The Mindfulness Response: Love & Belonging, Acceptance & Stigma

Chapter 4 Love and Belonging

            The Mindfulness Response reminds us to appreciate those who support and love us. This can be difficult to do when we are stressed, anxious, afraid, or depressed.  Using gratitude from the Naikan philosophy helps us realize our relationships are valued.  The group discussed how their presence was valuable and gratifying to others. There is an interaction every time we encounter another person. Self-compassion teaches us about self-kindness, which is applied to ourselves and others. Being patient with ourselves and others helps us build supportive relationships.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1969) commented on remarkable people as the most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, suffering, struggle, and loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.

            The Mindfulness Response recognizes life’s pain and suffering. Kubler-Ross reminds us that personal struggles can cause us to become incredible people. The group discussed feeling part of a larger community and how isolation and exclusion increased depression. From despair, we can choose a new direction in our lives and pass on these life lessons to others by being a teacher, a role model, an advocate, and being open to inspiring others.

Awareness of Love and Belonging

            The Mindfulness Response recognizes the pain experienced in those who don’t fit into the dominant society’s rules, and laws, or follow social values from the dominant culture. Those who are minorities or those with recurrent mental health symptoms encounter stigma, shame, discrimination, and exclusion. This raises questions about cultural issues, how a society solves problems, and what is most helpful.

            The participants who had support from their families realized how important it was. The family provided resources and help in numerous ways. Some participants couldn’t rely on family and substituted friends instead.

Those who lacked support from friends or family realized how it slowed their progress through the program. There were many reasons for not having support. Some participants talked about getting arrested, abusing drugs or alcohol, and having different religious or political opinions. Some participants explained how family members abused substances while they needed to be sober. Others relayed stories about arguments and childhood abuse issues.

            When a participant told the group they didn’t feel understood by their family and didn’t have support, the group discussed how to develop a substitute family through support groups and community support. They shared stories of how they rebuilt a family because of not being accepted. Sometimes the family didn’t believe that they had a mental illness and that they didn’t need to take their medications or see a therapist or psychiatrist.

            There is a lonely look on the face of the group therapy participant who feels their family doesn’t understand. Their shoulders, heads, and necks slump forward, and they appear to carry the world's weight upon it.

Cultural Awareness and Feeling Accepted

Participants came from different racial backgrounds. Some appeared White but announced that they were mixed racial backgrounds and held different cultural beliefs than the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants in the USA.

Participants talked about having friends or acquaintances from other ethnic groups, but feeling accepted is another issue. Friendship transcends race and ethnicity. The two are strongly correlated since people tend to have more friends among their race group than they do among different races.

Biracial adults tend to have multi-racial friends and are more diverse in their relationships than Whites, or those who identify with one race. Statistics show that acceptance may depend upon the racial background. For instance, biracial White and Black people feel more accepted by Black people than by Whites. Biracial White and Asian adults felt accepted by White people more than Asians.

Most biracial American Indian adults did not feel accepted by full American Indian adults. There were varying degrees of feeling accepted by an American Indian, with most biracial American Indians saying they felt somewhat accepted.

Multiracial adults who are White, Black, and American Indian say they have more in common with Black people than with White or American Indian people. Multiracial adults who are White, Black, and American Indian were more likely to stay connected with their Black family members (Thomas, Eckstrand, Montano, Rezeppa & Marshal, 2021).

Multiracial Hispanic adults identified diverse friendships. Most said their friendships and relationships were with White and Hispanics, or other multiracial groups similar to themselves. Hispanic people emphasize family and the tendency to stay in contact with relatives is important.

Cultural Awareness and Serious Mental Illness

Among biracial and multiracial minority groups, serious mental illness is highest, followed by American Indians, Hispanics, Black people, and Asians. These minority groups tend to get care through the emergency departments which has legal repercussions. They are less likely to use community resources. These groups are less likely to be treated for co-occurring depression, raising their risk of suicide. (APA January 2022).

Among LGBTQ+ populations, those who experienced more prejudice were from biracial, multiracial, or minority groups. Men experienced more prejudiced events than bisexual women. Gender nonconformity is related to minority stress and is associated with higher levels of depression and suicide. Higher rates of rejection in relationships by the general society created increased serious mental illnesses for this group. (Thomas, Eckstrand, Montano, Rezeppa & Marshal, 2021).

