Question your assumptions and limiting beliefs. Look at possibilities through a wider lens.
Is it possible that everyone in the world has mental health?
Is it possible to experience depression and anxiety and live a productive, fulfilling and joyful life?
Is it possible to feel our symptoms of our own mental health in a specific way to us?
Is it possible that many people are uneducated or misinformed about what mental health truly is?
Is it possible for educated people to think and behave in uneducated or unhealthy ways occasionally?
Is it possible that people who had unhealthy or toxic childhood‘s find healthy ways to live as an adult?
Is it possible that the best way to help someone is not to help them, but to guide them, to plant a seed to allow them to grow organically?
Labels of mental illness, depressive thinking, or any other type of mood disorder lead us to only see the possibilities that fit into a narrow spectrum of the prevailing emotional bias, and propaganda backs it up fueling stigma.
Do not pathologize or globalize specific instances. Feeling emotional about something has nothing to do with reality. We are then thinking with our emotional mind versus our logical mind. The interpretive lens of depression is narrowly filtered.
Having stated the above, it is imperative to also state that WE ARE ALLOWED TO FEEL HOWEVER WE FEEL. WE MUST OFFER OURSELVES THAT VALIDATION.
Consider these questions:
Is it always someone’s fault to be experiencing mental health challenges or disorders?
Is it linked to genetic predisposition? To our environment? To our lack of self-care?
Can people find their own awareness and prevention strategies to make change on their own?
Could they possibly realize that they need professional help and ask for support?
Can we offer them resources to guide them if they ask for support and guidance?
People make illogical and uninformed jumps all the time. They go from specific to global:
“I am depressed/anxious. I must be crazy/mentally ill/bi-polar.”
“I fail to regulate my emotions so I must be completely unhealthy and untreatable.”
“I’m a total embarrassment. I don’t deserve to be loved. Nobody would ever want to be with me.” “I am not good enough.”
“If I need a mental health day/days/month, and/or support, I must be a failure/weak.”
These are powerful and classic mental health bias. Socratic questioning can correct this type of bias and reasoning which generally lies unexamined beneath feelings of fear, hopelessness, and misinformation.
WE ALL HAVE MENTAL HEALTH.
Our mental health lies on a continuum. Depending upon what is going on within us and around us, and how well we are practicing our daily self care, we move along the continuum from feeling well to unwell, and anywhere in between.
Join me in my global call to action: Normalizing Mental Health. #normalizementalhealth
For information on how to join my global group of dedicated professionals and peer specialists, and to be a part of my “Falling Back Into Wellness” Symposium on November 5, 2022 where we are providing informational workshops and trainings on mental health and wellness, and to learn more about my “Integrative Approach to Wellness,” including my use of Socratic questioning in order for my clients to go within to find their answers, email me at wendyblanchard044@gmail.com.
We journey together.
Love and blessings,
Wendy
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