I’m still sick and in a whole mood today. Mainly I’m weary of the “helpers,” “advocates” and “experts” when it comes to mental health. There have been far too many people speaking for us and getting it horribly wrong. From now on we are the ones who should be speaking.

I mean even when those “helpers” improve the message a bit, they still give far too much weight to those old damaging constructs. I’m not saying I’m the one to fix it. I’m just one voice among many which is why we need to start listening to those voices.

This isn’t a subtweet of anyone in particular just a theme repeated every single day. We are instructed and prescribed to like helpless children but we have things to say. No one can help us without sitting down and doing a whole lot of humble listening.

“Humble” means recognizing that so much of how they think of MH is informed by terribly discriminatory and inaccurate constructs. Humble listening means being willing to rethink everything they think they know which is tough when they cast themselves as one who knows best

Finally listening means acknowledging that a lot of the “knowledge base” to date was built on a whole lot of not listening. And taking meaningful steps to rectify that. Even if it means unlearning their own “expertise” and special “helper”/“advocate” status