Isn’t it funny how we talk about “mental health awareness” in the context of illness.
“Mental health issues”. “My mental health is suffering”.
Or even in some cases: “I’ve got mental health” (meaning “I’ve got problems”).
This is very convenient for the pharmaceutical and mental health industry:
For us to become dependent on diagnosis’ quick-fixes and complicated interventions:
ADHD confirmation, pills, extensive daily “must dos” in order to be OK:
Wake up at 5am, journal, do yoga, cold shower, go to work (attend the one-off token wellbeing seminar at work, which has nothing to do with how you really feel and behave at work), go the the gym, cook a nutritious meal, sleep 8 hours, rinse and repeat).
Or: Long-term psychiatric or psychological support.
The problem with:
Diagnosis: It can feel like a relief at first but then you can become a prisoner of your diagnosis.
(I highly recommend reading more about this in Chana Studley’s “Beyond Diagnosis“)
Moreover, a diagnosis of depression, anxiety or burnout is the culmination of chronic overthinking. As soon as you find yourself constantly stressed and overthinking, you’ll be able to get a diagnosis sooner or later…
(Interestingly, many companies only show real concern when it’s a diagnosis and ignore the fact that the leadership team are running around “constantly on” and stressed…)
Ongoing pills: They can numb your feelings and create addiction.
Daily must-dos: We’re not robots.
Long-term psychiatric or psychological support:
As Sydney Banks said:
“If you go to a psychologist and they tell you: ‘Well, you’re going to need about 10 years support to recover from this’, don’t believe that! You’ll wait for the ten years to be up and think, ‘well I should be feeling better by now…’”
Most (not all) psychiatrists/psychologists are working from an outside-in paradigm:
You are broken and need fixing.
You will be fixed through 1-hour sessions (not a second longer even if you’re at your lowest moment when “time’s up”) over a long period of time.
While this can be helpful in allowing you to understand some of your experiences and release emotions, it hides the most powerful truth from you:
Your health and healing are inside-out, and always now.
Just like when you were a freshly born baby, or your dog/cat.
But for the noise of all your scary and horribly real-looking and solid-looking thinking, you can access a totally new way of being in your mind-body, life and work.
A way full of flow and thriving (not perfection).
Sydney Banks defined the experience of mental health as realising that your feelings are coming 100% from inside of you in the moment.
As soon as you assign how you feel to something or someone else, you are experiencing mental instability…
Very, very few companies are talking about this.
And won’t until more leadership teams realise and embody their own default mental health.
Read more in our ”Uncovering the myths of mental health” series on our blog over the next few weeks.
