When Can We Say What We Actually Want to Say?

A sent me a screenshot. Roughly speaking, it was about how B, someone we both know, missed the work we once did together. All I felt was dismay. I don't miss it at all. And I can't stand B, who posted it.

I don't want to elaborate on my dislike here. What I want to talk about is how even work that appears to share the same goals can produce silence. This is especially true in mental health, in the spaces where qinlizhe are active.

Out of worry, reluctance to hurt someone, restraint. More often, because I don't expect to be understood. I'd rather be misread, rather stay silent, than explain myself again. The desire to speak has already gone.

In that moment, I won't tell A that I don't actually want to see things like this, and that I don't find them moving. Nor do I want to tell A what I dislike about B. Why? Because I've said it before, and A brushed it off. Besides, my years of practice have already shown where I stand. If A really understood what I do and what I value, we would, for one thing, have built much deeper trust long ago. For another, A wouldn't have sent that message.

Working together doesn't automatically produce friendship. If anything, caring about the community and about qinlizhe makes us expect more of one another. Increasingly, I feel that supposedly similar values don't amount to much. Values are so difficult to assess. Someone can say things that look right, do things that look right, and still hurt other people.

I feel that much of the misfortune and tragedy in my life has come from these connections that seem to be something they aren't, and from this gap between appearances and reality. You could say they've helped make me mentally unwell.

Shared practice doesn't automatically bring genuine closeness. It often creates relationships we're forced to maintain. Our field relies so heavily on symbols of "kindness" and "empathy" that it becomes harder to voice actual dislike, doubt, criticism, worry...

This isn't what I understand action to be. It isn't what I understand research to be either. To me, both are journeys full of risk. They aren't some supposedly safe space in a vacuum. They should, and must, be honest and dangerous spaces. By dangerous, I don't mean deliberately causing harm. I mean allowing conflict and anger, allowing people to say unpleasant things. What dismays me is that qinlizhe action and research were supposed to help us escape a form of suppression. Now they seem to be producing new forms of it.

I want to say to A: we aren't friends. We have worked together, and I admire what you do. But I won't tell you about these hidden dislikes, or the preoccupations and troubles I find difficult to explain to outsiders. And I want to say to B: stop using me as a prop in your performance of moral virtue.

I've asked people who have similar troubles what to do. Some are in their fifties or sixties, some in their twenties or thirties. The answers always come back to compromise, solidarity, accommodation, endurance. One organization leader told me she was utterly fed up: even when talking to volunteers, she had to hold things back, censor herself. It's strange, really. If all this work ends up creating room for other people to speak, what are we doing it for?

Is there some invisible force in Chinese culture, or the culture of these small circles? Why does it discipline us so effectively? Avoiding direct conflict, the social rule of leaving people their dignity, the heavy dependence of marginalized groups on internal solidarity when resources are scarce and risks are high: all of these produce silence.

In a sense, whether it's mental health, gender, or any number of public concerns, marginalized issues, and communities: if you can speak freely within them, if you feel everyone in a particular circle is wonderful and you can always be understood, that's quite a lucky thing.

Back to the title: when can we say what we actually want to say?

Taken out of context, as a question on its own, the first answer that comes to my mind is, oddly enough: once you go mad. But by society's standards, I'm already mad, aren't I? And even as a mad person, a patient, I still can't say what I want to say.

Long-term suppression and silence do mental health no favours. They keep reinforcing self-censorship and self-surveillance, leaving you feeling increasingly split in your own understanding. Something that might have been settled at the start with an argument, with simply swearing back, can grow through years of silence until the mere sight of someone like B ruins your day.

I've never expected people to understand one another completely. Honestly, I don't think complete mutual understanding is possible in a philosophical sense. But I do think we can at least genuinely face one another's existence, acknowledging another person's complexity, strangeness, and resistance to being fully understood.

There are so many people I want to tell the truth to, to speak honestly with. But as in the fairy tales I read as a child, telling the truth doesn't necessarily bring a reward. Even in spaces that make a point of celebrating complexity, people's tolerance for it has limits. Perhaps candour itself is a scarce resource.