Human connection is a powerful and important skill. For a few, it may come naturally. Yet it’s something that every one of us can deliberately learn and develop. Connection from one understanding human being to another who is struggling in life can be a game-changer, preventing them from descending into dark and dangerous escape tunnels in a bid to tame their turmoil.
We must try to understand the troubled souls we encounter in life, especially those with obvious mental health issues, by simply listening to them and appreciating their back stories. The past unavoidably moulds our future, sometimes in small ways, sometimes it shapes our entire existence.
In my brother’s life, for example, before even beginning to understand let alone help him, there is a conundrum to get one’s head around. He will often suddenly declare, with complete sincerity, that he’s been haunted by “something paranormal” since childhood. To most outsiders this is unbelievable so they will almost certainly conclude, understandably, that he’s crazy. Despite this, Jason has always been one of the kindest and most generous of souls you could hope to meet.
Yet it is those demons of his mind that first caused him to explore alcohol, which of course did nothing to ease his mental ill-health. And I only learned the power of connection when it was almost too late.
It was our unfailing brotherly love that brought me to realize what was happening. And by connecting with him since, I’ve gained so much perspective and insight into many others’ mental health issues and their causes – as well, sadly, as recognizing the woes and failings of our health care systems.
Shamefully, I had failed to understand and connect with my brother during the earliest years of his troubles and that lack of connection almost resulted in losing him. It wasn’t until he was in his early twenties that I’d grasped, with a deep sense of guilt, the true extent of his situation.
Isn’t this a common fact, though? How many others pass beneath the radar of friends and family without support, perhaps because they deliberately develop the skill of hiding their trauma, but then face a lifetime of endless struggle and decline? I asked my brother why he’d hidden his issues so carefully as a youngster.
“I’d convinced myself,” he replied, “that no-one would understand if I said anything. How do you make someone understand something you don’t understand yourself?”
The first act in connection is acknowledgement – of the person and of the situation. Second is ownership, wanting to help. And personal action is next, because there’s a distinct lack of professional support for people with mental health issues. That’s not just down to a lack of resources. Strangely, there’s a far too common lack of empathy by some professionals who treat clients with an indifference that simply pushes them deeper into isolation.
Human understanding – that genuine empathy – is something many of us are still not very good at. The sad reality of life is that we’re all too often tangled up in our own agendas or focused on our own worries, so we ignore the warning signs. My brother just became a reclusive teenager, hiding in his room with his music on loud; this is ‘typical behaviour’ and easy to dismiss as normal, isn’t it?
But unless we attempt to understand what seems unimaginable to those of us who are living ‘normal lives’, we will never truly be able to help anyone who’s in trouble. Our responsibility as caring human beings is to look out for the tell-tale signs that someone may need help. Without connection we’re all lost. It’s a challenge, but we all have to try harder.
I hold my hands up. Had I been more mindful and enlightened, I’d have connected with Jason sooner and done more to help him. If this sounds like over-simplification, it really isn’t. Helping someone like him is hard and has often felt like an impossible task without any likely reward. Connection requires real commitment.
But caring for another sows seeds that will bear fruit in time.
That’s because we’re not just doing something practical in this world,
it’s our very spirits that are meeting at a deep level.
An experience that illustrates this occurred when my own two children were very young. Their great-grandfather was a gruff no-nonsense man, as tough as nails and characteristically harsh towards nearly everyone. However, he had an inexplicably close connection with my children and lived for the joy of seeing them.
In his late eighties and living in a care home, the highlight of his life was sitting in the atrium and staring through the windows as he waited to see the children. On these visits, a big smile would erupt beneath his thick, grey beard and he’d hug them with all his heart.
Then one Saturday morning my mother-in-law came to visit us and asked for a quiet word in the back room, so the kids were sent to the front room to watch TV out of earshot. She told us tearfully that her father Ted had passed. After she left we sat in silence pondering how to tell the children this heartbreaking news.
Suddenly, the door to the front room flew open and the kids ran to us excitedly, announcing with absolute conviction that, “Great grandad is in the sky, and he hasn’t got a beard anymore!” We stared at them bemused.
A little later, my wife phoned her mother and told her what the kids had said. There was a long silent pause on the other end of the phone before my mother-in-law explained that the previous night, in an effort to force-feed her father, they’d had to shave Ted’s beard off.
When we truly connect with others, we discover love.
© Marc Graham King, 2025
Marc Graham King’s debut book is He’s Not Mad, He’s My Brother.
A compassionate and loving memoir of his brother’s life, it was the winner of the national Spiritual Writing Competition 2024.
