Positively Mental: The Gifts of Psychological Crisis
Many people who have survived adversity experience lingering challenges to their mental health, and cannot see beyond the pain that seems to plague them.
Depression, Anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other reactions to trauma, crisis and loss can strip us of our hope, and we may feel we will never find a way beyond or through the despair they engender.
"Mental health problems" have reached epidemic proportions in recent years, with one quarter of the population affected at some point in their life. It seems to me that mental distress is a natural reaction to the brokenness of today's world. It is often the most sensitive and compassionate people who find themselves unable to function in a dysfunctional environment. As a society we need to shift our perspective to recognise this, support them through their crises, and value what they have to teach us, for everyone's sake.
Depression, Anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other reactions to trauma, crisis and loss can strip us of our hope, and we may feel we will never find a way beyond or through the despair they engender.
"Mental health problems" have reached epidemic proportions in recent years, with one quarter of the population affected at some point in their life. It seems to me that mental distress is a natural reaction to the brokenness of today's world. It is often the most sensitive and compassionate people who find themselves unable to function in a dysfunctional environment. As a society we need to shift our perspective to recognise this, support them through their crises, and value what they have to teach us, for everyone's sake.
My Survivor Story
In 1989, following many emotionally turbulent years, I crossed the line to experience a sustained psychotic episode that leveled out to leave a diagnosis of "derealisation and depersonalisation as a result of severe anxiety".
Translated, this meant my perception of reality was erratic and I experienced myself as detached from my thoughts, actions and physical presence. I was often unable to perceive any boundary between myself and others, particularly experiencing the pain of others as indistinguishable from my own; a level of empathy that varied from debilitating to unbearable.
There were indescribably beautiful experiences too, when I could see the world and everything in it with astonishing clarity and profound awareness; psychic communications, synchronicities, and experiences that I later partially comprehended through reading about basic quantum physics.
But there was no control; no reliable reality. My world had become a terrifying facsimile of what it used to be and I was unable to function effectively within it. I was forced to give up my job, my children and my home, and not surrendering to the seductive temptation of constant suicidal impulses became my major challenge in life.
Twenty-four years later, living in beautiful Cornwall, happily married, with work I love and my youngest child just departed to university, I recognise my period of mental crisis as what Stanislav and Christina Grof have identified as a "Spiritual Emergency" . Although devastating at the time, with far-reaching consequences, and in no way easy to overcome, my mental health problems were a gift to me in the longer term; a catalyst for a new way of relating to life, myself and others from a deeper place and learning to reach heights of creativity and purpose beyond anything I had previously imagined.
I am now privileged to work with groups of people experiencing mental and emotional distress and to share my own experiences with those who want to hear them. It is only recently that I have felt moved to become a mental health advocate and use my personal history to speak out against the stigma and institutional harm that still casts its shadow over those of us who have experiences beyond the ordinary.
I am happy to share my history and insights through speeches, presentations and workshops, and also the poetry that has been inspired by my experiences.
I am now privileged to work with groups of people experiencing mental and emotional distress and to share my own experiences with those who want to hear them. It is only recently that I have felt moved to become a mental health advocate and use my personal history to speak out against the stigma and institutional harm that still casts its shadow over those of us who have experiences beyond the ordinary.
I am happy to share my history and insights through speeches, presentations and workshops, and also the poetry that has been inspired by my experiences.
Photo from NNelumba
