The Effect of Maladaptive Metaphors

            Language, specifically metaphors and comparisons, are used in everyday life to improve communication and understanding of the world around us. Metaphors are used to compare abstract ideas to concrete ones to facilitate comprehension of complex topics. Depending on how society uses certain expressions, they can develop positive or negative connotations that affect the way people perceive an idea. While metaphors are proven to be beneficial in understanding complex ideas, they can also be misleading when used carelessly. Commonly used phrases bearing negative connotations often obscures the reality of suffering. Both Alyson Chuyang and Susan Sontag reveal the detrimental effects of using maladaptive metaphors to describe illness and depression. For example, In Depression and That Slippery Slope, Chuyang uses many metaphors to describe her depression, such as “Slipping” into a dark ravine, or “drowning” in her work. However, she later realizes that those phrases obscure the reality of depression. Similarly, Sontag demonstrates in her book Illness as Metaphor that specific phrases and beliefs prominent in history ultimately obscured the truth of illnesses.

Chuyang communicates her overwhelming and depressing experience in high school as she struggles to balance school work, editing the yearbook, working for the school paper, completing college applications, and instructing swim classes. Chuyang uses metaphors and comparisons to convey her feelings of depression, but they negatively impact the way people view depression. Chuyang narrates that she felt a “constant feeling of drowning in everything that I was doing,” and “felt myself slipping into a dark ravine” (Chuyang). These phrases that are often used to describe depression can make someone feel as though they cannot get out of their depressive state. If someone is “slipping” down a steep slope, it suggests that he or she is falling helplessly and cannot get back up. Similarly, when someone is “drowning,” it implies that they cannot resurface, which will cause them to suffocate and die. This can make a person suffering from depression feel as though they cannot get better and there is no assistance available to them. Chuyang ironically illustrates her feeling of constant drowning even though she is a professional swimmer. However, her view on depression changes after she agrees to start seeing a therapist, “despite what stereotypes may arise from the word ‘therapy’” (Chuyang). Instead of viewing depression as irreversible, she recognizes that depression can be cured, and she does not need to get out of depression alone. The shift in Chuyang’s perspective represents the initial step to get better. For a person to improve, a person’s relationship to or interpretation of metaphors should shift from viewing it as a permanent state to one that is curable. Chuyang successfully alters her relationship between herself and depression, and ultimately sees herself as a professional swimmer that can break the surface to breathe again.

Relatedly, Sontag brings into account the many instances in history where misleading language and metaphors in medicine obscured the reality of diseases. For example, she quotes Galen, who claimed that “sanguine women” were less likely to get cancer than “melancholy women” (Sontag 53). Cancer is one of the many diseases that has been attributed to personality traits because it is medically unexplained, or the cure has not yet been found. Attributing an illness to a feature of a person’s character places the blame on the patient for getting sick even though it is of organic origin, not emotional. In the nineteenth century, physicians urged cancer patients “not to ‘give way’ to any grief” (Sontag 52-53). This led patients to feel as though it is their fault and it is their responsibility to return to health. As a result, patients believed that they could not speak about the hardships they were going through. Instead, they felt obligated to stay silent and be indifferent toward their illness in order to heal. 

Chuyang’s article and Sontag’s book both emphasize the issue with misusing metaphors. Both pieces have different language used to describe a difficult situation, but the message that the struggling person receives is the same. The hardship one faces is challenging to manage, but  one must do it alone. As a result, individuals feel uncomfortable with asking for the mental support they need. Chuyang initially does not believe she would be able to recover because of the stigma that once a person is depressed, it is almost impossible to return to normalcy. Furthermore, Chuyang felt that she could not ask for professional help because it would make her seem incapable of handling responsibilities that other people can handle. Combined with being told that she lives a good and happy life, she was completely closed to the idea of requesting guidance. Similarly, claiming a disease is of emotional origin as in Sontag’s book would cause a patient to deny professional mental help. Physicians gave cancer patients the obligation to get better by being emotionally unaffected by what is occurring in their lives. This emotional oppression can cause a person to resort to harmful coping mechanisms such as abusing narcotics, overconsuming alcohol, staying in bed the entire day, engaging in unprotected sex, overeating, and over-purchasing of products. These coping mechanisms may temporarily relieve emotional distress, but in the long term, they only prove to induce more guilt on the patient. 

            The use of metaphor is a powerful tool in shaping an individual’s perceptions. Metaphors can connote a positive or negative viewpoint on a specific topic. In Alyson Chuyang’s account of being depressed during her senior year, she uses figurative language to describe how overwhelmed she felt. The language that she uses implies that recuperating from depression is highly strenuous, and that the person suffering is alone in his endeavor to heal. Along with the stigma that surrounds therapy and professional mental help, people hesitate to ask for guidance. Likewise, Sontag highlights the issue of using diction that attributes diseases to emotions. In both pieces, the person dealing with hardship is discouraged from seeking guidance, which may lead to coping mechanisms that only worsen the patient’s mental health.   

Works Cited

Chuyang, Alyson. “Depression And That Slippery Slope.” Harness Magazine, 27 Jan. 2019, www.harnessmagazine.com/depression-slippery-slope/.

Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor. Penguin Books. Penguin Classics, 2002.

October 16, 2019