Flickering
Bluelighter
Let us presuppose that the prevalence of mental health issues in our society is so strong because our attitude towards them is abysmal. It isn't that we fail to address them, it's that we actively make them worse, and indeed create the problems to begin with.
An enormous part of this failing must come from our tendency to only recognise a problem if we can detect it physically. This culture is catching up very slowly with the idea that a person can be afflicted by mental health issues. It is astounding how many people think that depression is not real, or that it's something you can snap out of. But even those who don't will almost universally focus not on the problem in and of itself, but on the effect it has on a person's life, i.e. their productivity to society.
This is why we prefer to medicate rather than to treat. Like giving someone amphetamines when they catch a cold; it has nothing to do with curing the illness, in fact it will likely prolong it. But if we have suppressed the symptoms, then you can get through the workday.
The instant you remove this economic bottom line, you will see with unmistakable clarity how detrimental such an attitude must be to the individuals suffering from various forms of affliction.
My problem is depression, and it stems from multiple traumatic events in my youth, so here is a thought experiment I learned from LSD. I have found very useful. I hope that you will too.
I stop seeing myself as an adult, and suppose that I'm simply a child. (I find twelve or thirteen is a good age to relate to, because the memory of that age is not too abstract.) What this does is it immediately removes any need to blame myself for the problem, or to tell myself that I ought to be tougher, and just get on with it, and look at all these people with worse issues than I. The image becomes on of vulnerability, and it is a real image, and it evokes compassion towards myself - not through pity, but out of understanding. The focus is no longer on how I'm going to get on with my life, which is the frame we're used to seeing mental health problems through. Instead I get a much simpler picture. This is the problem. This is how I feel. This is why. We can see that children are not separate from their bodies and emotions. Well neither are adults. And neither am I.
The next step is detachment. Suppose this is not me. Suppose it's somebody else. Pretend for a moment that I am a mental health professional, a psychologist or a doctor. Now what am I going to recommend for this patient? How would I talk to this kid, and what would he say?
He would say: "I don't enjoy anything, I don't want to play, I don't want to work, I'm too tired."
I woulds say, "So then what do you want to do?"
It isn't a trick question. The answer is almost always the same: I want to do nothing.
So then, rest.
It's just as you would treat any other debilitating disease. You would not tell someone with a virus to soldier on into the workforce until it went away, you would tell them to get some bed rest for a few days or a few weeks, to not expend energy and to let the body correct is own biorhythms. So someone please tell me why is it that this is exactly what we're doing for depression, and other mental health problems?
I was supposed to do so much stuff today, but instead I stayed in bed and let my problems swallow me. I didn't feel happy. But I didn't feel stressed either. I thought of all the people who say they can't get out of bed in the morning and, well, isn't your body trying to tell you something? And it occurred to me, as I thought about how it felt to be happy all those years ago, and how that compares to this. Wait a minute. I'm sick.
Perhaps this problem has gone on for years and years - for what stretch of time in that period have you listened to what your body wanted, and just done nothing? I don't mean sit around watching YouTube videos and playing videogames or whatever. I mean dormancy. Sleep, and otherwise lying down expending no energy. If you had the luxury for even a few days, did you find that your thoughts turned from suicidal ideation, to what is really beneath it: the desire to rest, and be free of the enormous strain that is being placed upon your mind?
But there are practicalities. I need to work so that I can eat and have a bed I can sleep in at all. If this is your obstacle, and it's certainly mine, then you need to see society with its medicines and its paradigms not as your friend, but as your enemy. You need to frame this problem so you can figure out a way around it. You need to be aware of it, otherwise it's going to keep smothering you. Stress is poison to a person suffering from depression, or PTSD, or whatever. Chances are you're already enduring increased cortisol levels from prior moments of trauma, abuse, neglect or just prolonged periods of severe anxiety. Neuroscience shows us that a person's interest in things decreases as their level of stress increases. If your condition is already causing you very high levels of stress, adding to that is going to make you want to kill yourself. It's just cause and effect.
If, in full knowledge of these things, you would not tell a twelve-year-old to man up and get on with the day, you should not be telling yourself that either. If you are, it's because you're seeing it from society's point of view, not your own.
