The Importance of Empathy

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People often feel more comfortable judging people in circumstances they do not think they could be in.

Compassion takes more cognitive energy than judgment.

It takes courage and strength to offer empathy.

People living with psychosis and other mental health conditions and neurodivergences experience the world a bit differently.

I'm one of those people.

At age 13, I found myself in a hospital chanting, "I don't belong here."

I quickly learned that almost no one felt they belonged there.

It wasn't just there that I didn’t belong.

My whole life, I had struggled with belonging. Social expectations were mysterious to me, and I often missed them. I didn't have many friends. I had tics, obsessions, attention issues, and a list of over quirks.

But that day, as I was saying, "I don't belong here," I truly felt confused. I didn't know why I was in the hospital. In a few days, I would be given a diagnosis involving psychosis in what would begin a decades-long journey toward recovery.

I would also learn that very few people feel they belong when in a psych unit. With doors equipped with buzzers to keep us inside and the most basic liberties like writing with a pen suspended, psychiatric hospitals can feel distinctly othering.

Hospital after hospital stay, I began to feel less and less a part of typical society and more like some other group of humans cut to the fringes. I remember clearly one day going into the clinic where I would be admitted to the hospital. A man hopped off a gurney, asking a woman for a cigarette. He gained permission from the officers escorting him before taking a smoke with her.

They shared a few words about being stuck in a psych ward and wanting things on the outside.

These were my people.

One day, a social worker left a resource book packet with my family. I learned about peer support and the recovery movement. In these spaces, I found people who had walked through the immense pain of mental health conditions, experiences of homelessness, and........

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