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Your anxiety wants you to stay anxious.
What is mental problems? Is it a feeling? Is it a bad feeling? Is depression also a bad feeling? Is it a state of being? Is it something that only scientists and doctors really know?
Here is an odd suggestion: the way you make things better is to cease worrying about things getting better. Yet oddly, if you can do this then it doesn’t matter what science says the problem was, however, if you can’t, science often doesn’t really come through either to helping.
Seems like a paradox, no?
Problem-solving for Mental Issues
Even though regular, every-day type of problem-solving techniques can work sometimes for mental health problems, there is plenty of reason to understand that mental issues are not occurring or are not operating in the same way as regular kinds of problems operate. One reason is pretty plain; even if a person learns to cope with the problem, for many people it remains annoying them and making things difficult. This should be a good signal for why mental health is something different than anything else we encounter, at least for how we understand what it is.
Regular problems (external problems) are fixed by giving attention to them and trying to change things, for example, like fixing a hole of a roof. Problem understood, solution implemented. Mental health sometimes behaves like this, but when it doesn’t most often we just keep applying the same ways of understanding things as though mental health is another problem like all problems. While for sure we are able to consider and do things for mental health issues in that ‘regular problem-solving’ way, the reason why those efforts work or don’t work defies that the typical problem-solution notion accurately reflects what is happening. In other words, if it works then great! But if it doesn’t work, then we have a problem with the way we are understanding the problem-solving solution—and this can become a real problem!
Think about it. If I dropped my drink, what is needing to be changed? The spilled water and perhaps the broken glass. My feelings about it really have nothing to with the mess, so far as the desired change; I can believe anything I want about it, the way I go about understanding the situation and applying the solution is the same. If I have a cut finger, what is asking for change? The cut needs be mended. Ok, simple. But what is trying to be changed if I have anxiety or depression? Some people might say everything, others might say that I’m useless, but what is that?
Psychiatry likely would say that there is a neurochemical imbalance in the brain, which is a similar problem-solution notion to having a cut finger, but when we look at the evidence, scientists cannot tell us what exactly is broken, and in fact, they are often ‘mending’, ‘fixing’, or ‘healing’ things in the brain only from a theoretical standpoint. Adjusting the neurochemistry of one’s brain, while having neurochemical correlates to having perhaps adjusted that neurochemical situation, it has no reliable outcomes so far as the actual experience of the mental issue. A good outcome, they say, is probable, but it really is random. If an intervention for a neurochemical imbalance is applied and it works, no one knows why, and if it doesn’t work, likewise no one knows why. Some people get healed and for others its tough luck! But you should keep betting on us!
If it works, then fabulous!
But if it doesn’t ?
Orientation
The difference in the types of problems, e.g. social problems (everything we come across in the world, such a fixing a wobbly chair, keeping your lawn green, or figuring out how to put a satellite in a stable orbit) and mental health problems, is distinguished by orientation. Yes, there is a social component to mental health, but the real issue here is that a solution does not have to be social for a person’s mental health to be restored or remedied. The social aspect of mental health is but one of a plethora of theories. Similarly with the supposed neurochemical imbalance, it could work – it is able under certain conditions to work – but it is not needed for a solution to be found and utilized effectively. This means that a mental issue it is not happening the same way as other issues. So again, what is happening when the usual problem-solving approach does not work?
Well, often, we think in terms of Operative Conditioning, which is an empirical intervention, i.e., in order to bring about change we just need to practice the new thing enough. But for mental health a real and very practical question haunts this method; how long would I have to keep trying to think differently or do things differently before that problem that I am wanting to go away is fixed? I need reliable income now, for example, I need to give this presentation next week! How would I know if I didn’t keep trying that way for, say, one more day, then it would finally work?
These types of question can create more problems, aggravate the issue because not only is the original solution not working, but now a person might think something is even more wrong with them because they can’t even do the offered simple task of thinking differently for long enough. Then someone might offer them more things to do to try and counter the problem they are facing because they are feeling worse about their situation of failing these solutions—and now they feel even worse! As a therapist, I have met many, many people who subscribe to this ideal because this is what they have been told, and 10-15 years later they come to me still are struggling, applying coping skills and so on, never really having the life the yearn for. I then try to help them adjust or attenuate how they understand what is happening for them.
How we are oriented on mental health has huge repercussions to results.
Is it my fault?
It is not in the sense that somethings we have no control over, but it is in the sense that this is what we have to deal with. It is not your fault if it causes you more distress to think that you are to blame. But It is if it is the source of finding a solution to your issue.
