It is Time to Change the way we View Mental Health
Why do we fight so hard for narratives that don’t serve us?
WE GOTTA STOP SAYING THIS!!! —
Something that has always bothered me is when people say that depression and anxiety are “incurable”. I think that this mindset causes even further feelings of hopelessness in those struggling. This belief makes it easy to fall into the trap that our anxious or depressive phases are who we are as a person.
& CONSIDER THIS —
First of all, there is no exact chemical makeup that makes someone depressed or not, it’s not like an X-ray or Covid test where you can see a tangible result (unless you’re Dr. Amen). There is no perfect “normal human” chemical balance, and if there was, I think most of us would be considered “mentally unstable”.Mental Health diagnoses come from the DSM5 which is just a book that people wrote to help organize what we call disorders which are then given to patients based off of their self-report scores. If I wanted to go into a psychiatrist’s office right now and get a diagnosis it wouldn’t be that hard to research the criteria I would need to report and leave with a fancy new label. This also may explain why so many people are misdiagnosed or diagnosed with a disorder that they don’t have. There is a lot of gray areas that people don’t seem to talk about. Mental health is not all or nothing. This isn’t to say anxiety and depression aren’t real, they very much are and they can be DEBILITATING. However, it is to say that being stuck with a label that was given to you during a bad breakup or hard transition in life is just nonsense (and depressing in-itself). People who struggle with anxiety and depression already tend to have catastrophic and obsessing thinking so let’s stop adding fuel to the fire.
Dr. Caroline Leaf explains that we do not have anxiety or depression, it is not a part of our being. She explains that humans aren’t miserable 24/7 with no relief their entire life. Sure, we go through phases and some may struggle much deeper/longer than others, but this does not mean we are these feelings, or that these feelings have power over us. In fact, we have so much power that we can rewire our brains, and change its’ chemical regulation through a process called neurogenesis. It’s like the saying “fake it till you make it”; The more we repeatedly do something, the more it becomes innate in us. Our neural pathways are like deep tire tracks in the mud, they are very rigid and stuck in place. However, this does not mean that we can’t unlearn these pathways and create new ones. Just like a dirt pathway in a field of green grass, the more you walk along the trail, the more permanent it becomes and the easier it is to travel down without second thought. The more you walk on one path, the less you walk on the other, and the quicker it fades away.
TAKEAWAYS —
At the end of the day, yes genetics plays somewhat of a role in our chemical makeup, and antidepressants can be lifesavers. While there isn’t one cure fits all, there’s many different little things we can do in our lives to heal our wounds and feel free. It’s time to stop letting mental health labels take over our peace and steal our identities.
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