Understanding How Stigma Increases Shame

            Stigma is a strong guard that won’t let you release pain from the past. Stigma allows shame to continue in people’s lives. It creates a barrier of silence, like a prison fence with barbed wire holding people in its walls. It prevents people from seeking help. NAMI.org sites 1 in 5 people are affected by mental illness and are afraid to talk due to stigma. Old stereotypes that are repeated continue to stigmatize people with mental illnesses.

            Three sources of stigma are damaging. The first is media sources, from the news to online chats, social media, TV shows, and movies. The media can portray people with mental illness in ways that harm them and their image.

            A second way that the group noticed was their attitude about themselves and their negative thoughts. Believing that the movies or social media sites are true causes people to question themselves and create more negative thoughts about themselves. Self-stigma is a shame that is internalized.

            A third way is from outdated laws and policies in the state and federal systems. When funding for mental health research is lower than other agencies, it sends a message that mental health is not important. When funding services are cut or lowered, it tells people they are not valued.

            The group discussed how stigma exists, despite conversations about stereotypes. Participants talked about hiding symptoms and diagnoses due to fear of being ostracized by others. On an interpersonal level, there is discrimination, devaluation, and dehumanization, as others ignore those with mental health problems. (Corrigan, Morris, Michaels, Rafacz, & Rüsch 2012). At a societal level, some policies and norms harm the health of those with mental health symptoms and reduce opportunities for them to improve their well-being (NIMH 2023).

USA Culture

            America has a dynamic and diverse culture. The overall culture emphasizes independence, do it yourself, work hard, stay happy, and then you will be successful. When it comes to mental illness, aging, grief and loss issues, or poverty and homelessness, troubles arise. Cultural attitude to “put on a happy face” tells people to hide their feelings. The group talked about how this is not possible. Cultural attitudes such as this create more stigma for those who experience serious mental illness. (Hofstede, 1980, 2001).

            The group discussed how common depression and anxiety are and how common mental illness is. One participant discussed how they fell between the cracks, and how it was difficult to get out alone without support.

            Stigma creates shame and guilt. Shame is a painful feeling that grows over time and inhibits our very being. It causes us to believe that we were born defective. Stigma comes with humiliation or distress caused by hearing messages we are wrong, at fault, and are to blame. These messages can be heard by small children from adults and carried with them into adulthood, where they are haunted by the heavy burden upon their shoulders created by shame. Shame and stigma can remove or restrain people with serious mental illness from participating in the community (National Institute of Mental Health 2023).

            When a participant experiences mental illness, values are questioned. These types of questions affect spirituality, purpose, and our communities. What is their worth in a capitalistic society if they are not working? Muller (1999) wrote about national well-being and how it needs to consider those who care for others, those who volunteer to instruct children who cannot read, and care for those who are disabled. “What we desperately need is a broad, comprehensive indicator, a Common Wealth Index.” The figure would somehow manage to calculate the true value of common work. This would measure more thoroughly the depth and breadth of our national well-being.

            Participants discussed mental illness, stigma, and shame, and how it affected their sense of belonging in a community. The group expressed that they feel alienated and not connected to past friendships, to their religion, faith, or spirituality.

            At times, group therapy members talked about not feeling accepted by their family, friends, or society because of their beliefs, or because of their diagnosis. Some participants lost their housing due to arguments about lifestyle and values. Others told them not to take psychiatric medications because they did not want to be associated with someone who had a mental illness.

            A participant told others that they tried to do what their family suggested, just pick up your bootstraps and move on, but it didn’t work. Others in the group were told to just think happy thoughts, but they talked about the voices, intrusive thoughts, and images that got in the way and the positive thoughts disappeared.

Identify Stigma

            National Alliance of Mental Illness (2023) educates people about stigma and how it prevents people from feeling good about themselves, seeking help, and alienating them.

Stigma can stop communication. Being aware of how stigma excludes, prejudges, and discriminates is necessary to change policies and laws. The group therapy participants have lengthy discussions about stigma.

            Group discussions centered around statements that they heard about people with mental illness. One conversation talked about how a participant was told that they were just “faking it.”  The family did not acknowledge the mental illness. They did not talk about those types of symptoms. The family did not believe in going to a psychiatrist or taking medications.

            Another participant talked about how friends and family blamed the mental illness on them and said that they “caused it themselves.”  The family believed that the participant did not lead a healthy or good life and therefore it was their fault. The family did not trust them and alienated them from other relatives.

            Another participant talked about how they were told that they could snap out of it if they wanted to just try harder.”  They had to find other friends to be supportive of them. When the holidays came, they decided to go to their friend’s house and not their family’s home. Their family was not there for them when they needed them.