Mental Health Awareness – why we are making it worse, not better

With Mental Mental Health Awareness Week being this week 18th-24th September, I’ve been getting plenty of requests for workplace yoga so workplaces can join in the on the theme. This is good up to a point, but maybe a bit tokenistic.  It’s got me thinking about the approach we are taking in New Zealand toward ‘mental health’ and why it is not working.

In fact, not only is it not working, it seems to be making things worse (and in some cases causing harm).

There’s got to be a better way

All the mental health ‘stuff’ you hear drummed into you by our media, in our workplaces and schools, amongst sports players and even by ‘iconic kiwi role models’, in my view is often about looking good, but not doing good. It’s not helping, and the messaging they are giving is actually part of the problem.

Let’s just ask ourselves, why is there is more conversation in our society about mental health than ever before, yet there is more depression and anxiety than ever before?

If our current strategy was a good strategy, wouldn’t it be making things better, not worse?

There’s got to be a better way. And we can all make an effort to do better than this.

3 Ways Current Strategies are Victim Focussed

You might have noticed the messages such as “End the stigma around mental health.” It now seems brave to over-share and highlight your dysfunction on social media. This all sounds very lovely at the outset, however the problem with this so called ‘vulnerability’ is that its victim focussed, not solution focused. The victim focused approach seems to be celebrated in our culture in the following ways:

1.  Over labelling gives people them an ‘easy out’, and keeps them stuck

When someone is given a label that classifies them with some sort of ‘mental health issue’ this label gives them an ‘easy out’. For example, when life gets difficult, people around them must tread very carefully, and pander to them, because they are ‘broken’ in some way.  Ive seen well known sports people and politicians quote that they have been ‘struggling with their mental health’, almost like a ‘get out of jail free card’ as an excuse for poor behaviours or drunk driving.

When things get hard, people blame their struggles on their mental health issue so they never have to overcome it.

Our tendency to over-label can keep people stuck. Sure, sometimes we need professional support  and a diagnosis can be helpful for deciding appropriate treatment. But I have noticed that we are far too quick to give other people, and ourselves a label to explain behaviour we find difficult.

I once had someone say to me for example, that she has ‘high functioning anxiety’ so that must be why she constantly scrolls through social media (I think it was a self-diagnosis?). I noticed she was almost kind of proud to say so, as if this was a good thing? Facing the deeper causes of the anxiety itself was far too difficult, so it was perhaps easier to give herself a label.

Giving yourself a label will most likely just allow you to hide, and complain about how hard life is, so you never have to do brave things.  A label can’t possibly reflect your whole identity. A label only solidifies that you are indeed ‘broken’, and that the only path is medication and managing your ‘labelled identity.’

Being given a label, either from yourself or someone external,  is definitely not part of the solution. Its problem focussed. Good luck trying to heal yourself when you completely identity as ‘your label’. This is a disservice to our true potential, and disregards or limitless possibilities as human beings. 

 2.  People get rewarded when they have special labels

People that have a strong victim story, get rewards from others when they play their ‘poor me’ card. They hide behind these labels, and latch onto them like a badge of honour. As if their mental health is something outside of them? We have celebrities doing this – splurging their vulnerability story and getting rewarded and celebrated for their dysfunction.

The labels also help you hang on to it. And how is holding onto a label a good thing?

I think we need to be reminded that the aim of the game here is to be healthy and vibrant and well! To flourish! (not to stay stuck). It’s ok to be vulnerable, but we don’t want to stay there. We want to wake up, and grow up. We want to shine the light of awareness on the stories we are holding onto that are not serving us, and then choose a better story. We want to move from the child story to the adult story (See this blog: We are all story-tellers.)

Just a gentle reminder - the aim is to become less dysfunctional, not more dysfunctional (!)

3. Its too scary so it’s better to leave it to the experts

Our current messaging says it’s too scary to talk about mental health, so it becomes more comfortable for people to not even go there and leave it to the professionals.

This also makes things worse because now we have a society where many of us can’t even have a human conversation with a friend who’s struggling because we are afraid we are going to make things worse. We don’t know how to hold space for someone because its all become something for ‘the experts’.

A text with a few emojis is not having a  genuine connection. Neither is a flow chart from some ‘expert agency’ with ‘5 ways to happiness’. Learning to hold space for someone, is a basic skill we can all develop. But it means knowing your own self, first. So you can get out the way, and truly be there for others with compassion.

