'It is all in your head' must be the number one response people get when
expressing an anxious moment, a worry with no apparent reason or 'unreasonable'
response according to others. Today, I will be voicing thoughts regarding the
ignorance and taboos we meet so often in our daily life in relation to mental
health.
I find these two being related, as it is so easy to maintain a culture of taboos
where there is ignorance. Ignorance can be a result of lack of proper
information and understanding of that information. In tackling this, as a
society, it can be a step to fight the mentality of 'it is all in your
head.'
Let’s say someone tells you they have anxiety. Anxiety has many
'faces' if you like. For instance, people with high functioning anxiety, a term
widely used, refers to those who function reasonably well although suffer from
anxiety. Now many, falsely mistake stress with anxiety. The difference is while
stress is caused by external factors, such as work, anxiety is caused by
internal such as trauma. People often consider those with anxiety 'neurotic' (a term not used medically
but as an adjective), to be overreacting, attention seeking or even drama
queens. Telling someone who just trusted you enough to tell you they had a
panic or anxiety attack 'It's all in your head', there is nothing wrong
you or you are not hurt (physically), not only shows how ignorant as a
society we are but also how much we have failed to educate people on the
subject. When we fall and hurt ourselves, most of the time the wounds are
visible, a scratch, a bruise and so on. When we are emotionally hurt it is not
possible to expect those wounds or traumas to be visible,
although there are many cases where psychological pain, stress, trauma etc.,
starts appearing such as hair loss or hair turning grey, let’s say, a very common problem.
Telling someone their panic attack is in their head, is like telling them
they did not experience the discomfort or pain but they imagined it. Just
because something is not caused by physical pain it does not mean it did not
happen, exist or experienced. Panic attacks often include shortening of breath or feeling as if the person is having a heart attack, amongst other. Just
because this is not cause by a heart attack, it does not mean it did not happen
or the person did not have the symptoms, it just means they were caused
by something else, something non-physical.
Now, even though I have, met drama queens, attention seeking and hyperbolic
individuals, we have failed as a society to distinguish between those individuals
and those with some form of mental health issue, disorder or even syndrome whom
are often characterised in the same way, simply because people are ignorant or
misinformed and cannot see the difference but simply a reaction which they seem
to misinterpret. Now that being said, I do strongly support attention seekers
to see a therapist as to discover why they are in so much need to post so many
selfies with everything hanging out.
Even though especially in the past few years, there is a more open
discussion, information and acceptance on the importance of mental health,
there is still a frightening trend of those who will respond with 'you are fine, you
look normal.' And...there is where the problem lies. I was recently with an old
friend and one of his friends and suddenly the conversation turned to this
topic. When the young woman with us expressed how much it helped her going to a
therapist and how she can do and say things which are normal to all of us but
were hard for her, my friend's response was 'why, there is nothing wrong with
you, you are normal, just as you always were.'
What followed after was a very interesting conversation which came with
comments that I have heard many times from people, such as the ones mentioned
above. I realised that not only as a society we have great ignorance on mental
health, but also great ignorance regarding the role of therapists, not to mention the social stigma of going to one, creating so much resistance to do so, for so many.
I have often heard people say they do not trust them to do what their role
indicates but upon elaborating, they seem to not understand at all what it is
they are meant to do in the first place, which is not magic or solve your problems. People tend to fail to understand mental health is not the same as physical health where wounds are visible and
treatment is different. Many have also difficulty accepting the term 'therapy' or 'treatment' as they feel they are not 'ill', getting hund up too much on words and less in the point.
I have also heard of people being paranoid that if they go to a therapist,
he or she will place ideas in their heads and convince them of things that are
not reflective of their situation (not using the word true here consciously).
Although this is indeed an issue raised in the field regarding false memories
brought in, in therapy and indeed has been an issue which professionals see a
need in tackling, this is something common in medicine too. There are cases of
being misdiagnosed for instance but this is no reason for never visiting
another doctor in your life. Besides, it is not something that you are certain
you will meet upon deciding to go to therapy, it is not a certainty or the rule.
People are often reluctant to see a therapist , as they do not consider
themselves 'crazy' as they often express. Not going to go into how problematic,
ignorant and false that term is but will say, that if you cannot function as
you should then you should treat that as any part of your body. If your arm
cannot make certain movements or without hurting and it does not function properly, you would go to a doctor right? Imagine now someone telling you that you seem
normal and your arm is in place and it seems to not be paralised so why do you
need to see a doctor... What would your response be if your arm has not full
and proper funtion without say, hurting in certain movements or no apparent wounds, bruises, scratches?
Imagine now, you have a thought or behaviour that leads to being
disfunctional or problematic (not you as a person, but the behaviour itself).
If for example you think everyone you meet wants to hurt you (emotionally or
physically) and cannot form healthy relationships. I would say that there is
something that you may need help with to understand why and hopefully solving. Now lets say, you started buying useless
things and you have become a hoarder. Now we all at times buy useless things
but hoarding is another thing. It does not mean you are 'crazy' as you say, but
there is something that has sparked this behaviour and if you could have tackled it, you would
have, therefore a therapist can give you some assist in discovering what that was
and hopefully resolve the problem.
People tend to perceive mental health to mean mental illness and
often avoid seeing someone with the fear they will be called 'crazy', or worse, see themselves as such. We
often do not appreciate the fact that appart from psychiatrists, we are gifted
with psychologists also. The differentiation which came between the two was a
very important step.
In Lisa Appignanesi's book 'Mad, bad or sad. A history of women and the mind
doctors from 1800 to the present', which I recommend by the way, we can see how
women for example were seen in need of a psychiatrist and seen as 'crazy' when failing to conform
or want what was considered normal at the time (like not wanting to have
children). This is a perfect display of how psychology has benefited us, people, on the whole and that what is out of the norm is not
necessarily an illness, recognising the uniqueness of personality.
This I think is the biggest misconception which has been bred throughout
time is that mental health is synonymous to mental illness. This for me is like
having ache every time you bend your arm because you hurt it during exercise
and be told you need surgery where you just need physiotherapy.
As a society we have failed to educate people and have instead created a
society where weakness is nurtured. We have gone from trying to teach respect
and acceptance for what is different or what we are not well acquainted
with, to a place where any opposing or contradicting opinion is seen as a personal
attack. In this respect, instead of improving things and creating an
environment of understanding and not judging those brave enough to recognise a
need to seek help and work out their issues, to the other extreme where we
teach people they have to tiptoe around everyone.
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