**Please know this song has brief explicit language**
Broken limbs can be fixed, put them back into place
What about feelings that are too f—g hard to face?
Mental illness is so hard because it’s so hidden. As the song says, a broken bone you can fix. Fragmented marrow is discernable. But the sickness of mental illness does not clearly or easily reveal itself; it lives deep inside those who bear its burden. And for those who have never experienced it, mental illness can seem so foreign and inconceivable as to be borderline unbelievable. With such an unempathetic viewpoint, impotent encouragements to change perspective are sent like gutter drippings to assuage a raging forest fire. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way.
Change my perspective, that's what they say
Like I'm in a car and I could just change lanes
Solder new neural pathways deep in my brain
But it doesn't work that way, ooh, I wish it worked that way
Our culture is so steeped in obsession with the mind and rational thought that it is often the only solution offered. Just change perspective. Institute more gratefulness and positive thinking. Find the silver lining (which, for someone like me, is like chasing your own shadow in the park at midnight). Where we have been taught to find answers is the problem's primary residence. It doesn't work that way.
In addition to being impossible to overcome through mental fortitude, mental illness is incredibly isolating. It can cripple you socially and keep you from others. Yet, we are social beings, and much of our formation, starting from infancy, comes through relationships. So how do we proceed through the internal chaos when the feelings are too hard to face? When we find ourselves feeding on the darkness and the bleeding of our hearts? When we can't let the pain, the brokenness, the ache, the emotions go? When peace of mind feels impossible?
As I reflect on this song by The Used, I stumble over hints at a way forward. They speak (or scream) of the inability to solder new neural pathways, and rightly so. We cannot physically rewire the trillions of synaptic connections in our brains or pinpoint which synapse out of the trillions is defective. But research shows that our brains can change, and do change, all the way up until death. The agent of change, however, can’t come from within. Listening to this song reminded me of a book I read years ago by Joel Green, Body, Soul, and Human Life. Here is how he explains it:
Although our genes bias our dispositions and character, the neuronal systems and pathways responsible for much of what we think, feel, believe, and do are shaped by learning…this “learning” is particularly focused on the practices that shape our lives and on interpersonal experiences, which directly shape the ongoing development of the brain’s structure and function. If the neurobiological systems that shape how we think, feel, believe, and behave are forever being sculpted in the context of our social experiences, then in a profound sense, we must speak of personal (trans)formation in relational terms. Our autobiographical selves are formed within a nest of relationships, a community.
Simply, relationships can reshape our brains. Community can change how our brains work. But I don’t like this as an answer if I’m honest. Community is too cliché and too shallow of a Christian notion, at least how I’ve typically thought of it and heard it taught. The simplicity feels too immediate and can too easily be fulfilled with a kind text. To truly help alleviate the suffering of mental illness, something more robust needs to be employed. Mental illness requires a full scope of help and professional attention, including sustaining support and care from close friends and family. Something like companionship is the sustaining and transforming relationship I need when traversing the valley of the shadow of death.
Maybe this is why Jesus was seemingly perturbed with his friends in the garden the night before his betrayal and execution. He was anguishing internally and wanted a companion for the journey to sustain him a little longer. But instead, they were sleeping.
Broken limbs can be fixed, put them back into place
What about feelings that are too f—g hard to face?
Change my perspective, that's what they say
Like I'm in a car and I could just change lanes
Solder new neural pathways deep in my brain
But it doesn't work that way, ooh, I wish it worked that way
In my headspace
I'm feeding on the darkness and the bleeding of my heart
In my headspace
I go back to where it started when I hadn't fallen apart yet
I can't let go
The pain that I feel runs too deep
Always alone
There is no space for me in my headspace for me
There is no space for me in my headspace for me
My head is in space, lost in a dark place
Before the stars were born, when it was all shades of shadows for days
Time didn't exist yet, and neither did I
Except in my mind, somewhere deep in my mind
Change my perspective, that's what they say
Like I'm in a car and I could just change lanes
Solder new neural pathways deep in my brain
But it doesn't work that way, ooh, I wish it worked that way
In my headspace
I'm feeding on the darkness and the bleeding of my heart
In my headspace
I go back to where it started when I hadn't fallen apart yet
I can't let go
The pain that I feel runs too deep
Always alone
There is no space for me in my headspace for me
There's no space for me in my headspace for me
The sickness doesn't show
It just lives deep inside of me
Every day, it grows 'til it's in control-
Of my headspace
I'm feeding on the darkness and the bleeding of my heart
In my headspace
I go back to where it started when I hadn't fallen apart yet
I can't let go
The pain that I feel runs too deep
Always alone
There is no space for me in my headspace for me
There's no space for me in my headspace for me
There is no space for me in my headspace for me
There is no space for me in my headspace for me