Opinion: After Winston Peters made smooth international appearances as Foreign Minister, said good things at the United Nations and then got into a dispute with former New South Wales premier Bob Carr, I read a press secretary’s description of him as “shy”. This seemed comical, given Peters’ public bullishness, and entirely plausible. It’s easy to find people who occupy separate versions of themselves. In his new memoir, Knife, Sir Salman Rushdie writes about two Salmans, the private self and the famous persona.
Recently, an old friend gave me an account of a very young person breaking down at an awards ceremony, devastated not to have won. My friend and I smiled, empathising, while agreeing that our warm advice would be, “Get used to it.”
When we were young, we recalled, no one cared about our mental health. In moments of crushing disappointment, we remained poker-faced. We agreed the new emphasis on mental health is preferable, also that ordinary disappointment shouldn’t be considered traumatising.
It helps to get older and to realise that life is full of devastating setbacks. The thing to do is keep trying. I remember a friend, who was despairing after missing out on an arts grant. “They rejected me,” he wailed. I told him not to take it personally, simply to apply again.
We’ve all seen older people exchanging derisive looks when they hear what the young consider traumatising.
If you’d offered my mother counselling after a man had put an unwelcome hand on her knee, she would have laughed. Robustness fosters resilience, but too much causes emotional harm. There needs to be a middle way between the brutal and the hair-trigger.
When the private self has been hidden, it can be surprising to discover the public perception. After publishing a memoir, I read descriptions of myself that the book had apparently dispelled.
I had been seen as cat-like, sleek, unamused, also cold and aloof. Now my true self had been revealed. (As shy as that other shrinking violet, Peters. And as frequently amused as he appears to be.)
So which is healthier, poker face or uninhibited tears? It’s clear that a poker face doesn’t extinguish emotion. Stress can manifest itself physically.
Hypothetically then, in my case, would frequent weeping and public meltdowns have prevented a lifetime spent in dermatology clinics? Over the years, while publicly catlike and unamused, I could regularly be found, one of my children shrieking in a pram in the corridor outside, standing in a whirring, white-lit capsule having my skin medically irradiated.
It’s possible for people like me to maintain perfectly normal skin, but only by waging a battle that involves an endless array of potions and periodic sessions in a phototherapy booth. Ultraviolet light cures the condition, psoriasis, but increasingly our local sun seems too strong a dose.
One hospital dermatology department I regularly attended was next to an abortion clinic. Every visit, with kids in tow, I was confronted by maniacs waving banners and plastic fetuses and condemning me to hell. It didn’t occur to the protesters that I was coming for an abortion three days a week.
The lifelong skin curse is worsened by stress. Expressionless while facing the anti-abortionists, I was registering them physiologically.
It would be interesting to know whether bursting into sobs when thwarted, turned down, overlooked, negatively reviewed and so on (going through the hoops of normal life, in other words) would be preventive. I wouldn’t be surprised. In my experience, the old are usually wrong, and young people are on the right track. So I told my good friend: don’t laugh at the young when they weep with disappointment. They’re probably doing life better.
