People living with psychosis and other mental health conditions and neurodivergences experience the world a bit differently.
I’m one of those people.
At age 13, I found myself in a hospital chanting, “I don’t belong here.”
I quickly learned that almost no one felt they belonged there.
It wasn’t just there that I didn’t belong.
My whole life, I had struggled with belonging. Social expectations were mysterious to me, and I often missed them. I didn’t have many friends. I had tics, obsessions, attention issues, and a list of over quirks.
But that day, as I was saying, “I don’t belong here,” I truly felt confused. I didn’t know why I was in the hospital. In a few days, I would be given a diagnosis involving psychosis in what would begin a decades-long journey toward recovery.
I would also learn that very few people feel they belong when in a psych unit. With doors equipped with buzzers to keep us inside and the most basic liberties like writing with a pen suspended, psychiatric hospitals can feel distinctly othering.
Hospital after hospital stay, I began to feel less and less a part of typical society and more like some other group of humans cut to the fringes. I remember clearly one day going into the clinic where I would be admitted to the hospital. A man hopped off a gurney, asking a woman for a cigarette. He gained permission from the officers escorting him before taking a smoke with her.
They shared a few words about being stuck in a psych ward and wanting things on the outside.
These were my people.
Peer Support
One day, a social worker left a resource book packet with my family. I learned about peer support and the recovery movement. In these spaces, I found people who had walked through the immense pain of mental health conditions, experiences of homelessness, and adversity. Many held an almost cosmic ability to relate; having hit the bottom themselves, they let go of the egotistic barriers I so often ran up against when trying to connect with others, particularly since my newfound status as a person with a mental health condition.
I didn’t have a term for it at that time, but what I would call it now is curious kindness: an openness and willingness to understand that if someone’s behavior doesn’t make sense to us—that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense at all, we just haven’t figured it out yet.
It was in the peer recovery movement that I met AJ French. I attended a class she taught me about wellness and recovery, and what it could be like to reconnect. She understood.
Like me, AJ had the lived experience of mental health. She also spoke of what it was like to experience homelessness. As an expert by experience, she took a stance as co-facilitator of the Wellness and Recovery Action Planning (WRAP) class. That changed something for me in a way that no conversation with a psychiatrist or therapist ever could. She shone with hope. Today, she is the executive director of an organization called Gift of Voice.
She might not call it such, but she’s also a sage of curious kindness.
The Lived Experience of Homelessness and Being Human
I’ve heard people say harsher things toward people experiencing mental health conditions, especially those also touched by homelessness, than almost any other group. Just last year, I witnessed a large portion of a community push against a warming shelter in the midst of a cold winter.
I have often wondered what might lead one person toward compassion and another toward an attitude of exclusion, particularly toward people living with a mental health condition or those who have experienced homelessness. I interviewed AJ on her experiences, compassion, and what makes the difference.
AJ openly acknowledges how her lived experience has made a difference in how she understands these experiences. She says, “I never would have wanted to go through an experience of homelessness, but I would not look at people the same way if I hadn’t gone through it.”
Everyone Has Something to Give, and Something to Receive
Thankfully, lived experience is not an essential criterion for kindness. AJ shares that compassion often comes from conversations and recognizing how similar we are. Giving the example of volunteering at a soup kitchen, AJ reflects, “It’s not enough to purchase the food. It’s not even enough to serve it. What is needed is to sit across the table and break bread with one another. That person might be going through a rough time, and they still have something to offer.” In these small interactions, we see each other as fellow humans.
AJ remarks that “everyone has something to give and something to receive.” When someone is placed into limiting boxes like “the mentally ill” and “homeless person,” those on the outside lose vision for the person amid the stereotypes and labels. The truth is, a person is more than any health condition they have or any circumstances they enter. We all have strengths.
AJ is an advocate for person first language, which emphasizes the human over their status, for example, “a person with a mental health condition” rather than “mentally ill” or “a person experiencing homelessness” rather than “homeless person.” Even these small alterations change how we understand a person.
What Choices Did They Have?
As we speak, I think aloud of other challenges that people are often much more empathetic toward, like cancer. People often tend to think of cancer as something that can happen to them, making it easier to sympathize with, though they might not think of experiencing homelessness the same way. Still, it feels more complex than that.
AJ relays, “Cancer is something that most people agree that no one chooses. There is a fairly common misconception that people choose homelessness.”
Whether a person has or does not have housing is often more related to the financial and family supports we have than a decision to live on the streets. When a person finds themselves without a place to stay, there is always a story. That story usually includes elements of trauma and loss. Maybe someone had become a caregiver to their parents and then lost them, or perhaps someone began to feel so low that each day felt impossible. They started to hear voices shouting the most piercing things (because no one knows you better than your own mind), and were no longer able to keep up with rent.
Even when someone makes a “choice” that does not benefit them, AJ emphasizes we have to ask what choices they had to choose from. Addiction is common in individuals experiencing homelessness, but people do not choose addiction; more often, they are choosing what they know to be able to escape what feels unescapable.
AJ states, “We need to ask people what happened here? What happened to you? Not what’s wrong with you.”
Compassion Takes Courage
Many people view kindness as weak, yet psychological research suggests the polar opposite. Compassion demands more cognitive resources than judging. It can be exhausting to acknowledge others’ suffering (Scheffer et al., 2022).
And it is so worth it.
Curious kindness and compassion do not just benefit the people around you; it benefits you, too.
Through curious kindness, we can get to know people we otherwise never would have a chance to, and open ourselves to perspectives beyond what our own eyes can see.
I have great gratitude to AJ French for the impact she has made in my life and how she has spurred me toward curious kindness. I hope that, in time, experiences like mental health conditions and homelessness will no longer be viewed as so esoteric, but through a lens of “What happened here?” and “How can I help?”
We are all vulnerable. We are all capable. We all belong.