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nullcompany t1_j1vyeoz wrote

I think most of us cannot be experts on this delicate subject, as the foundation of my reply. But I feel that people are generally afraid of being judged, and that mental health is the most invasive, vulnerable way to be judged that we have come up with.

Being judged makes us feel very strongly about many topics, all of them divisive. And part of being judged is our inclusion within, or deliberate exclusion without, a community.

That every human is always a single sentence away from losing their entire tribe of family, friends, and neighbors is what makes us all so fragile in this regard. (Hagrid: "Should not have said that")

So to be so vulnerable as to seek some mental health when you might need it, I'd have to salute or comfort anyone willing to do that because I share the world with that person, we don't experience it separately. And I can feel the nakedness and embarrassment of someone sharing that they've needed mental health because it's so profitable to judge and shame and ostracize. Kick the people who are down, it's the quickest win.

Just like we're all one sentence away from destroying our connection to people, we're all one bad experience away from losing our mental health. I believe that if you can view people through this lens that it's the tiniest bit easier to accept how precarious a situation we all are in and how much we might prefer we were all a little more accepting of each other at the outset of that one bad event.

I'm completely unqualified to have any opinion on this other than as being a person, though.

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