That Tiger, Mental Illness

Today (actually yesterday by the time I finished writing this) I finished all three seasons of Fruits Basket and the Prelude movie. I thought it was a really well-told story with many admirable features, not least of which being the ability to constantly be dealing with heavy emotions during every one of its 63 episodes without being irritating or contrived. That being said, I wasn't terribly impressed with the values or worldviews presented. One of the standout examples of this came in season 1 episode 18, "What's Important Is...".

To summarize quickly, this episode centers around Kisa, the Tiger of the Chinese Zodiac. After repeated bullying and ostracization at school, Kisa has gone mute and runs away from home. Hatsuharu, locates her in her Tiger form and brings her back to Shigure's house with Tohru and Yuki. Kisa remains in her tiger form and lashes out by biting Tohru and Hatsuharu until there is a confrontation with Kisa's mother where Tohru has a sympathetic speech and Kisa comes back to her human form. Kisa remains mute, but latches onto Tohru from this point forward and the adults decide to allow her to live with Tohru in Shigure's house for a while. Kisa receives a letter from her teacher trying to encourage her to come back to class, and Yuki and Hatsuharu have a conversation with Kisa about this note, their disagreements with it, and Yuki sharing what similar experiences he has had. This ultimately ends with Kisa breaking her silence and being encouraged by Yuki to face her fears and resume classroom attendance.

My main contention with the episode is that Kisa's (mal?)adaptive strategies for coping with her situation are universally condemned and seen as something to fix as quickly as possible by other characters, and we as the audience are supposed to agree with the characters. This sucks. It shows a lack of respect for Kisa's desires and a fundamental misunderstanding of her situation.

This is present from the beginning of the episode. When Kisa runs away, Hatsuharu takes it upon himself to track her down and return her to her mother. Sometimes people just need to be alone and need the space. Kisa is clearly pretty emotionally distraught, and as becomes clear later in the episode, her mother is, to put it mildly, not the most supportive person in the world. There is plenty reason to believe that escaping that environment and taking some time for herself would be a positive thing for Kisa. This is a recurrent theme throughout the episode: characters frustrating Kisa's ability to act more independently. Everyone is making choices for her, imposing their values on her, and above all not allowing her to be alone.

In my personal experience, this was one of the most frustrating features of adolescence. I felt as if everyone in my life was trying to control me and that any semblance of self-assertion or autonomy would be thwarted with a heavy hand. In situations like these, others trying to show their support by reaching out and comforting me, even with the best of intentions, could make me feel all the more suffocated. There have been many occasions that I have been Kisa biting Tohru.

Arguably, I am inappropriately projecting my experiences onto Kisa's completely different in a way that makes no sense. After all, my issues could be interpreted as lacking control, in which case it would make sense that I would want to separate myself to claw back some level of autonomy, while Kisa's issues revolve around a lack of social acceptance and closeness to others. She has been ostracized at school, Hiro has abandoned her, and her mother makes it clear that she is burdened by Kisa. It's not unreasonable that in this case Kisa would be seeking out more relationships, not less.

However, even in this interpretation, Hatsuharu and Yuki are acting wildly inappropriately. They are trying to get everything to return to 'normalcy', which really just means back into the control [1] of her mother and back into the lion's den of the bullies at school. Kisa is seen as the defective one that must fix her mental state in order to properly re-integrate into the smooth functioning of society. Her struggling is an inconvenience to those around her.

Kisa's mother makes this abundantly clear:

And although Hatsuharu expresses it in different language that is presented far more sympathetically to the audience, Hatsuharu states the same sentiment. After Hatsuharu tells everyone about Kisa's situation, Kisa (justifiably) gets upset about him sharing this information and bites him. To which Hatsuharu responds:

This is why I don't think my comparison to control is entirely irrelevant. The search party's exertion of effort is blamed on Kisa, when it's pretty clear that it is the antithesis of what she desires. Sure, of course she does want better relationships with a higher form of human connection, but these connections will be entirely out of her parents' nexus of control and their footsoldiers. The Family exercising its authority and enforcing its ownership rights are not exactly a path forward to understanding and caring relationships, even if these enforcement efforts weren't manipulatively presented as themselves being another inconvenience Kisa has made them suffer through. Especially when the inconvenience in question is not attending the oppressive institution of the school where she is being harrassed for her body not meeting normative standards [2].

