Common Ground

     As many of us know, explaining a mental health condition to someone that doesn't have any experience dealing with a mental health condition can be difficult, and sometimes downright weird, especially if we don't know the person we're trying to explain something to very well. I encounter this problem when I have to explain my OCD to people that I'm not related to or that aren't my Facebook friend. Sometimes they get confused. Sometimes I get confused. Sometimes I make it sound way worse or way more "crazy" that it actually is, and then I end up backtracking and saying, "It's not as bad as I just made it sound, I swear."
     I can't refer everyone to my blog so they can read the way I have explained my mental health condition in writing. (I always write better than I speak.) I generally use lots of examples when I try to explain something, but with mental health conditions the examples can make it seem worse than it is or the examples can make people uncomfortable, if I deviate from the contamination OCD examples they see in the media (which I always do).
     I was discussing this issue with my therapist in my weekly session this week, and she suggested that I try to find common ground to make people understand my mental health condition when they ask. By that she meant, that I should make them think about some time they might have been preoccupied with thinking of an issue and unable to get it off their mind (maybe like a college student around the time of finals or someone worrying about a medical test result). Then explain to them how the obsessive part of my disorder is similar to that, but magnified to the extent that it can be debilitating. Then maybe they could understand without horrific examples that make them uncomfortable, and I wouldn't end up making it seem worse than I intended.
     I think the idea of trying to find common ground can also be applied if you're dealing with someone with a mental health condition when you don't have a mental health condition yourself. It gets rough. You don't understand what's happening. The other person can't find the words to explain what's happening. Look for common ground, and then try to empathize with the struggling person. You don't have to fix it, because a lot of the time, you can't fix it, but you can find common ground and empathize with them and then ask how you can help. The other person might appreciate the effort.
     I'll end with this: Explaining your mental health condition to someone is never easy. It also isn't easy to understand when someone tries to explain something like that to you when you don't have personal experience with a mental health condition. Find common ground with them instead of getting frustrated or angry because someone can't adequately explain or understand. Draw a similarity between a common human experience (whatever human experience is similar to life with your mental health condition) and go from there, so that you are meeting each other sort of at a ground zero of shared human experience.