How do we deal with suffering mental health in the academe?

tl;dr: Suffering is part of life. Poor mental health will be a regular challenge for both educators and students. But we can reframe these forms of suffering as opportunities to be more authentic; to stay the virtuous course. This is an opportunity for all parties to explicitly commit and act responsibly towards a collectively agreed-upon outcome, covering each other’s weaknesses, and struggling together towards flourishing.

Mark 8:34-9:1. Whoever wishes to come after Me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me

We have come to associate pleasure with rewards and suffering with punishment. Yet, the stories of Job and Christ show that suffering is not necessarily punishment; suffering is part of life. Suffering is part of a virtuous pursuit; the deliberate building of habits to be good (virtue), or the deliberate building of habits to be a master of one’s craft (virtuoso).

The virtuous pursuit requires sacrifice and temperance. I don’t this necessarily means that we should give up all forms of pleasure; the challenge is finding the balance and peace between extreme pleasure and suffering.

We have experienced how the pandemic is not just a biological issue. It has led to suffering in terms of our mental, emotional, social, and spiritual health as well. We’re familiar with the reports of people suffering from anxiety attacks, panic attacks, and depression due to isolation from our loved ones.

Is it appropriate to view the pandemic and our multiple forms of suffering as punishment? The story of Job offers an answer: no. But the times of suffering are opportunities for us to be more virtuous, to embrace more our human nature to be good. When it is more tempting to take advantage of suffering as a means to abuse those who suffer more than us, we can become more like saints if we choose to lift others despite our own suffering.

How does this inform how teachers and students can deal with mental health issues?

I find insight in how the general empirical method or the Lasallian reflection framework can be applied to explain the actions of Job. Imagine suffering the worst kinds of disasters: losing one’s loved ones and material possessions all at once. I dare say that Job is the poster boy of what a person with the poorest levels of mental health would look like.

When it is easiest to curse a higher power, Job chose to… reflect. Inquire. Postpone judgement and action until he thought he has reasonably made sense of his suffering.

Social media and pop culture have trained us to automatically react, do snap judgements, and act with minimal reflection. As long as it feels good, it must be good. Thus, anything that feels bad must be bad. But this does not reflect the reality of our lives. Instincts and reason are meant to complement each other.

A friend of mine who teaches at another school shared a common story in the academe: a student shared that they are clinically diagnosed with high levels of anxiety, and that a certain classroom assessment triggers anxiety attacks for the student. How should educators manage this increasingly common manifestation of poor mental health of students?

Did the student do the right thing, informing the professor of one’s poor mental health conditions ahead of time? Yes! But what would be wrong, in my perspective, is if the student blatantly lies or mentions this predicament near the end of the term, when it’s too late for the teacher to do something.

Is it valid for educators to feel frustrated about these situations? Yes! As former students ourselves, we’re all to familiar with all kinds of “palusot” or excuses, and thus, within this premise and context, it is natural for us to have a healthy amount of skepticism. But what would be wrong for us is to immediately judge (as in, form conclusions solely based on feelings of frustrations) the student.

Thus the call for reasonableness in judgements and responsibility in commitment-actions. The fundamental principle is dialogue. It is the role of the student to be proactive in communication and to explicitly show both commitment and action to find other ways of demonstrating learning. On the other hand, it is the role of the teacher to provide multiple opportunities for the student to demonstrate commitment and action to learning despite the circumstances.

My conclusion is that mental health issues, both from the teacher and the student, are mostly personal; on the level of the unseen interior. It is unreasonable to judge another using our own biases and standards of what we respectively consider as bearable or unbearable. Thus, in the spirit of authenticity, the general empirical model, the Catholic see-judge-act, and the Lasallian reflection framework highlights the need to EXPLICITLY COMMIT AND ACT, while ensuring RESPONSIBILITY.

Suffering is part of life. Poor mental health will be a regular challenge for both educators and students. But we can reframe these forms of suffering as opportunities to be more authentic; to stay the virtuous course. This is an opportunity for all parties to explicitly commit and act responsibly towards a collectively agreed-upon outcome, covering each other’s weaknesses, and struggling together towards flourishing.

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 49: FEBRUARY 18, 2022]

We are all blind (and that’s okay)

Mark 8:22-26. Jesus heals a blind man

Maybe we’re familiar with the story of the blind men and an elephant, each having their personal version of what an elephant is based on part of an elephant a particular blind man can sense (even if limited).

To us who have the natural desire to know, the inquisitive nature of our curiosity, having a part of our senses impaired can feel very frustrating. Yet, in many ways, we have our blind spots and biases. We have our pet peeves, our favorite ice cream flavor, or a Netflix series we love to hate.

And that’s okay.

When Jesus commanded that we love God (as in, we love Love) and to love our neighbors as ourselves, perhaps that is the invitation to cure our spiritual blindness. Our natural desire to know would compel us to seek a Higher Power, and the new commandments of Jesus are great guidelines.

It is in loving others as ourselves that we are somehow able to manifest more our likeness of God.

Just as the blind men can only better approximate what an elephant is by relating with each other, we can only better understand God (yet limited still) by loving each other.

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 47: FEBRUARY 16, 2022]

Asking God for signs? Better ask for insight!