This expectation of normalcy is not limited to Kisa's mother or Hatsuharu. At one point Tohru says:

This is seemingly more innocuous, but it is all the more pernicious and insidious for that. Granted, the 'one day' is less time pressuring and it is specifically speaking to Tohru, not speaking in general. However, this is still framing Kisa's defense mechanisms as invasive, undesirable, defective. I accept that this is a weaker point than the ones that come before or after, but I am still uncomfortable with how everyone wants to 'fix' Kisa. Even if your goal is to have Kisa speak again because you believe her muteness is supervening on her suffering, conceptualizing the symptom as a negative and intrusive force is counter-productive to this end. You would be much better off accepting the behavior for what it is and not treating it like such a big deal. Sometimes mentally ill bitches gotta do they thing, just let 'em vibe. The suffocating pressure of others wanting you to 'improve' or fulfill a teleology is palpable, regardless of whether you express it to them directly or not.

This non-coercive and non-judgemental approach is a strong option to me because it refuses to play the game that the mental illness wants to play, and therefore fails to provide fuel to its fire [3]. If Kisa actually wants to be left alone and her muteness is a way of distancing herself, allowing her this space will give her the room to feel more in control for a time until the time comes where she feels it is no longer necessary to be paranoid about the intrusions of others. She can begin reaching out on her own terms at her own pace.

If Kisa's muteness is a way of her crying out for help and demonstrating to those around her how much pain she is in, not treating it like such a big deal will undermine the practice. This is an incredibly positive thing because to choose to play the game at all is already to lose. If you treat her muteness as significant and severe, this lets Kisa know that this is one avenue to achieve the attention of her pain being recognized, therefore reinforcing the behavior. When Kisa fails to achieve this recognition, the interest in the behavior will fade.

Obviously this strategy is not sufficient in and of itself, otherwise the conclusion would simply lead to complete neglect and disengagement. Those seeking to help Kisa and her ilk should be kind, understanding, and supportive in their interactions when they do occur. In case one, where Kisa needs space, ensure that when she does reach out that the experience is attentive, compassionate, and low-pressure. In case two, where Kisa is seeking validation, you can demonstrate what a more healthy method of communicating can look like (demonstration, not allocution).

However, there is a third type of case that I failed to mention, where Kisa's muteness comes from a place of anxiety and fear. She is so nervous about saying the wrong thing that she decides to say nothing at all as a way to protect herself. This is actually the most explicitly textually supported interpretation, even though I think that Kisa's other behaviors make this a highly unusual explanation as they are not very congruent with the type of anxiety that would manifest this. Regardless, here is the evidence. Kisa's classmates only break their shunning of her by laughing at her when she speaks up in class and snickering at her contributions, and this could understandably make someone anxious to speak. Tohru's speech that gets Kisa to transform back into a human form is the following:

Clearly, this resonated with Kisa as indicated by her transformation and subsequent attachment to Tohru. So Kisa is afraid to speak up in front of others and afraid to share her bullying with her mother because she doesn't want to disappoint her; as a result she has become mute. One might think that a more passive approach like the one I favor would struggle in this situation, where Kisa is being avoidant. Granted, this case is more complex because we are no longer dealing with a dyadic situation [4], and therefore my conclusions will be less individually actionable. That being said, I still think my favored approach has many virtues, especially if applied at a larger scale.

Broadly speaking, anxiety comes from a fear of violating expectations. Often, it is appropriate to focus on the fear component, as the fear may be unwarranted for the situation. However, in other cases the expectations ought to be the focus. In this case, I don't think the expectation of verbal communication is helpful, and is rather actively harmful. A great demonstration of how this could work comes in the scene where Tohru and Kisa decide what to cook for dinner without requiring Kisa to speak. Kisa is not being forced into attendance and is included in communal activities and everyone accepts it without confrontation. Relaxing the expectations like this is incredibly helpful for those of us who go through periods of abnormal behavior. Just let me do my thing, don't make it a big deal, it'll probably pass. And it'll pass a lot smoother if I don't constantly feel the pressure to conform [5].

Of course, Kisa's friends and family cannot singlehandedly carry out this task. The loosening of expectations would be best achieved if consistently practiced ubiquitously, and particularly if it was practiced at school (though there are good reasons to think that schooling can never be capable of this). Instead, Kisa receives this letter from her teacher:

Yuki and Hatsuharu rightfully criticize how tone-deaf and unaware the letter is of Kisa's situation, but cruicially do not dispute the act of pressuring her to return to regular attendance and vocally participate. Rather, they double down on this perspective and encourage her to try re-integrate.