Right now I’m going to do probably the worst thing that a therapist can do, I am going to blame the person for their mental issue. And the counselors and social media celebrities of mental health tips and tricks everywhere will be cringing, perhaps even taking up arms, but hopefully only for a moment. We definitely are not supposed to blame the client for their issues, but when you step back and really think about it, much of feeling better is taking responsibility for one’s own experience, so it is sort of a kind of blaming. For instance, if I have a cold, I do certain things which are in effect taking responsibility for myself, I could be blaming myself, for example, I should have washed my hands after that meeting, but in another instance, I am blaming myself by the fact that I then have to take a day or two off, lay in bed, drink fluids, and so on. I am ‘blaming myself’ because I am taking responsibility for my condition, i.e., the sore throat is mine, it is the ‘fault’ (the sore throat) that is mine. And, in reality, if I do not accept this kind of blame and instead blame someone else or ignore that very fact of the issue that is me (my cold), often the sickness gets worse, and I feel worse, for example, I could develop pneumonia. But we therapists are not supposed to blame people. In this weird sort of way, we are supposed to help them ‘blame themselves’ but of a sort where it doesn’t feel like blame; if call it ‘applying skills’, or ‘self-compassion’ maybe this is what responsibility is in another light. We walk lightly; one of the problems can be that the person indeed has a problem of blaming themselves, so we help them to open up the harsh judgement that prevents them from finding their power; then another problem can be that the person takes no responsibility, expresses no agency, for the problem that is distinctly theirs, and leaves it in the hands of someone else. In truth, mental health can often quickly become a paradox, as I said, a conundrum.
Overall, in every instance of mental issue the goal is to help the person understand their own situation in whatever way that helps them, often through strategically shedding light into the paradox involved and the conundrum of what is happening that they are suffering, to develop a certain awareness so they can deal with it. If science helps a person to understand what is happening so they can deal with it, then great! If dealing with it means it goes away, then all to the good!
But again, what if the problem remains? Do we keep trudging ahead, doing that same thing over and over, applying the same method for problem-solution again and again, expecting different results? When do we look elsewhere, when do we seek differently, for help? Can we understand what is happening in a different way?
The Problem in The Quick Fix
The internet suggests that posts with 1200-2500 words with chunked sections and clear headers perform best because somewhere some statistics analysist said that number of words cover enough depth to cover a topic thoroughly.
Oddly, though, if you are interested or concerned with your mental health, then what is really happening that you might read many posts about whatever mental issue? At least for our concern, is 1200-2500 words enough to cover the topic thoroughly? If it is addressing the problem thoroughly, then why would I have to read any other posts about it?
There should be no misunderstanding about the relationship between the rise of the internet and social media and mental issues: they happened at the same time. And to get really philosophical about it, whatever was happening before social media, it is likely there was some other perfectly valid reason why, say in the 1930’s, people could be neurotic.
In any case, we have to consider what kind of help is being gained from social media posts about mental health. For sure, its (mostly) free advice, so it seems sensible we would first go for the low hanging fruit. It’s kind of an irony, I think though, when we do indeed get help from a blog post, a sort of strange miracle. I don’t think I have to educate anyone now days that such posts are for ratings. At least most of the time and even under the most empathetic expressions of wanting to help people, it means the post is for the person who is putting out the post, not for you. Or, the solution that should help you comes from someone else helping themselves and not really caring about you (in a sort of paradoxical sort of ethereal community kind of caring way; think of Walter Benjamin’s reproductions from the 1930’s if you really want to get intellectual about it). So, what was the helped that worked if it worked? Is the latest Tip and Trick, the Quick Fix of mental health social media really and seriously worried about mental issues? How could we tell? What could it mean when it actually helps? We’re taking it in good faith, so, was it the information in the post, or was something else happening?
Existence is Ironic
It is also funny and a supreme irony that here I am posting such a post! We can’t help it! Social media is like going to high school and talking with your friends about the drama of last weekend. Yes, socializing can be helpful and in many ways necessary for health, but it likely part of the problem as well. Oddly celebratory, it’s almost like I am creating a problem on the weekend so I can have something to talk about on Monday, like, that is what I am supposed to do. But I’d say the better explanation is, in a certain light, the mental issue is playing out in a person’s experience because the social world is part of the person’s experience.
Let me say that again: it is less that the person is involved with the social world than the social world is part of the person’s experience.
Here is another mental health conundrum. In a very real way, a mental issue is like an old saying: It is the experience of having purchased a bill for a bridge in Elko. The thing that is mental issue, the experience that is a problem, is you (the person) now going out there to see how great it is, to check out your investment, but when you get there, there is only a rotted a bridge of crumbled wood, two hundred years old, pieces of it barely hanging over a dry creek bed, tumbleweeds, with no one around. And now people are calling you saying you owe them money. And now realize you didn’t buy the bridge, but a bill for making the bridge, which cannot even be used as a bridge! And now you’re trying to find the person who sold you the bill but they can’t be found.