I don't mean to say that rest is the only thing a person needs. But considering it's almost completely overlooked in mental health, I at least want to bring it to people's attention.
An enormous part of this failing must come from our tendency to only recognise a problem if we can detect it physically. This culture is catching up very slowly with the idea that a person can be afflicted by mental health issues. It is astounding how many people think that depression is not real, or that it's something you can snap out of. But even those who don't will almost universally focus not on the problem in and of itself, but on the effect it has on a person's life, i.e. their productivity to society.
This is why we prefer to medicate rather than to treat. Like giving someone amphetamines when they catch a cold; it has nothing to do with curing the illness, in fact it will likely prolong it. But if we have suppressed the symptoms, then you can get through the workday.
The instant you remove this economic bottom line, you will see with unmistakable clarity how detrimental such an attitude must be to the individuals suffering from various forms of affliction.
My problem is depression, and it stems from multiple traumatic events in my youth, so here is a thought experiment I learned from LSD. I have found very useful. I hope that you will too.
I stop seeing myself as an adult, and suppose that I'm simply a child. (I find twelve or thirteen is a good age to relate to, because the memory of that age is not too abstract.) What this does is it immediately removes any need to blame myself for the problem, or to tell myself that I ought to be tougher, and just get on with it, and look at all these people with worse issues than I. The image becomes on of vulnerability, and it is a real image, and it evokes compassion towards myself - not through pity, but out of understanding. The focus is no longer on how I'm going to get on with my life, which is the frame we're used to seeing mental health problems through. Instead I get a much simpler picture. This is the problem. This is how I feel. This is why. We can see that children are not separate from their bodies and emotions. Well neither are adults. And neither am I.
The next step is detachment. Suppose this is not me. Suppose it's somebody else. Pretend for a moment that I am a mental health professional, a psychologist or a doctor. Now what am I going to recommend for this patient? How would I talk to this kid, and what would he say?
He would say: "I don't enjoy anything, I don't want to play, I don't want to work, I'm too tired."
I woulds say, "So then what do you want to do?"
It isn't a trick question. The answer is almost always the same: I want to do nothing.
So then, rest.
It's just as you would treat any other debilitating disease. You would not tell someone with a virus to soldier on into the workforce until it went away, you would tell them to get some bed rest for a few days or a few weeks, to not expend energy and to let the body correct is own biorhythms. So someone please tell me why is it that this is exactly what we're doing for depression, and other mental health problems?
I was supposed to do so much stuff today, but instead I stayed in bed and let my problems swallow me. I didn't feel happy. But I didn't feel stressed either. I thought of all the people who say they can't get out of bed in the morning and, well, isn't your body trying to tell you something? And it occurred to me, as I thought about how it felt to be happy all those years ago, and how that compares to this. Wait a minute. I'm sick.
Perhaps this problem has gone on for years and years - for what stretch of time in that period have you listened to what your body wanted, and just done nothing? I don't mean sit around watching YouTube videos and playing videogames or whatever. I mean dormancy. Sleep, and otherwise lying down expending no energy. If you had the luxury for even a few days, did you find that your thoughts turned from suicidal ideation, to what is really beneath it: the desire to rest, and be free of the enormous strain that is being placed upon your mind?
But there are practicalities. I need to work so that I can eat and have a bed I can sleep in at all. If this is your obstacle, and it's certainly mine, then you need to see society with its medicines and its paradigms not as your friend, but as your enemy. You need to frame this problem so you can figure out a way around it. You need to be aware of it, otherwise it's going to keep smothering you. Stress is poison to a person suffering from depression, or PTSD, or whatever. Chances are you're already enduring increased cortisol levels from prior moments of trauma, abuse, neglect or just prolonged periods of severe anxiety. Neuroscience shows us that a person's interest in things decreases as their level of stress increases. If your condition is already causing you very high levels of stress, adding to that is going to make you want to kill yourself. It's just cause and effect.
If, in full knowledge of these things, you would not tell a twelve-year-old to man up and get on with the day, you should not be telling yourself that either. If you are, it's because you're seeing it from society's point of view, not your own.
I don't mean to say that rest is the only thing a person needs. But considering it's almost completely overlooked in mental health, I at least want to bring it to people's attention.
