Don’t let your Head F*ck with You (Mental Health Awareness)

Hey, how are you?

Your brain:

Don‘t say it.

Don‘t say it.

Don‘t say it.

Don‘t say it

“I’m good—you?”

“Yeah good, thanks.”

But really, how are you doing—like, how’s your head—are you coping; is it clear up there?

Maybe it’s a conversation we should be having more.

Hey, I’m Lloyd. Nice to meet you. This whole life thing is pretty difficult, isn’t it?

I can’t remember a recent time when life was actually easy. When there wasn’t suffering. There wasn’t adversity; struggle, in my everyday thoughts.

If there was a time, it was brief—momentary, in fact. A blissful stillness— the space between thought and feeling.

For generations people have hid in the reticence of their thoughts, long before we understood them. It’s only the last decade that it’s actually been discussed: Mental Health.

And our heads are always f*cking with us.

[‘Mental Health’ – A person’s condition with regard to their psychological and emotional well-being]

Mind.uk have published statistics which illustrate the size of the problem we are facing. Here’s just a few numbers that stand out:

– Approximately 1 in 4 people experience a mental health problem in the UK, each year.

– 1 in 6 people reported experiencing a common mental problem – like anxiety, in any given week

– In 2016, an estimated 20.6 people out of 100 experienced having ‘suicidal thoughts’

– In 2013, there were 8.2 million cases of anxiety in the UK

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Medical disorders like Depression, OCD, and Borderline Personality Disorder are often at the forefront of mental health. They’re the poster of the issue, capable of ripping people from their very core – the crippling effect of which is no joke, and should not be underestimated. But dig a little deeper than the surface and you’ll find an inherent issue lurking in the darkness of not just the suffererees of these disorders, but in everyone on this god damn Earth.

Anxiety.

It’s the only actual thing that’s scale is both big and small at the same time, that changes; without permission.

We question our own thoughts, psychoanalytically. We’re worried about what others think about us, constantly. We’re worried that that person won’t text us back—Damnit, I knew I should have worded it differently. I must be boring then. We’re worried if we’re actually normal; if our problems are discrete and unique to each of us.

We think, surely—logically, we must be mad.

But we’re not.

And it’s these little details which make us incapable of living our ‘normal lives’, whatever that is, anyway.

You see, there’s a reason that the head is the heaviest part of the human body – it carries the most shit. This shit can’t be excreted. It’s toxic. And if you let it, it will even have you believe that it smells funny.

Our anxieties drag us along every-day, living rent-free in our heads; laughing at our lives as they unravel. So if you think your landlord’s a pr*ck, have you met your own head?

Forget the Coronavirus, anxiety is the biggest pandemic of this era—we just hadn’t realised.

There’s been this movement for years about how it’s okay not to be okay, which has done wonders for raising awareness on a global scale, and it has started the conversation, but does there come a point where this awareness must then advance into a progression?

If you’re reading this thinking, “What does this guy know? He’s not a doctor, he’s just some random dosser on the internet”. Well maybe I am just a random dosser on the internet, (most of us are) but I am also a diagnosed sufferer of OCD and I can relate to many of the problems, mentally, that trouble people. Even though my brain will tell me that my fears and worries are unique to myself and that nobody else will ever feel the pain that I feel every day, each of us, and the problems that we face; are more alike than we’ll allow ourselves to admit to.

Our feelings are a problem for us. We struggle to separate what is true and what is not. This eats us alive. But this irrationality is part of being human, and unless you’re on some serious smack, is difficult to suppress. But it can be alleviated.

Anxiety is also linked with neuroticism. Psychological scientist Richard Zinbarg and a team conducted a long study based on ‘scientifically validated measures of personality’. Their scores categorised the students as having low, medium or high levels of neuroticism. The students then did an assessment measuring the amount of which they experienced symptoms of mental health problems. The results indicated that the students who scored more highly on neuroticism were more likely to develop anxiety/depression disorders.

Basically, people who are highly neurotic are more susceptible to anxiety and depression—and that’s just the problem. We’re just so f*cking neurotic. All of us are.

We have more than we’ve ever had before. More TV’s. iPhones. Data. Opportunities. Cars. Clothes. Virtual sex. And yet, in spite of all that, emotionally—it’s so hard. How is it that we have so much but it still doesn’t get any easier?

Post-modernism has driven us into caring too much about just being people in our society, and how we are viewed by others. Our heads imagine that we’re in some kind of real-life, f*cked up version of The Sims. We’re so manipulated by own minds that everything matters and, as a result, we fear life itself.

Then we take to the hard-stuff in an attempt to, (circle any of the following) escape, alleviate or distract ourselves from our feelings of pain and worry. Or we suppress these thoughts and still feel equally crap about our lives.

At the other end of the spectrum, anti-depressant’s go a way in alleviating the pain, but they also become a problem when we develop a dependancy for them, especially on high dosages.

That’s why the solution was never encapsulated in a pill. It’s more abstract than that. It’s more likely by a foundational shift in our thought patterns.

We’re told not to fight fire with fire, but rather counterintuitively, the only way to extinguish negative/irrational thoughts is to alter our way of thinking.

So let’s talk about how we can think a little better, which actually starts with people listening.

In the ITV series ‘Harry’s Heroes: Euro having a Laugh’, former England footballers Paul Merson and Lee Hendrie, as well as Welshman Vinnie Jones, were all opening up in conversation about their struggles with depression and other mental health problems that they suffered with. Hendrie admitted that on two occasions he had tried to kill himself. At the end, he proclaimed that; “A problem shared is a problem halved.” having found comfort in sharing his issues with those around him that were willing to listen. I believe this is the first part of the conversation – to first let it out.

Refocusing our thoughts

By filtering out negativity from our lives we remove any potentially damaging information arriving at our doorstep. The news is pretty glum at the moment, so keeping that to a minimum is critical in abstaining from negative thoughts. It also involves removing anything that looks positive but actually generates a negative response. Like when you see a picture of a celebrity posing with their 10-inch biceps and 8-pack of abdominals, somewhere in the Bahamas, on the internet—and suddenly you are reminded that damn, I have none of things. I must really suck. This is a negative disguised as a positive because our heads are then telling us that we are inferior, and become insecure. Too often, we let other people’s lives influence our sense of accomplishment.

Instead we need to re-focus our thinking on reinforcing what is good. This will minimise our worry by cutting out all the bullsh*t. It will also train us into thinking more positively about the world we are in. Websites like The Happy Broadcast do a great job on reminding us that this life thing it’s not as bad as we make it out to be.

There isn’t a cure, there is only better solutions.

How often have you thought that you had the answers, and still failed?

Have you ever bought a nicer pair of trainers because you thought it would make you more attractive or cool, and then harshly realised that you’re the same loser as before?

Have you ever thought that if you just did that one thing differently, you could change your life.

Our heads tell us these lies because we believe that in life there is this cure—a magic potion that will cure all of our problems and free us from the wrath of our fears, worries and anxieties. But they never do… We’re too busy chasing rainbows in a storm to realise that there is no end.

I think that part of progression begins with raising awareness and becoming conscious of the uphill battle we all face when dealing with our mental health, but it only continues when we understand that we can never be completely free, we can only create better solutions to our problems. it’s also important to understand that this is a constant practise. In doing this we are, by proxy, liberating ourselves mentally—accepting honestly that sometimes it will be challenging. The mental practice of this acceptance and control will help us better cope with ourselves. It’s a better solution.

And then, finally, our heads start to f*ck with us less.