Archive for the ‘mental health’ Tag
I’ve been engaging lately in what I once thought was the right way to do things – reading and researching to understand what those words “liberal” and “conservative” mean. I confess I’m running into trouble. I just can’t understand “conservative.” All I know is it’s not my father’s conservative, even mine up to and including Eisenhower. I do know, though, what I mean by “liberal.” This is a partial list
- Violence breeds hatred.
- Hatred breeds destruction for the hater as well as the hated.
- Vengeance is violence in any form, physical or other, even ridiculing, insulting, or demeaning.
- Peaceful problem problem-solving leads to fulness of growth for everyone.
- Every individual is of value, deserving of care, appreciation, and encouragement.
- People come in many genders, abilities, and color.
- Freedom makes creativity possible by allowing every individual to grow and prosper.
- Peace makes freedom possible, and vice versa.
- Appreciation, gratitude, and forgiveness clear the path to peace.
- Earth is a gift to be cared for with appreciation.
- Children are a gift deserving birth into a loving, caring society.
- Agape love signifies mental health.
- Good mental health depends on all the bullets above.
- History ignored opens the way to history re-enacted.
This is it for starters. Now I ask for two things,
- Add to my list
- Provide me with a similar list of the current meaning of “conservative.”
Thanks
I was on my back, giving it the twenty-minutes it needs every so often since my 2015 accident. This time, though, I was hoping to slip into a brief nap to help recover from a couple of nights of poor and minimal sleep… sorry, I can’t help empathizing with those who are suffering. Instead, I found myself plunging into despair (Loss of hope.) I haven’t been that close to depression since the mid 1970s when the despair was more personal. At that time my 2:00 am moment clicked in and I started the turn-around-conviction that somehow I’d do something to make it better, and I did.
This time two relatively minor straws almost broke the back of my determination. On top of one loss of freedom after the other in the country – women’s rights, physicians rights, gender rights, asylum-seekers rights, health rights, housing rights, food rights, climate rights, even professor’s rights or the right not to be killed by gunshot, were two deliberate insults: the removal of Harvey Milk’s name from the ship that had been christened in his honor and the removal of the bust of Martin Luther King that had been in the oval office. But the major one that almost did me in? – the Supreme Court clearing the way to remove immigrants to countries other than their own origin where a language foreign to them might be the norm. Losing language communication is equivalent to solitary confinement, pretty close to a death sentence.
I solved my own problem by getting back to editing my manuscript, How Could These Lovely People Have Let It Happen? A Psychologist’s Intimate Journal. Really. It helped. By the time I had spent a couple of hours at the computer, walked the halls of the Waters of Excelsior and enjoyed an evening meal with friends, my symptoms were alleviated.
But what hasn’t been helping – and so I’ve stopped it – is contributing to the political party of my choice. (Guess which one.) I don’t see my minimal money being spent to help spread caring and justice. Why can’t they just tell the human stories of people being afflicted by current policies? I do understand it won’t happen with most news media telling them, for various reasons of fear and ownership control. But why can’t some of the party money buy ads just to tell the story of women suffering and dying because of legal controls over medical practices, or of families imprisoned, or of those living with the disaster of violent weather issue? Personally, I don’t know a single person who doesn’t care in one way or the other for the welfare of others. That’s where the truth lies, not in data and graphs and generalized hypotheses.
Oh well. Bottom line I guess we all have to take care of ourselves …
Of course I want mental health for all. That’s the reason I don’t like the focus on “mental health.” The problem is, the focus of that term is on individuals, diverting attention from the major cause of poor mental health which is social structure. What can one expect when we live in a world where there are so many threats against healthy development right from the beginning: forced birthing, lack of prenatal care, laws against saving the life of a pregnant woman, no recognition of the importance of early – and later — child care. Failure to assure care is provided for the newborn as getting back to work is more valued that setting the stage for healthy infant development.
Enforced fear everywhere. What’s the message in schools with security checks and cops as part of the daily process? What is the message but “be afraid. Be very afraid!” Healthy mental health requires the courage to see ahead with hope, not the avoidance of reaching for future potential.
Healthy growth requires confidence that tomorrow will follow today in a physically safe world, with the safe haven of a constant home where one can count on enough nourishing food every day and a safe place to sleep every night. It requires clean air free of the constant news of tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods. It requires family, neighbors, and friends setting examples of success in purposed daily living with caring and respect for each other.
It requires being surrounded with sufficient honesty that a reasonably steady future can be anticipated. It calls for honest answers to any question, often requiring the help of a book to clarify, not wondering what awful truth is hidden in those banned books.
