Reflections on Mental Health: Repressing vs Resignifying.

Today I write about a non-technical topic: mental health. My personal reflections on how to achieve healing. It's not meant to be professional advice, but to provide insights into the real path to improving our lives by working on our mental health. Reflecting on why the most common mechanism we use to try and cope with the challenges in our lives, repressing, is the worst idea and what is the alternative.

Before I go any further, I'm an advocate on always having support from a mental health professional. If you're into spiritual and energy healing, or life coaching, that's great, but regardless always, always, have a mental health professional by your side.

Just like dentists, they're not there just to cure a grave illness, but to make sure you stay healthy and in the best shape. Being in psychotherapy doesn't mean being crazy or having a crippling mental condition, it means staying mentally healthy!

Preface

I am not a mental health professional, I've been and continue to be in a process of improving my mental health. There are so many taboos around this topic: it used to be people would be discriminated against for working to improve this aspect of their lives.

The truth is, we all need to procure our mental health, not because we have a grave condition, but because the nature and dynamics of the world we live in have changed much faster than our minds can evolve to adapt to, and it is only natural that as a result of us constantly trying to adapt to this modern world, we need support to keep our minds in a healthy place.

Stress for example, is a survival response: it is not supposed to be triggered by us being so close to a deadline on a job task, but to our brain the smallest threat to losing our job is a threat to our livelihood and hence our life, and it is no different than being about to be eaten by a pack of wolves. But guess what? Our body and mind are not meant to be in a constant state of stress!

Repression (and Avoidance) as a Coping Mechanism

The most common mechanism we use to cope with the overwhelming dynamics of our modern lives is: repressing our thoughts and emotions, and that means also avoiding anything or anyone that we believe contribute to those thoughts and emotions showing up in our lives.

In men for example we confuse it with the philosophy of stoicism, and we've learned to repress our emotions because unfortunately, we are culturally conditioned to perceive those who show vulnerability as weak.

But it is impossible (and even a little absurd to be honest) to believe we can avoid everything that makes us feel bad: can I really jump from one job to another every time I experience something I don't like? Eventually, I'll run out of job options! What about friendships, romantic relationships...?

The Reality of Avoidance

The truth is in the pursuit of our goals and dreams, the closer we get to them, the more ambitious we are about them, the more capable we need to be to deal with difficult situations and people, and learn how to face and handle them. This is because the higher our responsibilities, the higher the stakes, the highest the stress and competition.

Shall I give up on my relationship after this big fight, or shall I have that difficult, honest conversation with my partner first? Shall I give up on becoming a Manager, or shall I develop the skills I need to better plan, measure and negotiate the challenging scope of work I'm being tasked with? Shall I give up becoming an entrepreneur, or shall I learn how to adapt to uncertainty, better manage my finances, manage my fear of rejection...?

Even if I decide to face my stressors, repressing my emotions we can only contain them so much until it all blows up in an epic emotional breakdown at the worst time of our lives. Containing our emotions takes an increasingly higher toll in our physical health: headaches, throat aches, acid reflux, tiredness, neck and shoulder pain... caused by the increasing effort is takes to keep it all in.

Resignifying

Have you ever heard a song that resonates so much with you, you play it over and over again and it makes you feel better, even if it is a sad song?

In order for us to be able to process something, we need to identify it and name it. Artists have a way of putting into words and images concepts and ideas so abstract and deeply rooted in our subconscious that is almost like magical when we read, listen or observe them and they cause us to have a realization.

Resonate... is the physical phenomena of an object vibrating at the same frequency as other. If you play a note of a guitar string close to a guitar, you'll see how that string begins to vibrate.

That "aha!" feeling we get when we see a description of a feeling, idea or emotion that perfectly explains what we have been feeling inside but couldn't describe, that is resonating.

And once we put a name to it, now we can process it! Now that we can explain it, we can take it through our mind, analyze it, understand it, interpret it and... change it!

It's not that we're trying to convince ourselves that red is blue or up is down... is that many times when we dive into our most deeply rooted emotions, when we bring it to the surface, when we shine a light on them, we realize it's not what we imagined it to be.

This is what resignifying means, not trying to force a different concept on something, but revealing it for what it really is.

• Why don't I want to spend money on myself when I have enough?
• Why do I want to keep saving money and never invest it in a good opportunity?
• Why do I try to please everyone, even against my best interests?
• Why do I feel guilty every time I put myself first?
• Why do I feel the need to enter into a new romantic relationship every time I find myself single?
• Why can't I be alone, why do I feel so bad doing things by myself?
• Why do I feel so drained when socializing, even when surrounded with good-willing, lighthearted people?

Final Thoughts

So the real path to healing our minds, to become a more fulfilled individual, to unlock our real potential is through facing, processing our feelings and emotions, to learn to name them, not by repressing them or avoiding situations.

A mental health professional, a psychotherapist, is a person equipped with the tools to guide our self-discovery and self-realization in a safe environment.

The dynamics of this modern world are so complex that our mental evolution has not caught it to it yet, it's only natural our minds get overwhelmed by it and should be absolutely normal then that we procure our mental health.

It should not be a taboo anymore. Personally I'm in a much better place right now thanks to it, better equipped as a professional, as a father, as a person. I am able to achieve more and benefit the people around me thanks to my mental fortitude.

I'm so proud of myself and surprised to see how I react today to challenging situation vs before: I can still be a happy, fulfilled person living the moment because I have done the work on facing my fears, my guilts, the ideas that kept me in a frozen response to personal catastrophes. I'm more resilient, and a better more present parent and husband.

This is why I wanted to share a little insight into mental health. If you have read your way through here, thank you! I hope this has given you and "aha!" moment and pushed you towards a direction of fulfillment.