In Troubled Times: Annoyed? Irate!

Following the 2016 election, I wrote a series called In Troubled Times. It seems appropriate to post these again now

As the days post-election melt into weeks, I observe myself moving from disbelief to despair to relative calm . . . and now to feeling just plain annoyed. I am tired of the news being dominated by one horrible announcement after another, and even more tired of how much attention is paid to the continuous verbal effluvia flowing from the president-elect. I am tired of being jerked around emotionally by a bloviating buffoon whose chief delight seems to be keeping everyone else off-balance. I’m tired of every conversation about the news beginning with “Guess what outrageous thing president-elect/his newest appointee/some member of Congress just said?”

It’s one thing to be appalled and frightened by the statements of politicians now in power. There’s a time to focus on politics and a time for other parts of my life. It’s quite another to have my thoughts and days hijacked by irresponsible sensationalism. Not to mention counterfactual (aka “lies”) distortions. Remember the meme of the person who can’t sleep because somewhere on the internet, someone is wrong? When my brain gets taken over by provocative statements, that’s where I am, duped into a cycle of research and refutation. It’s a gazillion times worse if I give in to a lapse in judgment and actually reply to one of those folks-who-are-wrong. That never ends well, no matter how many times I persuade myself into believing otherwise. Social media do not, by and large, promote genuine discourse, but I get sucked into trying. Of course, the responses only get me more wound up. That’s my responsibility, because I know better. But I really would like to be able to glance at the news or visit a social media site now and again without having to fend off the lure of the outrageous.

Why is the fruitcake (and surrogates) dominating the news? I swear, every time he twitches a finger (especially in proximity to his cellphone), it makes headlines everywhere. On his part, the tactic of controlling the dialog by throwing out pompously outrageous lies is nothing new. That’s how he dominated the primary debates. He got billions of dollars worth of free air time during the general campaign by poking one hornets’ nest after another. Now he’s doing it on an international scale. And the news media buy into it every time, battling the hydra that grows a hundred heads for every one they whack off with facts. We’ve gone from sucking all the oxygen out of the room to sucking all the oxygen out of the news sphere and now the world.

I draw the line at sucking all the oxygen out of my head. Okay, I’m not hopeful that the media will take my suggestion to just ignore any sentence that includes “Trump” and “Tweet,” nor am I a good enough nerd to reprogram my computer to do that for me. Nor do I want to shut myself away from news of any sort. For one thing, I know myself well enough to admit that would be too anxiety-provoking. I will likely do better when I become better at not responding to trollishness.

But right now, mostly I’m annoyed to the point of being downright pissed. I recognize that anger can be friend or enemy. It’s energizing, which can be exhausting if I spend too much time wound up, or focusing if I master it. If I give in, I run the risk of descending into petty insults and ad hominen fallacies. Or I can use it to point the way to improvements in my own attitudes and behavior. What’s getting to me, and why? My anger can show me the line between things best shrugged off and those that call for action.

This, however, is how I feel today:

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and Holofernes

Superb Middle Grade Fiction Featuring Queer Kids

Nicole Melleby writes Middle Grade fiction featuring exclusively queer kids who also happen to struggle with mental illness. They're really, really good books, too. Books I wish every family of a troubled adolescent, queer or not, would sit down and read together.

How To Become a Planet features a youngster, creatively named Pluto, who struggles with depression. I reviewed it here.

How to Become a Planet focuses on Pluto as a sympathetic character, a person who is both resourceful and overwhelmed, insightful and confused by changes in herself. Her use of astronomy metaphors is particularly vivid and powerful. Above all, Pluto is a person whose brain chemistry isn’t working quite right, not a diagnosis, and this excellent novel showcases her journey toward a new balance in her life.

Here's what the author said about this character in a recent interview:

Q: How did you balance depicting the reality of living with mental illness with the important message of hope?

A: Getting a diagnosis isn’t the end for Pluto—it’s a new beginning. I wanted to show that despite it feeling so hard, there is always hope. In the end, Pluto still has depression, she still has her struggles, but she has her support system and the understanding of her needs, and she’ll be okay. 

I think this is spot on for adults as well as kids. Turning your life around takes not only appropriate treatment (including, in Pluto's case, medication as well as psychotherapy) but time and patience. Backsliding and reversals are par for the course, no matter how skillful the professional help and supportive the loving families are. There's no magic wand to make psychiatric problems disappear, although popular media often portray it so. One insightful conversation and poof! you're cured. This is one of many reasons why books like Melleby's are so important. There is hope, she says, so hang in there.

In Melleby's new novel, The Science of Being Angry, young Joey can't understand why she explodes into destructive fury. Like Pluto, she has a family that loves her and struggles to understand her, yet it isn't enough. 