Stop it, Mona. You’re drifting into a rant. Let’s just summarize.
A healthy society calls for being “woke” i.e. being aware of important societal issues, especially those related to racial and social justice. It implies a consciousness of injustices and a commitment to fighting against them. It calls for respect for DEI – diversity, equity, and inclusion .. and empathy.
At some point every night, later rather than sooner, I wake up thinking of so many reactions I’d like to share in what seems like a topsy turvy world. I’ve been in this state before at several points in my life. That’s why I like watching historical documentaries about recent decades, because I know how they end. This one, though, not so much. It’s so complicated, and my scope of knowledge is so limited. I might have been a Political Science major, but I wasn’t. Economics would have been interesting, but it wasn’t my focus. The only place I have a right to claim any authority is in Psychology. I think it’s appropriate to take it easy on myself – and maybe you – and break down some of my reactions into smaller chunks. Easier to get back to sleep. So I choose to focus first on the issue of control
WARNING: I’M ABOUT TO GET PREACHY: I have thought of offering a workshop here at the Waters of Excelsior on “How not to spend money on psychotherapy,” the first point of which is control. The best way to avoid depression and chaos is to stop giving away one’s control. The lesson in forgiveness, for example, is to stop trying to get your offender to apologize, or to suffer, or even just beating oneself up with anger. As the saying goes, “Not to forgive is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.” (This could qualify as a sales pitch for Forgiving One Page at a Time, the diary format of When to Forgive, now out of print.) In other words, it’s the height of loss of control to expect someone else to do the job for you. Even worse is blaming someone or something else for your problems. That seems to be the “in” thing these days, blame the person who isn’t like you, or even blame the government for which you may or may not have voted. Relying on someone else to fix it is the height of helplessness.
AND NOW I’M ABOUT TO GET PRACTICAL: My policy these days is to avoid the news and analyses after 12:00 noon, sort of like avoiding the caffein that could keep me awake. What I have observed is loads and loads of analyses, most of which seem pretty right to me. But there’s one thing I’ve observed that I think is really important. The rule of formal government isn’t the only thing that produces change. I’ll bet you don’t even remember when Down Syndrome was called Mongolism, and diagnosed individuals were essentially warehoused as hopeless. Now you’ll find them doing jobs at restaurants, offices, greeting folks at orchestral halls, performing as actors, living happy and productive lives. Same goes for people diagnosed with Autism, many of whom are sought for their special skills.
I’ll bet some of you don’t remember when a woman would never be accepted as a TV anchor, or a news reporter, or a police officer, or in the military, or as a firefighter – or you name it. Yes, I’ll grant that Title IX helped a lot, but it wouldn’t have happened without the force of people power. All that even though the ERA never passed, And have you noticed how you don’t even notice when a black person appears in any kind of role– in spite of the fact that some powers in government are working like the dickens to be sure that racism survives. My point, not every change that happens is the result of official control. Bottom line, the final force is the action of plain, ordinary people who remain alert and let their preferences be known. But only if we don’t give up! If only we maintain control where we can, whether in personal interactions, signing petitions, volunteering, offering help, expressing an opinion.
That’s my first point. Stuff happens, sometimes without our even noticing it, but it can go the way we like if we don’t yield control through blaming others or just plain giving up.
It would be great if any of you reading this would be willing to support my efforts here by offering examples.
The latest thing in “explaining” mass shootings is to focus on the shooter’s mental health. All good and well. Why wouldn’t this Psychologist be happy to know people’s mental health is gaining in focus and purpose?
But this Social Psychologist doesn’t like the way it’s being used to avoid the more basic horror – the cultural grounding in which poor mental health is being fostered. What sensible, alive, and aware person doesn’t carry a substratum ache of empathy, concern, and fear in this world of cruelty, killing, and destruction. It almost seems like a mark of emotional health to be disturbed. No, I don’t like the implication that the cause lies in an individual’s deviation from the norm. On the contrary, the cause lies in the culture that fosters the human potential for evil.
Will we ever get around to looking at the painful, destructive inequities in childcare, education, financial status, health care, gender acceptance, respect, and expectations for individual accomplishment (not necessarily measured by financial wealth)? What did I leave out?
It could be done. We could create a culture based on encouraging personal growth, self-confidence, gratitude, appreciation, cognitive competence, kindness, personal value – dare I say love? But that would require reducing the “blame the other” emphasis implied in the focus on individual mental health and looking instead at our own responsibility as part of a culture. As it is, I’m afraid we have adopted “mental health” as a way to avoid looking at our own selves.
Please notice, I haven’t used the words “mental illness.” That’s a related but different story.
monagustafsonaffinito 