there for a long time yet. And brains are extremely sensitive to environmental factors, that is, life experiences: what we refer to as mental disorders are adaptations by the brain that don't help us live happy, productive lives. This means that, though millions of people have these things to some degree, no two instances of anxiety or depression or OCD can be seen alike. The similarity starts and ends with the symptoms. I've dealt with anxiety and depression off and on throughout my life and always will, and so I can relate to what the first article describes very well. I won't elaborate here, but if you can't, believe me, you're glad you can't. It can royally fuck up your life. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But I have scarcely any more insight into Royce White than anyone else, and even if I knew him personally, I still wouldn't. His anxiety is the adaptation of *his* brain to *his* environment. We can never know what we'd do in his shoes, because we'll never be in them.

So I won't judge the guy, though that doesn't mean I agree with everything he's saying or that I assume his approach to his situation is ideal. When I was 22, my approach to anxiety or life itself sure wasn't. (It's not now, for that matter.) If he can't play, he can't play, but from these articles it doesn't seem to me that the Rockets aren't trying to work with him. Why wouldn't they? It's a wasted draft pick if they don't. There's a limit to how far the team can go, just practically: the Rockets aren't a mental wellness organization, but an NBA team trying to make money and win games. They should treat him the best they can, but they're well within their rights to let him go if it doesn't work out, just as the other teams were well within their rights not to draft him. Talent by itself guarantees you nothing. And just because you have a mental disorder does not mean you can't also be arrogant or obnoxious or uncoachable or not someone that a team wants to hassle with. People dealing with mental health issues aren't the bums and fakers they're often and ignorantly judged to be, but they're not saints, either. Nor are they merely labels, merely the sum of their disorders. They're just people.

It does take guts to speak out, and I'm glad Royce White has done that, and I hope it contributes to a future where people with these issues are treated more humanely - they sure as hell haven't been for almost all of our history, and they very often still aren't. It sucks, and we need to do better. But it's as bad to fail to be grateful for the fact that there are lots of caring, supportive people and organizations who are trying their best to help. When you have a psychological disorder and your life is rocky as a result, it's very tempting to feel like the whole world's against you - indeed, it's often part of the disorder to feel that way. You only hear the sour voices in the chorus. Doesn't mean it's true.


Wednesday, May 1, 2013

First Church of...

This article has made the rounds lately: http://www.salon.com/2013/04/28/dont_stop_believin_do_atheists_need_a_church/

Fair-to-middling Salon clickbait, what else is new, but to the point...eh, this doesn't sound at all like my vibe, though the question is worth asking. It's true that unchurched people like me don't get the social benefits that churches provide: fellowship, moral support, community engagement. I don't know that the folks in the article are doing anything novel, though - there have long been ethical humanist societies and charities and other endeavors that afford nonbelievers a suitable happy place. If I and many of my fellows are habitual non-joiners despite this, that's on us...the Unitarian Universalists, I've wondered about. They say they're hospitable to atheists, though that hospitality seems to vary depending on the leadership of any given UU church. I'm not looking to join such a group - I don't identify as "spiritual but not religious" either - but I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. I grew up in church, and though as an adult I've never seen any need or reason to believe, that doesn't mean there aren't noble and edifying aspects to life in the congregation. (If I had kids, would I take them to church? No, but again, I can point to good things from my own time there as a child, and I would look for other ways to give my children those things.)

The notion of self-described atheist churches makes me queasy, though. It does no service to atheism or anything else if these atheist churches end up with the same problems that keep me away from regular churches. I understand the human psychological attraction to ritual, and it's not by any means all bad. But if that becomes a need for spectacle, or a need to be told what to think, or a need to feel more like "us" by excluding "them", or a focus on attaining the money, power and charisma needed to broadcast the message far and wide...then to me that more than negates the benefits of fellowship. And it's not atheism. Atheism isn't a religion and has no proper business behaving like one; atheism isn't anything in itself, merely the absence of a thing. To make atheism into a brand of any sort is to betray it. I don't need anyone to agree with me - I sleep well at night. I just need people to respect me as a good-hearted, rational person, which I usually am and you probably are as well, and to not look down on or attempt to marginalize me merely for coming to a different view. I think most atheists feel the same way.

But like you, I do need friends, and fellow travelers, and encouragement toward a life of virtue and love and fulfillment. I want the world to be better and the people I encounter to be happier for my presence, and when I do fall short, when I show my ass, which is more often than I'd prefer, I need a path to forgiveness and atonement, a return to right living. Doesn't everyone want those things? Surely most of us do. We are interdependent, no matter what we believe or whether we believe at all; we're a community whether we feel like it or not. Wherever I can find that community and grow with it is a good thing. That community doesn't have to be explicitly religious, though. I can take a walk on a sunny day, play a game of Scrabble, eat a breakfast taco, pick up my 4-year-old nephew from Montessori school each Tuesday and take him to a car wash and see the happiness and wonder spread across his face, grieve for the horrible things in the news and exult over the brave and wonderful things, watch a ballgame with my dad, fill the dog's water bowl, read Wikipedia for an hour, get sick, get well, compete in a spelling bee wearing devil horns, read a good book, crack a bad joke, email back and forth with a dear old friend, attempt to play along with Rush's "Territories" with my little brother, agonize over nonsense large and small. Embrace the uncertainty, embrace the struggle, live and work alongside our fellows. Who are we to demand more?