Philosophy…
In all mental challenges, you are there. But the problem does not have to be mental health.
You are more than there: you are the challenge.
In every type of help that you receive, it is you that are implemetning the treatment.
Yes, we can do drugs. Maybe someone else is ‘implementing’ that. But it is you who are intimately involved like no one else can be.
If you do not think that is true, then we know where to begin.
Stabilization is always about helping the person to come back to themselves. If I can talk to you , sit with you, be with you, and you come back to yourself, then that is what is happening.
If we need to give you medication, whether voluntarily or not, that as well is what is happening.
The issue is always the person that is you.
That is the philosophy part of mental health.
That is the reasoning of every approach to what is happening. On the ground, it might not appear like that is what is happening., for all sorts of things can be happening from personal loss, to unexpected life challenges, to appreciating the sunrise…. the permutations of existence are endless!
What is happening, though, in every case is you.
That is the philosophy part.
Science…
Science is just the systemization of things, of procedures, or empirical justifications, experiments, chemicals, theories, applications, and so on, that function upon you.
The key here, when we couple it with philosophy, is that science is support. It it auxiliary in its core. It is help, but help that is not required. It is indeed helpful, and offers interesting and helpful things for people struggling (you), but it is not required to find, achieve, and know mental health, that you are doing fine and that you are healthy.
Spirituality…
The sense we make of things is spiritual. So far as what makes sense and what we do with it, and how this sensibility goes with the living of life – you living your life – it is spiritual.
You might not think of spirituality in this way. More often, people think of spiritual things as having to do with a soul, or a spirit, or God, or universal consciousness. Often times we just associate awesome feelings and experiences with a sense of spiritual, or having some deep, meaningful connection with another person, as a spiritual event or circumstance.
Nonetheless, what it is to know, experience, and live, is itself spiritual.
Mental Health Philosophy
…is not really a philosophy of mental health.
It can be a philosophy in the sense of believing and adhering to a certain kind of sensibility that ones reasons and make arguments about, but that is not really what Mental Health Philosophy is.
When we take all that is knowable, all the permutations of knowing, all the items for your consideration, all the understanding and comprehension of experiences and life, there is only one conclusion to be had.
This conclusion is ironic. Which is to say what the conventional as well as spiritual philosophers have been saying since the beginning of history.
There is two ways of knowing, and when taken together we discover what is actually happening.
Whether you believe it or not. The very instance of sensibility that you are making necessarily falls into the description of Mental Health Philosophy.
It does not make you nor require you to agree, because what ever the situation you find yourself in, whatever experience you are having, of challenge and difficulty or ease and peace, whatever reasonable argument you might make to challenge what Mental Health Philosophy might be saying, it nonetheless accounts for your experience, beliefs, attitudes, and so on, in a presentation of exhibited, expressed knowledge.
Mental Health Philosophy is not a method or procedure to follow, because it describes and inscribes in an overt manner the procedures and methods that are already occurring. What we already are doing for mental health.
Even if this makes you uncomfortable, as though I might be telling people how to think, behave, or believe, Mental Health Philosophy accounts for it…
Because it is mental health. The thing that it is.