“Stay strong, my warrior” Katrina typed to her girlfriend who was on the other side of the city, in her bathroom, crying. It had been a hard day, and she found herself thinking the dark thoughts again. Katrina worried, she knew that sometimes, she wasn’t so safe, so stable. She knew that sometimes she thought about hurting herself. If only she could be there, to give her loved one a hug and wipe her tears away and tell her that everything would be alright. But maybe it would not be alright.
There’s this thing that we say in the mental health community, “Stay strong”. And I think it’s time we decided to catch up on what it means.
Defining “stay strong”
When we tell someone, (often someone with mental illness) to stay strong, there are many implications. First, we hear it a lot when it comes to self harm or suicidal ideation. We tell each other to stay strong or “you’re so strong”, encouraging the person to avoid these dangerous behaviors. Because we love them, we care about them, and we want to keep them safe and unharmed, first and foremost.
But more generally speaking, we use the phrase “stay strong” a lot. Maybe when it comes to resisting a cookie when you’re on a diet, or not flirting with your friend’s incredibly attractive boyfriend, stuff like that. And the thing about this stay strong bit is that it’s almost primarily an acknowledgement. That what you’re trying to stay away from is incredibly enticing, and causing you great anguish.
This is usually a fair assumption to make, when it comes to eating cookies and distancing yourself from addictions. You do have to have a pretty high level of willpower to sustain this sort of a push and pull relationship with something that continues to call you and your base instincts. So I’m not saying don’t use this phrase. But for me, something doesn’t sit right whenever I hear it.
The problem
I hear what you’re all saying, I really do. “Oh come on, girl. It’s a perfectly innocuous phrase to encourage someone to stay away from things they know they shouldn’t be doing. What can I still say if not this?” Yup, I get it. But just stay with me for a second, okay?
Let’s put this in extreme terms just for a moment, for black and white clarity on my point: murder. If you knew that somebody wanted to murder someone else, would you say to them, “oh, I know they made you so angry and you feel like they’ve done so much wrong that they can never be forgiven and don’t deserve to live. And I know that they just look so irresistably stab-able, but you’re so strooooong. You can decide not to do this!”? No probably not. You probably also wouldn’t say, “It’s amazing how you’ve gone so long without killing them already. Look how good you’ve been doing, I admire that strength.”
You’d probably say something more like “but murder is wrong. You won’t just be hurting them, you’d hurt their whole family, all their friends, and probably ruin your whole life in the process too. You’d go to prison and probably lose a lot of people who care about you if you did that.” And why would you say that? Because it’s a better argument, right? You’re giving them the real and tangible reasons for why they shouldn’t do something, and you’re not luxuriating on how nice it would be if only they did that thing, but they shoooooouldn’t.
But how does this connect? Well, it’s definitely lower stakes but the point is the same. It’s difficult to try to nudge someone in the right direction by constantly sympathisizing over how great a bad decision looks. Sometimes, people need emotional validation, to feel heard and understood. But making that your go-to response for someone who ostensibly, wants to improve, is a dangerous game.
Being a support system
Maybe I’ll write a whole piece on how to be part of a support system for someone struggling with an addiction or mental illness. (Let me know if you’re interested in the comments below or by emailing me, info on the “contact” page.) But for now, I’m just going to offer you a snippet. Being supportive of someone involves a balance between compassion and groundedness. What I mean by that is, you want them to trust you with their feelings and struggles, so it’s important to be a safe place for their feelings to come out. But that’s not all there is to it, unfortunately.
If all you do is validate someone’s addictive behaviors and the thought processes underlying them, then you can easily become an enabler. You need to hold them accountable for their actions too, and remind them that there are healthier behaviors they can engage in, and that you would prefer it if they did so.
On the flip side, if you just look at them from a behavioral standpoint with no regard to the feelings and thought processes that led there, you can’t connect with them and may become a domineering type, which is just as unhealthy. No, you need a balance. And as far as this “stay strong” stuff goes, I’m just not convinced that’s it.
A different approach
When I was younger and engaging in a lot of unhealthy behaviors regularly, I would try to surround myself with kind, gentle people. Ones who were willing to listen to me as I cried and try to pick me up when I’d fall. And that’s great, I deserved to be loved and respected. But if someone would question my unhealthy response to things, I would hold them at a distance, feeling challenged and defensive. Sometimes, I would even cut them out completely.
It wasn’t until a few years later, I met someone at school that really changed my life. He told me, “that behavior hurts me. I know it’s not about me, it’s about you, but that really hurts my feelings and I don’t want to see you do that.” He didn’t mince words, he didn’t wait for me to act out again, he just told me right then and there how he felt about it. And I was terrified.
What happened to the “stay strong! I know you’re hurting, but you don’t have to self destruct” that I was so used to hearing? No. This time, a boundary was made. He couldn’t control me. But he wouldn’t be a part of this dynamic. And I had to accept that if I was going to hurt myself with unhealthy coping mechanisms, I was going to do it even though it hurt him. I didn’t want to hurt him or lose him or even put emotional distance between us. And although it didn’t automatically cure me of my addictions and bad habits right on the spot, it really made me think twice before falling into them.
Stay strong
There’s a time for tenderness, which I think is what most of us are going for when we tell someone to “stay strong”. There’s a time for validation and compassion, and I believe that it is relatively frequent in a strong, loving relationship. But I also think there are better ways of expressing that compassion and care to someone, like “is there anything I can do to help?” or “I’m sorry you’re struggling right now, but I’m proud of what you’ve accomplished so far.” Ways that don’t remind people of just how long and hard they have to fight to be free of their own personal demons.
You can also suggest better ideas for them, if their minds and hearts are overwhelmed. Like, “let’s play a game” or “do you want to go to the park?” or “try to guess what I’m thinking right now”. Distractions, to ease their mind of the compulsions. Or you can go the other way, asking questions like “Well, what are you feeling right now?” or “what do you wish you felt like and wanted to do/be?” Or my favorite immediate question, “what’s the best decision you could possibly make right now?”
Or maybe your loved one is just fine with “stay strong”. Maybe it doesn’t highlight any self-destructive or self-sabotaging streak. That’s okay too, like I said, I’m not telling you never to say it. I’m just saying, give it some thought. Maybe there’s something else that you’d rather be saying.
