I’d be a rich person if I had a $ for every ad that I saw that claimed to make me:
“10% happier in 10 days, guaranteed.”
Or
“Calm my nervous & reduce anxiousness in one step.”
Those ads never spoke to me bc – 1) they were clear sales pitches & ya could sniff the desperation to get me to buy, buy, buy – right away! But perhaps more imptly for this post 2) thru the course of my MH crash & then ascent, I never felt overwhelming “sadness” or nervousness.”
I think pt 2 above is really interesting. If you grew up in my era – went to school in the 80s/90s/2000s (& certainly before) you were taught (if you were lucky to be taught ANYTHING abt MH in schools) that the 2 most common terms in this space were: Anxiety & Depression. Then, the deep “curriculum” that came from that was – Anxiety means an overwhelm/constant nervousness, & that Depression means persistent sadness.
These associations & explanations are a BIG reason why I never worked on my MH, until I had to – the crash.
I never felt “overwhelming nervousness” – I’d had a career presenting in tough rooms w sr. level execs & relished the opportunities each time. I never felt “intense sadness.” Certainly I had periods of being sad when losing fam members or friends, but it was never persistent.
These blanket explanations are another reason why, when schools have assembly programs or offices have town hall mtgs, & the topic is something like “suicide prevention,” you have over half the room that doesn’t think it applies to them. Another statement I wish I had a $ for every time I heard it uttered: “Suicide prevention doesn’t apply to me bc I’m a happy person.” For merchandising purposes, these simple explanations have been what’s been sold to us.
So this first slide is my reality. Even on my climb “back” I’ll sleep 7/8 hrs, & wake up feeling like I haven’t slept at all. Or as shown in subsequent slides, I’ll go months feeling an emotional numbness, or cognitive fog/malaise.
If we are going to help more ppl, we gotta get away from the oversimplification that: MH = MI = Anixety &/or Depression = Nervousness & Sadness as “the signs.”