Last Sunday night I sat at a table with a bunch of middle aged college educators. My mother was running a conference to educate people about mental illness on campus and Alison Malmon and I came down for it. Alison spoke at the conference, I was just along for the ride. The dinner the night before the conerence was one of those striking moments, with Alison and I sitting in the middle of all these well meaning older people tring to comumincate what it was to feel isolated at college and what educators might do to ease the burden of it. They were looking for us to guide them and I felt useless.
I listened and I tried to answer their questions about what I had needed and hadnt gotten at Amherst, but I felt like a phoney. My experience of being unhappy in college had been so personal and shameful, I couldn't relate to the stories of finding sources of support among other students. I don't I would have known how to look or how to utilize what I found. I was too busy pretending things were fine.
So how do we reach the kids like I was who struggled along because they feared the shame? If I don't know that answer all these later, I am not convinced there is a good answer.
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I'm so glad you wrote this post--outreach is complex, even when everyone on board has the right intentions. Shame and depression go hand in hand--and sometimes the best way to reach the helpers and the people who need help is through an authentic expression of how shame is experienced. You may have felt phony or unsuccessful---but what you were trying to do is very brave---and because it asks people to look at their own shame, you don't necessarily get the feedback that you're doing a good job, because often people actually go into defense or denial modes.
Also--to state the obvious--working with one's mother in a professional setting is tricky--especially when the topic at hand is personal suffering.
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