You’re stuck with having no way to get out of the debt; you have nothing to sell and have no reason to fix it so it would work to pay off the debt. Mental issues are just like that.
In many cases the mental issue is, as they say, the ‘lived experience’ of you trying to quickly return to the before times, before you made (what must have been) the bad decision, to fix something that is present in your experience as the representation of what went wrong, again and again.
Sounds pretty depressing, huh? A pretty anxious situation. Damn stressful at least.
The Quicker Fix Takes a Little Longer.
The Cognitive Model says that thoughts, emotions, and actions are linked together in an automatic way. Some people call this ‘The Hamster Wheel’ because it is a cycle, a closed system that just keeps going round and round. Because of this, when we have a mental issue, we think it is us, or to put it in a better way, I experience this automation as me, and the conclusion I come to, again, as a lived experience, is I that something is wrong with me.
For the problem itself, which came first, the thought, the emotion, or action, matters little. Only within the (subject) theoretical world, where for example, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy tends to put everything in the one bag of thinking (thinking comes first), does the question of which came first have any baring. But despite any specific therapy of what to do, there is a feeling indeed, there are thoughts that automatically go with it, and there are the thoughts and the feelings which automatically go with them. The problem is a vicious circle which confirms to the person of the cycle that the experience is correct, for example, the “correct’ experience of these feeling and thoughts is “being depressed”, or, the proper manner to make sense of this experience is “I am anxious”. When viewed in this way, light is shed into the strange situation that amounts to the experience itself. The particular form or cycle of feelings, emotions, cognitions, and actions correctly amount to an experience that is, somehow, comprehended as not correct.
When we are attempting to help someone with a mental issue, or if you are helping yourself, the goal is always to separate the feeling from the thoughts that reinforce the feeling which in turn reinforces the thought. It is not simply to feel or simply to think real hard and practice, but to notice that there are two things functioning together, at the same time, to reinforce each other. For example, this feeling is bad, this badness means something is wrong, the thought that something that is wrong is this feeling, this means something is wrong with me, I act in a certain way which exhibits that something is wrong with me, and so on. While some theoretical formations of mental problems would say that, say, depression is a problematic emotional experience that effects thinking, or a way of thinking that effects one’s emotions, it is more the experience of having a particular configuration of feelings, emotions, and cognitions that is the problem.
Without notice, no intervention can succeed. People can surely ‘cope’ forever if they want, for sure. The issue with this is that science and psychology and often partitioners that are not informed to this aspect of an ability for any intervention of function, end up reckoning the result of the intervention not working as either a failure of the person’s commitment, intelligence, or physical nature (genes, neurochemicals, or what have you). This means (logically) that any formulation of mental health that does not include an operation of noticing poses the person as inherently faulty, an inherently faulty person. Sometimes for some people this can work, the person enacts a prescribed fix and the problem goes away, and that’s fine. But when this does not work, which I would suggest is most of the situations, then we need correct not the theoretical model and the faulty person but how theory is oriented and orients subject to mental issues. The idea that all people for whom the faulty (medical) model does not work to remove the problem just need to try harder or need to fix their faulty way of perceiving things, translates directly into most people having a personality disorder, which, to my reckoning, is simply ridiculous. (See another essay of mine The Thing Called Mental Health.)
Those people for whom the notion of being inherently faulty does not seem helpful, and yet are indeed experiencing mental health issues, three aspects of hope can be helpful:
- Relaxation practices such a breathing and guided or non-guided meditations can help the body to calm by letting the thoughts ‘do their thing’ and flow by or through our involvement with them. These are called avoidance or disengagement practices.
- Experience the experience for what it actually is. One can intentionally center their awareness in body or what we call sensual experiences, experiences of one or more of the 5 senses, but including the sense of thought as a part of the sensual (sensible) experience. These kinds of practices are called engagement practices because the intention is to more thoroughly engage with what it is happening.
- Think deeply about what the situation is, including the experience itself as a body and thinking thing. Contemplate deeply and intentionally a particular facet of your experience, such as the notion “I am depressed” or “what is sickness”, “Love”, “hatred”, or a larger element such as a bodily sensation coupled with thoughts or images that arise that seem to be associated with it. This is another engagement practice, which lends oneself to the ability of integration when coupled with the sensual focused practice.
By any of these practices, the problem can be eliminated as a problem because, when oriented in a particular way, such practices can open up one’s experience to the possibility that whatever was a problem is experienced less as a mental issue and more as a simple living life problem of the sort that everyone, each in their own way, experiences.
Until next time, remember: You Are Mattering!