Consent is always important. Consent is important even when we're just talking to other people. What I mean by that is, consent is important when you are discussing the personal matters of another person, be it your friend, your family member, or even your child. You wouldn't discuss something highly personal, like a traumatic story, with other people without asking the person involved in the story, right? (At least, I would hope that everyone else would recognize that as a boundary.)
Recently, I found myself in situations when my mental health was discussed without my consent. I know I write this blog publicly, but that's a bit different. I decide what to share and when to share it in an effort to help another person who might be struggling with the same things as me. I consent to everyone seeing what is written here.
The situations that I'm talking about are different. Situation 1: Person A talks to Person B, and Person A says, "Megan sees a therapist." Person B then calls my mother and demands to know why I didn't tell them that I saw a therapist. I didn't tell them because I wasn't comfortable telling them because I don't trust them. Situation 2: I was in a group setting, and I only knew 2 people in the group. One of the people that I knew decided to tell practically the entire room of people that I did not know that I had "severe" OCD. They didn't ask me if we could discuss this before they brought it up, and I was angry as well that they thought they knew enough about me to be able to classify it as severe, which I do not. I did not give consent for these discussions either time, and neither person checked with me before putting me in that position.
I might not seem like it because of this blog, but I'm actually a pretty private person. Discussing my mental health without my consent is a boundary of mine. I don't talk about it over family dinner with extended family. I don't talk about it when I don't feel like I'm in a safe space. I don't talk about it when I have a day that my OCD has flared up and I'm easily triggered by things (because sometimes even just talking about my OCD can bring up the intrusive thoughts). I don't tell certain people, and they don't read my blog, because I don't feel safe giving them that information. Both of the above mentioned incidents felt like a betrayal of trust to me.
I'm not just being picky, I promise. Mental illness is traumatic. You really shouldn't discuss a person's trauma at any time without checking that it's okay with them first. You have no idea what it could do to the other person. By bringing it up when they aren't prepared, you could cause them to relive the trauma, you could send them into a spiral, you could make their intrusive thoughts worse if they have OCD, or best case scenario you could just really, really embarrass them. If it's something like Situation 1, you could actually be giving another person ammunition to bully them or belittle them, or best case scenario you've just started an argument when the person with the mental health condition has to explain why they didn't tell someone. Luckily, in both situations, they caught me on good days so that my dominant emotions were anger and awkwardness.
I'll end with this: Like with any traumatic thing, you should never talk about a person's mental health or share details about it with anyone unless you have the consent of the person involved. If you've been in situations like mine, it's okay to stand up for yourself and say that you don't want to talk about something or that you don't like what someone said. It's your life and your story, and you should get to decide with whom and when you share information.