A Better Way:
A Solutions Focussed Approach!

See your mental health as an opportunity rather than a liability

Emotional difficulty is not a problem or a bad thing that needs to be ‘fixed’. Its an opportunity to get curious about yourself.

Are you feeling a bit low? Anxious? Ask yourself, what could this possibly teach me? Maybe its my path to be with this? Perhaps it’s the deepest part of you asking you for change? A change in a belief system you’ve been holding onto, or a change in the way you have been living?

Most people are living a life that’s based on someone else’s dreams and desires, not their own. Do you feel a bit different to others around you, like you have some weird attributes that makes you ‘not really fit in’? Get curious about this, this is an insight to your gifts.

Once you see emotional difficulty as a signal to go deeper, to truly get to know yourself and how you could bring your unique gifts to the world to serve others in a meaningful way, we realise that emotional difficulty is just part of the path – and the ancient yogis would say, an essential part of the path.

“The wound is the crack where the light enters.” Rumi

We have a spiritual problem not a mental health problem

Human beings are resilient and grow through challenge and difficulty.

Perhaps your ‘mental health struggles’ are in fact just the stepping stone to you finding your true strength of character? How can you look within and ask yourself, how would living courageously look to me? Do I know myself? How can I use my unique gifts to help the world become a better place? How can I give to something greater than myself? If no one knew of me, what would I do with my life? What are my true core values and how can I live my life based on them?

This type of personal enquiry documented in the ancient wisdom traditions (and in the wellbeing science), suggests that emotional difficulty is all part of ‘doing the work’. The human spirit is resilient and strong, and we only find our true potential when we test ourselves, and do hard things outside of our comfort zone. We step outside of our families expectations, and even society’s expectations and listen to our heart, finding our unique gifts.

From this angle you can see that our emotional pain often results from a spiritual problem not mental health problem. We have more advances in our modern world than ever before, we’ve got it so good, and yet we are struggling so much. We are materially rich, but our souls are sick.

The Hero’s Journey – a solutions focussed approach rather than victim focussed

The Heros Journey has been told around campfires and been documented in mythology for thousands of years. It speaks to our ability to do hard things, to take on a challenge that’s so difficult that it tests us profoundly so we come out the other side a new and changed version of ourselves. It activates the innate evolutionary machinery that lies within all of us, and we come back a more confident and competent person.

As opposed to our current messages around mental health which keeps us stuck behind labels, the hero’s journey is solution focussed. Rather than paying attention to the celebrities in our culture who seem to celebrate their victim stories, we can turn to the ancient wisdom of these camp fire stories – the stories of the hero going through struggle, and going deeper, getting out of our head and into our heart, and finding a connection to something grander than ourselves, doing things our old self never thought were possible, and being an example of the limitless potential of the human spirit to bring good to the world, through overcoming our own perceived limitations.

This speaks to a better way to talk about mental health, in my mind. Or rather, I suggest we ditch the term ‘mental health’ altogether, and just call it life. Life will be hard if we stay obsessed with comfort, quick pleasure hits, social media,  being liked, having to have things our own way and looking to others for our happiness. Life will be easier if we connect with our mind, body and spirit using age old practices of yoga and meditation and other wisdom traditions, and let go of our ego’s attachments.

Going deeper in this way also means asking the big questions of yourself, evolving, and healing, and ultimately flourishing so we can live a life with courage, with purpose, and with meaning.

In the end, isn’t that what we are all here to do?

 Jo Jarden is a certified personal trainer and yoga teacher in Christchurch New Zealand and the founder of Heart and Mind Yoga studio. She has 10 years experience in health promotion in New Zealand and Australia including management and promotion of national chronic disease prevention programs. She now helps people one on one with their wellbeing through yoga teaching, personal training, workplace yoga and wellbeing workshops. 

Check out Jo’s upcoming wellness offerings here

Qualifications include:

Certified Yoga Teacher Santosha Yoga Institute, Registered Australian Yoga Alliance 2017
Certificate in Advanced Personal Training, Fit College New Zealand, 2016
Bachelor of Science with Honours Public Health. University of Canterbury, New Zealand 2006
Bachelor of Arts Mass Communication and Psychology. University of Canterbury, New Zealand 2005