Yuki:

Kisa:

What an ass-backwards motivation for "improvement". I have no idea if this genuinely works for people, and if it does, that's all the more depressing. Kisa is accepting that she is already a bad person because of the trouble she has put her family and friends through, when it should be clear that her behaviors are not problematic in any way and there is no reason why hey family should even be perceiving these as botherances in the first place. Leaving behind the complete incoherence of the strategy of 'trying harder' when it comes to this kind of bullying, the 'or else' here is extremely telling: Kisa is trying to avoid punishment [6] for behaving incorrectly. What an incredibly bleak motivation to promote as an appropriate approach.

Rather than refute this horrid thought process, Yuki endorses it and extends it.

Ah yes, outsource your emotional processing and have someone else fill the void instead! Yay dependency! This perspective is informed by Yuki's perspective on 'loving yourself':

"Self-love" is a phantasm. Or at least a highly confused theoretical construct that would be better expressed with a variety of more informative terms. "Self-love" is so fundamentally different from what we refer to as the love with others that the phrase only serves to muddle the conversation and attempt to give the appearance of symmetry where there is none. Even then, "love" is not a well-understood concept either, and its ambiguity is often taken advantage of to smuggle in specific demands into the normatively thick concept.

There are a number of distinct phenomena being subsumed into the concept of "self-love" by Yuki in the quote above. The first is self-affirmation. I affirm myself when I notice a feature I approve of and I negate myself when I notice a feature that I disapprove of. Yuki is right that forcing oneself to find "good points" is worthless and hollow, but is wrong for implying that those who are struggling cannot find anything good in themselves.

We can distinguish between explicit and implicit self-evaluation. Explicit evaluation is fairly trivial. If prompted, plenty of mentally ill people, even those struggling with self-confidence, depression, or anxiety could find *something* positive to say about themselves; the point is that it's mostly irrelevant to their suffering and that they have no desire to do so. And this shouldn't be a surprise really. How often do neurotypical people go around consciously affirming themselves? Even if they did, it would likely feel artificial and hollow to them as well. Dispassionately describing facets of your personality or behavior and giving them a 'yea' or 'nay' and failing to make the correct judgement is not the crux of a crisis in self-worth. Most of the time explicit self-affirmation is fairly irrelevant to the analysis of mental illness.

That being said, implicit self-evaluation is far more significant. Lots of mental illness can struggle on this spectrum, either being excessively self-aggrandizing or self-deprecating. But even in these cases, it is clear to see that the pathologizing strategy is entirely misguided, and the far more interesting and fruitful question is nearly always what political and social conditions and narratives would lead someone to evaluate themselves in such a way. Someone neurotically concerned with their figure or their school grades is best interpreted as a rational response to a pathological society.

Minimally, struggling people should be aware of the problematic sources of their values. Even though the pathology cannot be completely remedied until a material change in social conditions occurs [9], this awareness can influence what action they will take in a specific context.

A second distinct feature of "self-love" present in Yuki's description is self-forgiveness. I'm not terribly interested in this concept. It has a whole lot of christian moralism as baggage that I find unnecessary and distracting. I also don't think it's very relevant to Kisa's issue, as this implies that there are some specific transgressions (or 'sins' if I wanted to keep our language on theme) that are objects of continued obsession and distress that Kisa feels bad about. Arguably, at least one of Kisa's issues is a lack of self-esteem, which is the point that Yuki is trying to make with his speech about self-love. But a lack of self-esteem is a ubiquitous issue, not one merely confined to a series of several especially bad sins. I guess I don't have strong opinions about forgiveness because, idk, skill issue? It's over, it's done, get over it, be better or don't. You can still feel some level of guilt or embarrassment if you like, that's probably appropriate, but don't let it become this all consuming thing. I realize for some people it's not that easy but I guess I don't really see my past selves as very continuous with my current self, so it's not hard to not identify with the sins of the father. Edit: Also, i don’t know if forgiveness is very helpful either. Maybe my comments above were excessively dismissive, because I don’t mean to say that you should just move on and forget things “you” did in the past and just get over it. Rather, I think this is the trap forgiveness falls into. You can acknowledge the fucked shit you’ve done and still not be obsessively burdened by it, or completely wipe the slate clean. Both seem like incredibly psychologically weak and convenient options. Sit with the pain, process it, and continue on. You will have to return to the feelings soon, and that will be painful too, and that’s okay, it should. Unless of course it’s something that doesn’t warrant “forgiveness” in the first place, like if it’s something that you didn’t actually do wrong.

