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Sharing – Nature helps mental health, research says—but only for rich, white people?
See, it’s easy to tell people who live pretty comfortable lives what a difference some time in nature can make for their anxiety or other issues. People living in poverty or dealing with racism every day might not get the same benefit from an afternoon hike. We don’t know what impact it would have, because we’ve mainly only been testing in relatively wealthy countries with relatively wealthy subjects.
We should be considering all of the societal and environmental obstacles that exist for people when it comes to mental health challenges. I suspect it’s only very recently that we’ve begun to do that, so any of our typical “advice” about self-care might not be appropriate until we’ve done more.
Sharing – Better Mental Health May Not Mean Exactly What You Think It Does
I will say that his discussion around what people come into therapy for in terms of defining good mental health is often an issue. When I started therapy I wanted to not dissociate, because the dissociative states were proving to be more and more dangerous. But, it wasn’t like we could sit and discuss plans to simply stop, we had to dig into what happens right before I dissociate and learn better ways of dealing with that. (In my case, stress)
Even then, the desire to simply feel less stress is not always possible. It would have solved the immediate reason why I was in therapy, less stress would make me less likely to dissociate, right? But it also wasn’t sustainable because at some point life is going to be stressful. The key was not to avoid stress but to learn how to recognize it, acknowledge it, feel it, and deal with it in a healthier way.
So yes, I agree our definition of good mental health needs to incorporate much, much more than “not feeling sad, anxious, depressed, etc.” because we will feel those things again at some point. They are unavoidable, but succumbing to them without a proper response is not. We can, and should, learn how to do that.
Sharing – A Crisis Text Line Volunteer Tells Us What Life Is Like Right Now
This was seriously eye-opening, and as much as you should go read the whole thing, this was the one question and answer I wanted to make sure you read, because it’s a message we should take to heart. “SELF: Are there any positive trends you’ve noticed amid the anxiety? S.S.: Some texters realize they have…
Link – Some Parentified Kids Grow Up to Be Compulsive Caretakers
This is an under-reported, and clearly understudied form of abuse, growing up in a house and having to be the parent, but it is something that we need to be aware of, because it obviously plays an important role later on in life. “Kiesel’s story is one of what psychologists refer to as destructive parentification—a…