#whywe

Everybody is feeling it, no one is talking about it and it’s the elephant in the room. Growth isn’t found in comfort and we very rarely learn through comfort.

Although we have found new ways to cope in the pandemic, it has highlighted chasms, a difference between people, their view points and opinions. The pandemic is driving poor health and risk through mental health.

In the pandemic, mental health has affected us all. People who have been disadvantaged by the pandemic, people who are facing uncertainty. Also, in the pandemic, those people like me with pre-existing medical conditions, or those who experienced loss and isolation from the pandemic, and people from diverse racial backgrounds, who have been some of the worst affected.

But the pandemic hasn’t just thrown up inequalities between us, when it comes to mental health, you assume you have it in abundance until something happens, then you realise you don’t and you struggle to cope.

While the virus is still out there, the mental health impact will continue to run. We all have an opportunity to put mental health at the heart of our lives, and to focus on mental health prevention. We should want to improve our mental health. It needs to be at the heart of our decisions, in how we recover and how we move forward.

As we are continuing to see, the social and economic consequences are continuing to increase disparities and divisions in health further, but we’re also not done, the virus is on the rise again and that is not helping with mental health.

Mental health needs to be pivotal to our lives. Ignoring it means illness will find its way in. It is something you should reboot, something that needs to be owned, responded and to be proactive on.

For those who have worked hard on their mental health and understand their own needs, they probably just need a reboot and for those who haven’t and continue to struggle with their mental health, they should start.

It is important attitudes and behaviour around mental health change. Mental health is the best investment any of us can make for our future health.

My books deal with mental health. You can grab paperback and Kindle copies on Amazon, or through the following link https://linktr.ee/Ilana_Estelle

Source: https://cpmr.mentalhealth.org.uk

If we don’t talk about, or address mental health, it doesn’t exist, right? Wrong. Mental health exists even if we choose to ignore it, in the same way not thinking about healing doesn’t mean we don’t need to heal.

We shouldn’t ignore mental health. I have spent what feels like a lifetime talking about mental health. When you add the pandemic into the mix, it’s easy to see why mental health has taken a knock.

When it comes to my blog, I don’t make political statements, but I do point out the facts. I have brought politics into my writing, because it affects my life, the way I am able to live my life.it affects my mental health, but politics aside, mental health has become secondary to politics and physical health. Without good mental health, there is no physical health.

When we actively choose to ignore mental health, we shall continue to struggle with physical health and wellbeing. We may struggle to find opportunity; we may even start to spiral into the ‘blame game’ unless we’re already laying the blame elsewhere. But ignoring mental health, means we neglect our own personal needs and mental health.

And mental health stereotyping still exists. As a child, I was stereotyped for my learning ‘oh it’s just Ilana,’ when I was failing school, I wasn't failing me, they were failing me. Also being blamed for being angry and because I couldn’t get a grip on my anger, struggling to come to terms with something.

Anyone who deals with mental health issues will have stigma to deal with. For example, someone who is anxious in social situations and who may prefer to be alone is considered antisocial, or a recluse. Someone who struggles with depression is stigmatised someone who struggles from anhedonia (losing interest in activities or hobbies they once loved). (Source: https://www.theodysseyonline.com)

It’s also easy to be stigmatised for taking the initiative, talking about mental health, when it’s not popular. As a species we may shy away from anything to do with mental health. I don’t shy away, I deal with it.

It’s not what people want to hear, and it can be the reason people choose to ignore mental health, but that’s a choice they make. Deal with mental health, don’t neglect or ignore it.

Through my blog I prove many things. But since mental health has a huge impact on our physical health and our quality of life, if you’re not talking about mental health, you’re doing yourself an injustice. Ignoring mental health is a risk to individual health, it’s collective, someone knows someone who deals with mental health, who knows someone.

Mental health affects us all and shouldn’t be ignored. It is up to each of us to take the initiative, to educate ourselves with a conversation about mental health. It is time to wake up, mental health is serious, it needs to continually be addressed.

It shouldn’t be ignored because I have seen first-hand, how mental health can claim a life, and how talking about mental health can save a life.