In my review of this book, I wrote: 

What I most loved about this book was the respect with which Joey and her problems were portrayed. Joey is in many ways still a child, and for all her competence in many areas, she has a child’s limited resources for dealing with psychological issues that confound many adults. Her sense of responsibility often leads her to shoulder disproportionate blame, to withdraw rather than harm someone she loves, and to keep her pain to herself. She confronts an issue all of us face, regardless of how old we are: when do we ask for help, and when do we rely upon our own resources? In the end, Joey realizes that she cannot master her temper by herself, and—more importantly—that there is kindness, understanding, and help available to her.

Melleby doesn't condescend or simply. Her characters grapple with complex, often ambivalent emotions. Yet her faith in the resourcefulness of troubled young people, when given appropriate care, shines through. She reminds us,

There’s no one answer, there’s no one story for someone struggling with mental illness. 

If this means there are many more Melleby MG novels to come, that's an excellent thing! 

Book Reviews: A Respectful Treatment of Adolescent Anger Issues

The Science of Being Angry, by Nicole Melleby (Algonquin Young Readers)

Eleven-year-old Joey lives in an unusual blended family. For one thing, she and her two twin brothers have two moms, one of whom was married before and has a son from that marriage. She and her brothers were the result of IVF, and the boys are identical, having split from the same egg. For all the nontraditional nature of this family, there’s a lot of love and acceptance. But all is not well with Joey. She’s been having increasingly volatile episodes of anger and acting-out. Her temper has become legendary at school, where she’s been given the nickname, “Bruiser,” after she threw a soccer ball at a boy in gym class so hard she bruised his collarbone. She’s roughly pushed away her best friend, on whom she also has a crush. Now she’s left with the fallout wreckage of what she’s done.

Despite the efforts of her moms to help her, Joey’s outbursts are only getting worse. Finally, she melts down into a tantrum so destructive, her family is evicted from their apartment and must move into a motel, where close quarters fuel everyone’s irritation. Her moms start bickering, and Joey thinks that’s her fault. Her older brother, who is trying to focus on his academics, goes to live with his father, and of course, Joey blames herself for that, too.

Joey can’t understand why she flies into a rage or how to control it. All her best intentions are in vain. Then she gets the idea that perhaps her temper is a genetic trait inherited from her biological father. If she can just track him down, she thinks, she might better understand her own volatility—and he might have found successful strategies for managing his anger. With the help of her alienated best friend/crush, she embarks on a genetics project for science class. And, of course, nothing goes the way Joey expects.

In many ways, Joey is a typical adolescent, struggling with the tensions between immaturity and independence. In others, though, she is very much her own person with a unique family. I loved the way the unusual marriage and relationships are presented in a matter-of-fact way. Joey’s anger is clearly not caused by her having two lesbian mothers. Indeed, the clear love and understanding between her mothers, the way each of them has found her way to an authentic life, are one of Joey’s principal strengths. I also noted very little along the lines of, “girls don’t have anger management issues,” when in fact psychological research shows that girls experience anger as frequently as boys do (but are socialized to suppress it).

What I most loved about this book was the respect with which Joey and her problems were portrayed. Joey is in many ways still a child, and for all her competence in many areas, she has a child’s limited resources for dealing with psychological issues that confound many adults. Her sense of responsibility often leads her to shoulder disproportionate blame, to withdraw rather than harm someone she loves, and to keep her pain to herself. She confronts an issue all of us face, regardless of how old we are: when do we ask for help, and when do we rely upon our own resources? In the end, Joey realizes that she cannot master her temper by herself, and—more importantly—that there is kindness, understanding, and help available to her.

Highly recommended for adults as well as their adolescent children.

In Troubled Times Guest Post: Stephen Shumaker on Don’t Feed the Bully

In Troubled Times: Don’t Feed the Bully

By Stephen Shumaker

The last presidential election changed me, as I imagine, it changed a lot of people.

My change was wholly unexpected, and wildly out of character for me. I went from being slightly political to rabidly political. The closer the election came was like watching a car accident as it happened over a period of months. I watched it the same way I watch horror movies—with an anxious trepidation that becomes overwhelming if I let it.

Once the crash finally happened, and we got the result that everyone feared, I couldn’t stop watching this horror movie that had become American politics. Is that an exaggeration? I don’t think so. I turn on Rachel Maddow or Seth Meyers with the same nervousness that I feel when I watch American Horror Story or those cheesy movies about demonic possession. I want to be scared; I like that feeling, enjoy the thrill.

The difference is that this new thrill that I tune into could—and likely will—hurt the people that I love, in ways that I don’t know how to stop.

The thing that is attached to this new old thrill that I have when I watch these political shows, that I try to fight every day, is a sense of helplessness that is so deep it threatens to paralyze me. In a few ways, it has paralyzed me; writing hasn’t exactly been nonexistent, but it’s been so much harder. It’s so easy to get lost in the political mire of Trump said this, Trump did that. So much easier to watch the horror show unfolding across the country, with the latest “what our President-elect Tweeted” and the chaos unfolding in North Carolina and the attacks on people of color or LGBTQ running rampant because our incoming Chief approves such actions. So much easier to lose myself in the horror show than to focus on doing something.