Mental Health

Mental health

However still the surface looks, you cannot conceive of what goes on below, so it is with mental health. People look like they are together and ok, yet scratch the surface and they begin to fall apart very quickly. The sadness for me, is that most people are unable to talk about these deep issues for fear of judgement or being made fun of or even being seen as crazy. If you are physically ill, there is no judgement to be made, but mentally, well that is another story. It’s all in your head, pull yourself together, cheer up, what is the matter, you have plenty to be thankful for. These words do not help in the slightest and completely miss the point that depression or whatever it is mentally wrong, is so very difficult to explain. Many people lack the ability to look inside to examine the problem and understand just what is the matter. I would go further, in that the stigmatism around mental health creates a barrier, a barrier that causes people to join together and poke the person. A kind of communal bullying, it is horrible to watch.

In my dark times, I was on quite a large dose of anti depressants. That medication helped me. My brain has always been on very high speed. Im not saying Im clever, just that I could deal with many input sources at once. For example, after my separation I could sit at home, watch a film, whilst playing a console game, and reading a book. It was all manageable, but my mind would be exhausted. It was too much. The tablets stopped the mind from doing anything it did not need to do. I was able to deal with what was in front of me but that was all. Nothing else would distract my moment and my mental health, whilst seriously dulled, began to improve. My problem was not me, my problem was the wasted, useless, thoughts I was having about me and many other things, none of which needed to be dealt with. I was over complicating my life and because of it there was a rapid decline in my mental health. I wrote previously on Things I Wish I Knew and you can see that the brain/mind creates a lot of noise that does not help at all.

With the help of meditation and mindfulness (that’s another story) I was able to overcome the pointless chatter happening inside my mind, I was able to live in the present and stop worrying about stuff that was not involved in the now. I worked out sadness and regret was “past” based and anxiety and fear was “future” based and the mixing of the two caused the confusion of now. The flip side to this mindful thinking is that I don’t remember anything, unless I write it down, I now carry a To Do app on my phone tied to the computer that everything goes in. There are to do lists, business improvement lists, things to buy (Alexa helps with thats, by adding straight into that list). At the start of each day, I can prioritise my plan for the day and achieve. If I have big things to do, which can’t be done in a day, I make sure to add in a few little ones to ensure I achieve. If I have random thoughts or ideas, they get added to the list. My meditation musings might well help develop those thoughts which may otherwise get lost, same with waking at night, add those thoughts into the list. By doing this, I free the thought, I acknowledge I have had it, but until I choose, I do not have to think about it. This has worked for me, along with the exercise in the blog linked above about having thoughts and seeing how wasteful they mostly are. The trouble is you spend so much time with them, you sometimes miss the real indicators. By taking real notice, you can begin to dump the junk and work on the issues.

Truly I hope you can work on your problems, some of you will be able to and others will not. Until you have hit rock bottom you cannot understand that very deep, dark, cold place. So, don’t try and advise someone. If you genuinely want to help, when you ask them how they are, listen 100%, give them all of your attention, try smiling. Most of the time that will be enough, to know that somebody listened without judgement. You can’t offer a solution, that is theirs alone, just be supportive, be a friend, trust me, they are thinking they have nobody. The other thing to remember is that you cannot save everyone, sometimes their journey just isn’t about you saving them, but them learning from their life. If you are genuine about helping with the listening etc, do it selflessly. Most people do things for something in return. Do not make it conditional, their mental health depends on it.
Lov ya xxx.