On shame and shaming

Last year, in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month in the US and UK, I recorded a video describing life with bipolar disorder (my life, anyway). While I don’t want to be known as an author who only writes or talks about mental health, as I’d find that pretty limiting — and while discussing mental health isn’t especially comfortable for me, either, although I hope there’s value in it — the response to that video both surprised and moved me, particularly those messages from people who have experienced, or fear experiencing, discovery, mockery, or shaming. I’ve had more advantages in life than most, and more experience in shame than some; if I can provide perspective in this area, then I’d like to do so here in print.

I’m going to frame it by sharing a disturbing experience of mine. In early 2019, more than a year after the release of my debut novel, the New Yorker magazine published a confused, confusing article by a writer I’ve never met. He wasn’t interested in my book, beyond spoiling the ending and comparing me to the villain. Instead, he produced a bizarre, meandering diatribe — overwhelmingly anonymously sourced and remarkably hostile, even unhinged — claiming that I had invented a mental-health condition and was speaking about it in order to benefit myself. In fact, I was speaking about mental illness because I had written a novel about mental illness. Almost nothing the writer described could have occurred; absolutely nothing he described could have benefited me; and I’ve spent much of my life hiding my issues, not scapegoating them. He wrote an alternate reality, simply name-calling, jamming words into my mouth, ripping quotes from context, excluding inconvenient information, dwelling on my “physical allure,” and heaping abuse upon me across dozens of pages (making his one of the magazine’s longest pieces in years) in hopes that something would stick. (I regret agreeing to contribute a couple of sentences — misleadingly presented in the piece as a mea culpa — in an effort to placate him.)

I was also disturbed by activity preceding the publication — particularly how the writer, on the day before Thanksgiving, traveled three hours outside New York City to my family’s home, where in my absence he confronted my parents. Separately, when my ex-boyfriend declined to comment for his piece, noting among other concerns that he did not wish to be identified as gay, the writer’s editor sent him a lengthy email stating that I had already outed him by dedicating my book to him, even though I had only used his first name, and that the magazine would name him in full as my “ex-lover” unless he spoke to the writer (“To put it simply, it’s the adult way to handle this”).

“There was this extraordinary amount of animus,” observed a journalist in the Irish Independent, noting how the writer described me as though I were “Satan’s spawn” and Ted Bundy. “I just don’t get it.”  

I don’t, either, although there’s irony in being accused of self-serving manipulation by someone doing just that. Even the grotesque cartoon rendering of me above the headline tried far too hard to sell a fake story. Tellingly, when challenged on the article, the writer’s editor described it as “the narrative he wishes to share,” as though I were merely a character in a strange fiction.  

I later learned that this same writer has shared multiple narratives denouncing authors as frauds. Journalists, academics, and critics, responding to those attacks in the European and American press, have used phrases like “gratuitous assault,” “hatchet job,” “rambling, incoherent, and pointlessly snarky,” “designed to make [the subject] fit into [a] predetermined narrative,” “intention to humiliate his subject,” “It would take far too many pages to answer each of the many insulting charges…” They describe how he portrays his targets as “deceitful” and “suspicious.” One critic concluded, “Essentially what he decided to do was destroy. Some people make their lives by doing this kind of thing.” And certainly “my” profile won him attention, as outlets worldwide eagerly recycled a narrative they could appropriate as they liked. (If any of these tried to contact me first, I’m unaware of it.) The New York Times even alleged, falsely, that my novel was plagiarized, a claim they walked back a week later.

The experience upset and frustrated me: What was the purpose of this? Who could take it seriously? Why humiliate me in front of everyone I’ve ever known and ever will know, including an entire industry? Armed with emails and records, I drafted dozens of rebuttals dismantling the piece line by line and naming its anonymous contributors. In the end, though, I never published a word. In part because I felt afraid — the magazine had hurled a grenade into my life unprovoked, and the writer’s animus and conduct truly alarmed me — but mostly because that article self-destructed as you read it, without my help, for all the reasons described above and more. Even if you believed every disingenuous sentence, it was so unimportant, unintelligent, and unnecessary. To dignify it with comment would be like responding to graffiti in a toilet stall.

