“Why is my mental health so bad?”. What mental health privilege is and why some of us have a harder time than others with our mental health
Managing your mental health is not hard.
Yeeeeep. I said that.
But the world has made it really hard.
Getting better and healing your mental health often feels like this - on and on and on. A loooong road that leaves you wondering - “Where the hell is the finish line????!!?!?”
There are a few core common elements seen in the research and in my clients that put people at a great advantage for a mentally healthy life. And most of those elements are not under our control. I’m talking about the families we’re born into and the support available to us in the past and in the present.
A supportive family unit who are emotionally open, warm and regulated with firm boundaries (firm, but warm!) with parents who are healthy gives a huge boost to the future of kids mental health
But not all of us grow up in these families for a multitude of systemic, social, historical and intergenerational reasons
Having ongoing access to a strong support circle in family, friends, other people, professionals and healthcare services
We don’t live in a system, society or country that makes that easy to facilitate for everyone
Being able to identify and live out purpose and fulfiment everyday.
The Blue Zones work points to this after studying hundreds of communities around the world and finding purpose as a CORE common factor amongst the healthiest and happiest people all around the world
Most of us are lost and confused about our ‘purpose’ and what we find fulfilling, or we know what fulfils us but we are unable to do the things we love often due to social/financial pressures
Now - the key point to this blog post is not to point out what is easy and that people need to just work harder to better themselves.
It’s the opposite.
Me wondering if the universe will get its sh*t together and stop blaming individual people for big systemic problems
As a therapist working in mental health over the past decade, I have witnessed people and families pull up their bootstraps and try and try to heal and develop skills they need to move onto building a life they deserve. And so many of them do - which is what makes my job magical.
But so many are bound by the factors above (mainly financial) that it makes it almost impossible to receive the support and healthcare they need and want.
The good news is that we are able to take ownership and responsibility over our lives do heal and remodel our pasts (including our family upbringings) , build our own support networks and create a life that fulfils us.
But we cannot do this without acknowledging a lot of this privilege is out our control and out of grasp for a lot of people. We cannot place all of the blame and responsibility on individuals when the systems are at best making it very hard to progress mental health and at worst - setting us up to fail.