Mark 8:11-13. No signs will be given

“Lord, give me a sign!” As we celebrate a Happy Valentine’s Day, I can hear my past self praying to God so that He may give me a hint if my then-friend-now-wife liked me (HAHA!)

Popular books and other intelligibilia of pop culture have encouraged us to look at omens, signs, or downright superstitions as a means for the “universe” to communicate with us. If there’s no sign, we become furious at God. Or, we force ourselves to look at some things and fool ourselves into interpreting them as signs.

Forcing God to give us signs could be a form of testing God, a destructive kind of doubt (rather than a healthy constructive form of reasonable doubt, as in, inquiring what God wills).

As I have grown and laughed at my angsty impressionable teenage years, I realize the folly of relying on “signs”. Insights are borne out of one’s internal conditions, and insights reveal themselves to those who have the physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual capacity to apprehend them.

Isn’t the pursuit of insight more rewarding than an illusion of asking for a sign? I don’t believe that the prophets were superstitious; they just knew how to reflect more and appropriately direct their attention to the experience that mattered for virtue, and hence, they were able to provide a compelling account of virtuous prophecy.

Can I attribute to a single moment why I fell in love with Mika? I cannot. My love for her is an accumulation of insights, pleasures, and pains which led me to conclude: I cannot imagine my life without her as my partner; and she should be my partner in life.

Thank God for not just giving me a sign. He gave me more; an insight to who I really need and who will journey with me in my life.

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 45: FEBRUARY 14, 2022]

Nourishment is more about giving and less about receiving

Mark 8:1-10. Jesus feeds the crowd loaves of bread and fish

From a supernatural miracle perspective, this gospel accounts for how Jesus seemingly multiplied loaves of bread and fish. From a more realistic/skeptical perspective, this gospel shows how Jesus can inspire His followers to give what they have so that everyone may be full.

For me, both the supernatural and realistic perspectives illustrate what nourishment means.

In the perspective of integral human development, material and bodily needs can be considered as most basic. These are required for us to at least function; but material and bodily needs alone do not grant us understanding of our purpose in life.

Loaves of bread may make our bodies full, but the Bread of Life makes us whole and nourishes our soul.

Meal times and feasts are also about the people we are with, the potluck we bring, and the stories we share. My memory can forget the food and beer I drank with my barkada, but I cannot forget the wacky stories and laughter we shared. Yes, I may have felt full and even tipsy, but the bonding definitely nourished my social well-being.

From a personal and professional perspective, perhaps the invitation is: what can we keep on giving without expecting anything in return? What talents and abilities can we share as charity?

Lately, from a teaching or pedagogical perspective, I have tried to further hone my feedback-giving skills (this is informed by the principles of flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: immediate feedback can induce flow experiences). Chat groups and breakout rooms in Zoom have been my go-to strategies for this. Teaching undergraduate research methods this term, I understand that this is hard: imagine a total of around 15 research groups across 3 sections, each with their own particular research topics!

The funny thing is, I think I am “forced” by my professioral job to do this, but at the same time, the act of giving feedback to research is also a flow activity; a reward in itself. The dialogue and accumulation of insights nourishes the mind and the soul, even if it can sometimes fatigue the body. And I pray that I reach a point where providing insightful feedback is almost automatic (as in, almost auto-pilot) like how a guitar master can seemingly perform licks out of thin air.

Again, this takes virtuous painstaking deliberate practice.

To end this reflection, I see parallels in rethinking what nourishment means and the conditions of flow as an activity that is a reward in itself. Nourishment is more about giving and less about receiving, because the act is a reward in itself. I’d like to believe that this is a useful analogy or approximation of what we call God’s infinite capacity for love and charity.

It is in giving that we are more nourished; it is in giving that we become more like Christ.

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 43: FEBRUARY 12, 2022]

Analytically different, but really entangled

Mark 7:24-30. Jesus cures the daughter of a Gentile woman

Does Jesus really distinguish between Jews and Gentiles? This gospel, together with the parable of the good Samaritan, demonstrates that regardless of a person’s background, as long as the person seeks what is truly good, that person shall be healed and made whole (i.e., integrally developed).

In business and management, we are always keen to draw boundaries – externalizing costs, segmenting the market, distinguishing what is inside and outside one’s business model. From a cognitive perspective, boundaries are comfortable; the constraints we place help focus our thinking given our limited understanding.

However, the trap we should avoid is conflating an analytical or epistemic perspective with what is actually or really “real”. Analytically different, but really entangled.

From an analytical perspective, we can distinguish the different parts and systems of our body: fingers, toes, arms, legs, nervous system, respiratory system, etc. But in reality, these parts are really, complexly, and beautifully entangled. Our being is more than the “sum” of our parts and subsystems. Analytical models are simplified, useful, but fallible; it is our duty to always update our models and to recognize that reality may be a beautiful mess of entanglement different from the convenient analytical differences we may prefer.

This makes our fascination for bandwagons and exclusive tribes unfortunate, like the politics in our country. The derogatory labels we ascribe each other — pinklawans, dutertards, etc., — these are more driven by ego, and it may divide us further.

Today’s gospel continued the trend. Jesus wanted no one to notice His healing, and I stand by my interpretation: Jesus did not seek to be a cult leader that others only follow because of sheer amazement. Rather, Jesus sought that others follow the True Good through their own discernment, without regard to a person’s accidental background or context.

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 41: FEBRUARY 10, 2022]