So I kept quiet. This hasn’t been easy, especially as the writer fixated primarily on my time in British publishing (2009-2012), one of the more successful periods of my life, in an account that also read like an alternate reality. In truth, a UK publisher for whom I had worked freelance as a student offered me a job on the recommendations of my former employers. I loved the work and loved my colleagues, and within a year, my boss offered me, unsolicited, a new role. By the time I departed two years later, and thanks to an extraordinary group effort, our division was profitable for the first time in years. But perhaps inevitably, a few co-workers — one very senior — had for some time been making life difficult for me, gossiping about me in ways echoed anonymously years later in the New Yorker. (My boss called their complaints “propaganda” and “bullying manipulative emotion,” stressing that I had succeeded “entirely on your merits, but less business-minded colleagues won’t see it like that.”) Although it meant spending more time away from my desk, I had tried to get on with the job, despite other pressures: A colleague kissed me at a work event in December 2010, then began sending emails like “I can’t promise not to rape you, slowly, in the restroom.” This continued for a year and a half, but as an immigrant on a work visa, I didn’t feel I could complain. Instead, I felt increasingly unsafe and unwelcome at the office.

Finally, I resigned. (“I know you probably have a right to take things further legally if you wanted,” my boss wrote.) I was grateful for the shows of affection from my colleagues — “You are one of the best publishers I have ever worked with,” wrote a department head — although even after I agreed to remain for three months, someone spread stories alleging I’d been fired, for assorted unlikely reasons. Two American publishers offered me attractive senior positions, one of which I accepted; I reluctantly left my life in the UK, but continued to work with many of the same authors and agents in the US (where I had no such office issues), and worked with my former company, too. So it felt surreal, years later — even after many former co-workers attended events launching my first book in London — to see myself depicted as having taken “advantage” of unnamed colleagues… particularly as the writer didn’t properly explain who, how, or what I gained. If the industry loathed me, nobody would have chosen to publish me, especially not my own longtime employers.

And more broadly, it’s been frustrating to witness my career and character yanked inside-out over the years by a few petty individuals who lack the conviction to identify themselves, and to witness a magazine amplify those efforts, particularly when I have literally hundreds of emails and records contradicting them. I’m not the only person who’s experienced workplace hostility, but rarely does it snowball onto an international stage. For years now, I’ve lived with a fictitious version of myself in circulation, albeit one that most people don’t know about, care about, or credit. I call attention to it here not to dispute it in detail — that would take far too many pages — but because of what it reveals about attitudes to mental health. What troubles me most, more than half a decade on, isn’t the unconvincing, weirdly personal assault on me or my CV: it’s the writer’s contempt for mental illness, and his eagerness to exploit it. While there was little overlap between his story and my life — he even misrepresented basic biographical data — it’s clear that by discussing mental health as an author, I had encouraged this person to cast me as a character in one of his predetermined narratives. He made this explicit by likening me to various villains, including fictional serial killer Tom Ripley, a deranged loner destructively obsessed with another man.

I remember a 2022 Los Angeles Times editorial written by California’s surgeon general, herself bipolar, who described hearing hospital colleagues say of a bipolar patient that “She’s probably lying — she’s bipolar.” The New Yorker exploited that bias, sneeringly, insisting that nothing about me was above suspicion or beyond reproach, nothing I had achieved was legitimate, nobody could possibly like or value me. It argued that for unspecified “personal and professional gain” I “used” something I cannot control and often don’t understand but have worked for twenty-five years to manage, sometimes more successfully than others — something I will never beat or live without. That’s as cruel as it is unlikely. If my mind is up for discussion, then I want it discussed accurately. I hope, by saying as much, to demonstrate that mental illness isn’t a scheme, a scam, a weakness, or a license to impute to someone false actions, false motives, or false rewards.

Here’s a true story:

Beginning age twenty, at intervals and often at length, I would become dramatic, despondent, confident, frightened, paranoid, obsessive, detached; I would get wildly excited about a relationship or set ambitious goals; I would panic about a sleep disorder, a growth in my body, etc., despite doctors’ reassurances; I would imagine elaborate or exaggerated pasts or presents for myself; I would struggle to get out of, or out from under, my bed… I was also, at times, notably high-functioning, a good student, a good employee, and good fun. I worked hard, liked people, and generally got on with them. Not until thirty-six was I diagnosed with bipolar — I had previously been diagnosed with and ineffectively treated for depression — although matters only improved so much (and inconsistently) before new treatment in 2023.  

The diagnosis, I’m sorry to report, horrified me. I’d known the lows that Kay Redfield Jamison has described — “the experience of how it must be to be slow of mind; to be lacking in grace, polish, and coordination; to be ugly; to have no belief in the possibilities of life… or the ability to make yourself and others laugh” — and I knew the aftermath of an elevated episode: “Who is being too polite to say what? Who knows what? What did I do? Why? And most hauntingly, when will it happen again? …Apologies to make, intermittent memories, friendships gone or drained…” But I thought of bipolar people as unreliable, unsuccessful, and “crazy,” whereas I was merely… complicated.

