Black Swan and Mental Illness

Black swan : a suspense / drama movie discussing human’s deepest inner struggle with psychological illness.

And how our inner conflicts generate all kinds of dark feelings , self-doubts, fears and dis- empowering believes.

 Taking Care of Mental Health :

The story explains how all inner negativity may unintentionally get directed to oneself,
Makes an inner crack that appears as bi-polar behavior

swinging between good and bad, rational and mad, tender and wild.
Phases of psychological illness like self-hate, self-sabotaging behaviors, self-hurt were present heavily in the movie

and how all this happens because of a psychological mental illness ,

this is a core topic that the movie addressed.

Ask for Help:

Such damage may keep getting worse if stayed without healing

or without addressing its core roots which can be in childhood or in parent’s past

or in a present toxic behavior, old traumas

even in disempowering habits like scarifying oneself.

Invisible Emotions:

Tina – the main character – is a ballet dancer who never let herself feel fully,

she is fearful and avoidant of  doing anything wrong

, she is a perfectionist who pushes her self to pursue her mother’s old dream.

totally under the control and the repression of her mother

dealt with like immature person or a child.

 so her personality never had a real chance of growing beyond the limits that were on her.

She is never independent or dare to be herself fully.

The Dark Side of the Swan:

This trapped part of her personality kept growing in the dark, creating an inner shadow self with an intense negative self-talk .
The shadow self was negative destructive voice that kept doubting her abilities,
made her feel like the world is an unsafe place and that people want to stop her from achieving what she wants, and that she will never make it.

Black and white:

Now, the dancer Tina became two characters in one person
The good innocent one. ( the white swan ),
And the dark destructive one which is the ( black swan ) or the body that she was trapped in and had no control over its anger and resentment emotions .
Tina’s shadow was her own enemy and the only one she wanted to destroy was herself.

noticing emotions is healing:

The best therapy for Tina was to let go of herself totally rather than suppressing herself ,
and that means to shed a light on the inadvisable part of her personality to own all parts of herself,

rather than leaving it in the dark doing all destructive surprising things.

She struggled to reach that point of totally letting go .
Her only hope was the performance where she had to be both characters on the stag which represents her real self that has two faces.

Last performance:

Finally she could perform greatly and genuinely

but unfortunately it was too late for her struggling mind to bear all the pressure,

her mind was already on edge  because all of the self-doubt, almost damaged her

when the shadow self toke over her sanity on stage completely leading her to self harm.

Life lesson:

a sad ending that tells us not to give ourselves up to the voices in our heads,

and never leave ourselves in a struggle long enough that it is too late to fix the situation or pick ourselves up from mental illnesses .