Why Mental Health Isn't Just In Your Head

With the recent shootings in Texas and New York, I've had clients and students sharing with me how shocked they are by their visceral response to people and places they've never met or been. "Why now?", they ask. "This isn't a new phenomenon.", they say as tears roll down their face or their eyes become permanently stuck wide open.

Now, we are also of course seeing the anger and powerlessness building within the collective and the topic of mental health has once again become a prevailing conversation in the media and online.

So despite being on the tail end of Mental Health Awareness Month, it would perhaps be more important than ever to pause and ask ourselves what we mean we say 'mental health':

Typically we think of mental health as being in our head. I mean, the name mental implies it. But this is one of the biggest misconceptions; That by some means of life or biology we are mis-wired and therefore need to approach emotional struggles solely with talk therapy and/or medication. While these two components are certainly strong ones in the mental health space, it has truly done us a disservice by focusing only on the brain for answers (and quite frankly, so too has focusing on it as an individual’s problem rather than a symptom of collective conditions. But I digress.)

Instead we need to begin thinking of our bodies as one unit. What happens in the body happens in the mind and vice versa. Our nervous system, for example, is our body’s wiring in much the same way that we have wiring in the walls of our homes. This electrical system is sending and receiving at all hours of the day and is so adept at doing its job that without even having to think about it, it turns on or off, dimmer switches included.

In fact, our electrical wiring is so smart that it will memorize - and help your cells and therefore tissues memorize - the exact same sensations from an initial experience. That feeling you got the first time you hugged someone special- Wired for joy and relaxation. The feeling you had the moment your caregiver let you cry it out on your own? Wired to fight, fight, flee or fawn. (alone? abandoned? not important? not enough to care about? Wired.)

Our nervous system and our brains cannot differentiate between a real physical threat and a perceived threat of being left alone. And this is because the perceived threat of being left alone or unattuned to literally makes us fear for our survival in the exact same way as if a bear was chasing us. So, if I were to come to you with my mental health story of loneliness and despair and you told me it was in my head, not only would you be super dismissive but wrong. In my sharing of a vulnerable state, my entire body is responding.

And guess what. So is yours.

Yes, because we are wired to fire as social animals, we are literally attuning our bodies like giant tuning forks to whomever is in our presence. So me sharing that I feel loneliness and despair and don't know what to do about it will trigger your electrical system to respond. You include all of your physically and mentally stored reactions to the same thing and all without having to think a single thought about it. If you're in a better mood that day, you may perhaps be able to also cheer me up easier too. But maybe not. Maybe you've had a great day but generally an emotionally unavailable person because emotions literally FEEL dangerous. So you don't attune well to me without having a single thought about it.

So why is mental health not just in your head? Because its biologically impossible. We need to stop compartmentalizing our bodies and brains. And we need to stop compartmentalizing our life experiences as one-off situations that have little to no significance in how we respond to current circumstances.

If you're feeling particularly triggered by current events, perhaps tune into the feeling that's firing hardest. Is it a sense of injustice? Deep sadness? Helplessness? Whatever it is the answer to that question is probably something you embedded into your hard wiring a long time ago. It's probably so strong that you believe yourself to be helpless or unseen, alone, not important enough to be cared about, etc. It's not a judgement. It's the beginning observation to help you see your innocence and heal your "mental health".