A third feature mentioned by Yuki is acceptance, which I think is a fine virtue if you're going to choose one. Much of my previously described prescriptions could be classified as acceptance, and it's a powerful concept because of it's non-judgemental nature. It lays the foundation for growth to take place, whereas otherwise it's easy to get tangled in a thicket of self-flagellation without the possibility of processing.

However, acceptance also has its limitations, especially 'self-acceptance'. There is a temptation to understand the 'self' metaphor too seriously. The self is divided and conflictual, never some coherent set even for a moment, much less over time. At this point it's not entirely clear what one would be accepting if they accepted 'themselves'. What it really amounts to is a lack of being actively bothered by specific features of one's personality, behavior, body, etc. But while this is fine in and of itself as a state of enlightened understanding, it says very little about how to get there.

Though to be fair to Yuki, his point was about acceptance, not self-acceptance, and he and I are in agreement that other's acceptance (i.e. others not being bothered by your personality, behavior, body, etc.) is one an important contributing factor to one's psychic peace. Crucially, this is not merely begrudging toleration and it is also not enthusiastic endorsement, it is acceptance. Calm acknowledgement of what is without a desire to change it (yet also crucially not a desire for it to remain the same!).

Zooming back out to the big picture though, beyond the minutiae of "self-love", I flatly disagree with the thrust of Yuki's argument. Not only are the concepts used not very helpful, but the framing of the issue is entirely incoherent. Either side of the "self-love" debate about whether loving yourself must come prior to, or conversely must come after, the love of others is a disaster from top to bottom. It's an entirely undialectical view of the self and the other that can't possibly get you anywhere. There are so many layers of mediation and both positions flatten and deaden the whole of human relations. If I had to pick one, of course Yuki's position is slightly less unsophisticated, as it doesn't prescribe some magical bootstraps narrative, but it still makes it seem like some messianic figure needs to come give the gift of love and save you and it missing so much philosophically. And practically, it is used to argue for reliance on Tohru for her ability to move forward.

I'm sure if prompted, the character and the author would not endorse these things, and would rather say that once self-love develops in Kisa, she will not be as reliant on Tohru and this inverse relationship will continue as her self-love grows. However, the actions displayed have given us nothing to believe this will be the case. All we have seen is Kisa being heroically saved and loved by Tohru, given no guidance or support into improving her situation or herself besides the insistence that she must return to her parents, class, and regular speech, and being told to try a little harder. Yuki's closing lines drive this point home even further.

Frankly, this is offensive. Both emotionally and intellectually insulting. It swallows hook, line, and sinker the narrative that social outcasts receive the treatment they do because of a lack of willpower. Any modicum of nuance that was on display when Yuri was discussing acceptance and the social conditions for love has completely disappeared. This is a deeply individualized approach to solving fundamentally social problems. Sure, the individual can draw on support from others if and when they are too weak to handle things, but the only real purpose of this is to strengthen their individual resolve to handle their issues themselves. These 'issues' are naturalized, something with no human agency involved with, radically depoliticized.

To be clear, the umbridge I take with this quote has nothing to do with 'weakness' or 'strength' as criteria of evaluation. Nor do I take issue with the encouragement to try things that are challenging or uncomfortable. What I am frustrated by is how flimsy this analysis is both in terms of its understanding of the world and in terms of its actual effectiveness.

All in all, I was fairly disappointed with this episode concerning its message around mental illness, adult supremacy, the school and family as institutions, the nature of love, and how one should confront their challenges in life.

I didn't intend to write this much on the episode; I thought this would be a short little thing I could shoot out about my thoughts on the episode. As always with these things, by the time I'm interested in writing a blog post about it, the proportions are so unwieldy that I can't imagine anyone being interested in reading this (except for you Peiwen :P). I think this episode really stuck out to me since the last week or so have been a lil rough mentally for me. Ever since starting work things have been kinda chaotic, but this bout was especially intense(?). Not quite 'intense', as the time I cut myself again was probably worse lol, but this occurrence was the time I took the most significant action to meaningfully address my feelings, namely by isolating myself from my friends and taking some space for myself. As a result, I've been thinking a lot about how I like to be treated by others when I'm having some difficulty, and about what reactions from others makes the situation so much worse. When I watched this episode it felt fairly relevant to these considerations, and although I wasn't able to come anywhere near exhaustively presenting my opinion on the matter (and at times even felt like the way I expressed myself was entirely misleading), I hope this was somewhat reflective of a portion of my views [10].

I will leave the reader with a passage I find relatable while writing about mental illness (and myriad other subjects) that hints at what exactly I meant by 'misleading' in the previous sentence.