For more info, or if you fancy grabbing your copy and so mental health charities can benefit, please go to the following link https://linktr.ee/Ilana_Estelle

“Anger is defined as an emotion characterised by tension and hostility arising from frustration, real or imagined injury by another, or perceived injustice” – Google

Anger is a spontaneous response to an issue or situation that is being ignored and is continual. When anyone feels anger they are non-cooperative. We don’t actively choose to carry anger, it is our circumstances that dictate the anger we feel.

It is true for me. I continually lived in a ‘fight or flight’ response as a child well into my twenties trying to deal with a disability I didn’t know I had. It was an acute stress response to my own situation. It’s not something I fully understood and those who did understand, made my anger about me.

Children also don’t actively choose to hold on to anger. I needed help, to be able to understand and work through my mental and emotional struggles and with a little more ease. To be understood not misunderstood, to have the support, for me to navigate my disability, to give me the tools to cope moving forward.

Any issue or situation that is on-going and is never addressed by the perpetrator, will lead the victim to carry the hurt and hurt if not dealt with, will turn into anger. We have anger when our issues are continually not being addressed.

When anyone causes others to hold on to anger, and there is no apology for what they’ve done, the victim will always find it hard to let go of their anger. As adults, as parents, we have to want to care, to help be a support, it is our job.

I make reference to The NSPCC ‘Full Stop’ Campaign in 1999. (Source: https://sofii.org). No child should have to deal with the anger they feel through trauma, neglect or abuse, or deal with trauma, neglect or abuse. Full Stop.

We define ourselves by the standards we create. Those standards are a checklist of our behaviour, ethics and morality.

Each of our also stories contain a set of standards, which initially our parents set for us, which we continue to define ourselves by. The problem is that most of us don’t think about the standards we’re subconsciously living by, even though we still define ourselves and that can be dangerous.

It’s a checklist we adopt, through our beliefs, our friends, our environment, through our culture and our beliefs. When it comes to Western culture we are also defined by how we are compared to others, how we look and through material gain.

We are defined by our careers, by exams, how many rungs of the corporate ladder we’ve climbed. We are defined by our self-worth, based on monetary gain.

We must learn to ignore others defining us, or us defining ourselves. It’s not healthy. We are not our attachments, because who we are will change through each passing day, through our emotional and spiritual growth. So that we don’t define ourselves, we must consciously be aware of the things that influence us and understand how those influences work.

But influences will and do affect how we behave and feel about ourselves, and how we will define ourselves, and will if we continue set ourselves up for failure. When we choose to define ourselves by the things that are outside of our control we will fail. It is important we have satisfaction in our lives.

All of these paths I mention will lead us to being dissatisfied with ourselves and is the reason why we mustn’t define ourselves.

We often bury our heads when the truth becomes unpleasant, but necessary to hear. But problems simply don’t disappear because we choose to brush them under the carpet. They stay until we’re ready to deal with them.

We also take a head in the sand approach, or a head in the sand attitude to life and that’s not good either. All are dangerous, particularly if we’re doing those things around our health. We do it that often it’s become part of us.

It’s also not just something we do when we don’t want to hear something. We ignore what’s going on around us to avoid having to deal with negative feelings. We don’t choose to deal with our feelings, but switching off isn’t great either because that leads to an ‘ostrich attitude.’

We ignore information because of our need to avoid the negative feelings that we associate with the information we need to hear. But being an ‘ostrich’ only gets worse the longer we leave it. There is research to support this theory. Researchers have concluded that people ignore their issues to avoid negative feelings often brought about through guilt that accompany what they deal with in reality.

The research led by Dr Thomas Webb, from University of Sheffield and published in the Social and Personality Psychology Compass journal, suggests that people are actively motivated to avoid information. When we’re struggling we would rather not know how we’re doing in other areas of our life.

We go back in when we’re feeling strong enough to cope. We also avoid conversations where others tell us what they think of us, or our social skills, but in the longer term we can’t ignore what people say about us.

I believe that if someone has something they want to say about us, it is usually based on truth, therefore it’s important we hear what that it is. It’s usually done because they care and want to help us.

Source: www.dailymail.co.uk