Mental Health is more than Mental – Part One

Mental Health has always been found through acceptance, understanding, connection, meaning, authenticity, community, and humor.

(NOTE* – I capitalize several words that have other cultural, spiritual, and contextual meanings).

What if the modern relationship with Mental Health, and the process of Healing, are not doing as well as we hoped?

In this three-part article, I am sharing some perspectives on, and potential practices for, interacting consciously with any aspect of Mental Health. I will also be sharing some Traditional Chinese medicine approaches to understanding Mind and Self in the Mental Health and Spiritual practice contexts.

I am not suggesting any treatment, or a recommendation for a clinically diagnosed condition. Although that is my day job, if we have not worked together in real time, it is impossible for me to know what is best for you.

If you are looking for support, I work online with people from around the world.

What is Mental Health?

Objectively, throughout history, if you survived an animal attack or a severe injury, or if your behavior was ‘unique’ enough, you could become a Shaman. But if your behavior was not conducive to the tribe at all, or you became dangerous, you could be banished. Or, worse…

Mental Illness has not changed in a long time.

If, throughout most of human history, you got depressed, anxious, or overwhelmed by Trauma, you went to a Healer or Shaman. Back then, your Shaman probably understood what you were going through, because they most likely had similar experiences. They could tell a meaningful story, provide human connection, offers ceremony and Sacred Space, authentic acceptance, maybe some community reintegration, and hopefully some humor.

They might even invite you to begin a Rite of Passage, perhaps fasting alone for a few days on the side of a mountain. After all, life has been challenging, for a very long time…

Mental Health has always been found through acceptance, understanding, connection, meaning, authenticity, community, and humor. Healing your Mind, Body, and Soul, has a long history of being sought through Ceremony and Rites of Passage.

A loss of interest in the Sacred, a closing off to the Mystery, and a need to know more than to feel, seems to be, at least to me, the beginning of Mental Illness.

If your Mind is only thought to be healthy when you know facts, behave right, believe right, and don’t ask deeply meaningful and often unanswerable questions, then what is a Mind for?

What is Mind…?

Speaking of unanswerable questions…

‘What is Mind?’, is a central question to the longest living Spiritual traditions that still exist today. Given that we are talking about Mental Health, let’s say that Mind is a combination of consciousness itself, the mental sequence of cognition, the emotions and sentiments moving through your Heart, and the subjective lens that we all experience as our ‘Self.’

Mind = Consciousness + Cognition + Feelings/Sensations + A Self

What Influences Your Experience of Mind?

Because of how we experience our lives today, I am going to ask you to pretend you are watching someone, ideally a stranger, on a homemade video like YouTube.

As you watch the video or imagine wholeheartedly, what happens to the person when you see them go through some extreme stress? It can be funny, serious, or scary.

Have fun with your imagination! It is really good for your Mind.

What happens if your stressed-out YouTube personality suddenly stops sleeping? What do the effects of insomnia look like to after a week, or a month?

If they started using sugar as fuel, what do you see them eating to try and keep going?

Big stress, no sleep, comfort food is now comfort fuel. Now imagine them on way too much caffeine.

This gets tougher…, now imagine them using alcohol to calm down and try to pass out for some rest. There are many other substances that can be used as a snooze button. You only need a snooze button when you are exhausted or overwhelmed.

Although that is a common journey for about 30% of adults at any given time, I am not speaking about this to point out something good or bad. I am not even offering an opinion about those circumstances or choices.

I am, however, inviting you to consider the experience of Mind for each of those scenarios.

Mental Health = Mind – (Stress+Sleep+Diet/Sugar+Caffeine+Alcohol+Overwhelm)

Can you embody and empathize animistically with each of those relative Mental Health states?

What is the subjective experience of each of those examples of burnout like?

What if your YouTuber had experienced profound Trauma as a child.? How would that have changed what you expected to see?

Have you had any of these experiences yourself?

I am comfortable saying that I have. Which is why I am sharing these perspectives and practices with you.

Mental Health is part of an ‘Unspoken’ Social Agreement.

As long as you live and behave within a certain group of parameters, you are adapting to modern life just fine. If your behavior becomes a burden or a danger to others, you will need to be healed (or nowadays treated without consent). Or, as has always been, you may be banished or imprisoned.

Industrial society faces many challenges, but our impatience with the consequences of how fast things are changing, is at the top of the list – at least for me. If Mental Health includes adapting to your environment, is it realistic to assume that most people are keeping up with the changes?

Our present sense of Mental Health seems to be, if you can play along, let’s all get along. If you can’t play along, or simply don’t want to, or profoundly disagree with the way the game is played, you must be crazy. And that makes sense, if your society lives in survival mode, is driven by a fear of social embarrassment, and is comfortable with 30% of your tribe (it’s more like 60%) struggling to adapt to their environment.

I will come back to environmental influences in Part Two. For now, I am suggesting that the boundaries we have about Mental Health are, to some degree, determined by society and not by the capacity of the person.

The Experience of a Mental Health Healing Journey

Let’s say, objectively, that Mental Health involves many things, but must also include successfully adapting to your environment and social compact. On many levels. I would also suggest that optimal Mental Health includes enough healthy social connection, guidance, and self-directed growth to experience your Autonomy and Self-Respect. Maybe some Self-Love and Compassion for ourselves and our ‘Self’ would add be the optimal aspect.

That looks like a good start.

But all of that is objective. It was meant to be. It is a safe place to start. Talking about your (or my) experience of our Minds, and our subjective Mental Health, is very contextual and profoundly subjective. A Healing Journey is a Rite of Passage – it is meant to take you to your limits. A Mental Health Healing Journey has to be different because it involves people who are on the edge of, or well beyond their limits.

Healing, by definition must improve Adaptive Capacity and not add to one’s Volume of Distress. (See Previous post)

In part two, the conversation shifts to subjective experiences like Self Awareness, the environment you are adapting to, the biochemistry you are swimming in, and your opportunities to befriend all of those influences on the quality of your existence.