“Complicated,” over the years, had cost me a very great deal — I lost friendships, ruined relationships, missed or messed up life experience after life experience — and it was confusing and frustrating for many of those around me, although I did consistently well on the job. I say without self-pity that the shame and self-loathing of mental illness are impossible to articulate; I didn’t dare share such information as I had about my own with anyone, anywhere. Both pre- and post-diagnosis, I ignored, disguised, lied about, or denied it so as to spare myself shame (or professional consequences), rather than admit even that I was struggling, which I regret. At my worst or weirdest, throughout my twenties and thirties, I would say and often believe all sorts of things, some more credible than others, but all pointless. It’s excruciating to review, even years down the line — yet while seeking to hide or disguise a situation rather than explain the inexplicable might be desperate, selfish, and immature, it certainly never benefited me. (What benefited me was a work ethic and patient friends.)

Bipolar isn’t my decision, but how I respond to it is, and many, many times I’ve wished I’d been more mature and honest than I was, even if I couldn’t explain it. It’s still not easy to talk about, in person or in print: I fear judgment, and I feel such shame, particularly of those times when I was unstable, withdrawn, promiscuous; when I was prone to paranoia and self-aggrandizing spells; when I upset people and embarrassed myself… even as I earned academic degrees, thrived at work, officiated friends’ weddings, and wrote a novel.

I decided to speak about some of this when that novel — a thriller about a depressed person — was published. I hadn’t heard many bipolar people discuss their experiences, so I thought it might be helpful to others, even encouraging (and in fact the most rewarding aspect of my writing career has been the opportunity to meet those who did find it helpful and encouraging). Later, once it appeared that a writer with a concerning history would somehow hold this against me, I asked my psychiatrist to set him straight in a letter: not to defend against gossip — we didn’t yet know his agenda — but to educate him. Mine are real issues, affecting real people, and should be respected as such. (The writer barely acknowledged this inconvenient information, substituting the opinions of uninformed strangers.)

Even in his very few lines based partly in reality, the writer tried to have it both ways, portraying me as freak and fake: if, years or decades earlier, I’d expressed fears about suicide, or panicked about my health, or missed an office meeting — that made me a liar, a fraud, out to “enrich” myself. He also claimed I cheated my way into a graduate course twenty years ago by writing an essay, unread by him, killing off family members. Well, I did write such an essay, but to what end? How does he think graduate admissions work? (In fact, my course supervisor had already admitted me by that time, and years later told the writer that I would be welcomed back should I choose to resume my work.) By shaming and humiliating somebody for “behaviors,” imaginary or otherwise, that would seem to indicate a mental-health issue — only to insist these were, improbably, strategic and gainful — all the writer demonstrated was why somebody might fear shame and humiliation to begin with. Nothing in my life was or is ill-gotten.

Gossip, lies, insults — frustrating, even infuriating, but all that can be disproven or dismissed; it’s not real. Shame, however, knows substance. I did and do have a mental illness; that’s part of me. I’d already spoken about it, but on my terms, as my decision. By turning my mental health against me, that piece hit home: even though its particulars were overwhelmingly false, I still felt ashamed, the way I did when someone once called me a “faggot” who probably preyed on children and animals, as though me being gay licensed them to build a narrative around me. The shame that I’d worked for years to manage boiled up: dreading the sound and sight of my name, feeling sorry for those who knew me, avoiding people and phone calls and deadlines and mirrors, suspecting medication might be for weaklings and electroconvulsive therapy (which I’ve received for years, gratefully) might be for losers. The old fears returned, fused to that story: nobody will date me or marry me; I won’t be allowed to adopt; I won’t be able to work; I can’t make anyone proud or become the person I would like to be; I’m a burden and a frustration to so many who invest their time in me.

There was plenty going on in 2019 that urgently required attention, yet the New Yorker chose to devote its resources to a rambling, incoherent, pointlessly snarky gossip column — essentially what the writer decided to do was destroy — that served no purpose but to shame me, indulge the writer, and gratify its anonymous contributors. I am a real person, and that piece hurt not because of the warped, flimsy narrative the writer wished to share, but because he weaponized part of myself against me, the part I felt ashamed of. Yet I’m still here, and this brings me back to the beginning: While it’s easy to dismiss a person with a mental-health issue as weak or fragile, struggle makes you resilient — in my case, what that writer attacked is the very thing that helped me withstand it. The experience I’ve described above, and my response to it, might resonate with those who have had similar experiences, on any scale… and also, perhaps, with those who might — out of fear, laziness, or plain malice — believe that people with mental-health issues are fair game. We are not.