When you disregard the humanity of another, you disregard your own.

The ideology of individualism of our society is directly affecting our mental health. We have a “not my problem” problem. We are essentially – and have been for a long time – gaslighting ourselves with the idea of not needing anyone. When I was reading about the history of individualism (think Plato/Socrates) it was essentially more about free thinking; ones own opinions and experiences. A good thing because this leads to autonomy and more creativity and ingenuity. But it’s gone awry to the point where we believe we can’t or shouldn’t depend on anyone and if we do, we are “weak”.

We are living in a society that when someone says “this is happening to me…” we turn around and gaslight and say “no it’s not, get a better attitude; fix it yourself.” We are discounting the experiences of another person and as a result discount our own vulnerability of going through hard times. When we discount our own vulnerability, we  disown our own difficult feelings. This turns into destruction. Either towards the self (addiction; self harm) or towards another (verbal/physical abuse).

The disconnection of our own humanity leads to the oppression, exploitation and abuse of marginalized populations. When we are cut off from our own vulnerability, we feel rage and disgust when we see another’s and in a systemic and individual sense, we act on those feelings because we don’t want to acknowledge the existence within ourselves.

As Jones and Okin state, individualism leads to isolation. The idea we must do everything on our own, overtime, leads to the slow erosion of connection with others. Lack of connection to self and others is the recipe for depression and anxiety.

Individualism supports and promotes perfectionism which I consider to be self-harm. The constant grind of not good enough and the unrealistic idea that perfectionism is attainable leads to consistent overfunctioning. Stress from overfunctioning can lead to becoming physically ill.  Perfectionism is directly linked to anxiety – the attempt at controlling something from happening. Perfectionism and individualism are both white supremacist cultural values. To learn more about this please see Jones and Okun’s workbook on dismantling racism here: http://www.cwsworkshop.org/PARC_site_B/dr-culture.html

What we see is that the ideology of individualism can create a sort of narcissism because most people already don’t feel good enough. The consistent message of “do it on your own” and then not succeeding compounds shame – a feeling most do not want to feel. This feeling is can be deflected because for most people it’s too painful to feel. To put it very simple deflected shame/the inability to feel it, is narcissism.

So while free thought and opinion creates and expands, we must come back to our own biology. We need others to attune and comfort us in order to feel connected, worthy and valid. This does not mean others do for us, rather, others do WITH us. We must recognize our own vulnerabilities within ourselves and instead of shunning them, connect with them so that we can connect with others. Thus recognizing humanity in all.