For many people their mental health issues often lead to a feeling of loss of control, helplessness, and despair. A key characteristic of mental health issues is an inability to act. Often because we don’t understand what is happening to us. Why am I always tired, why can’t I sleep, why can’t I stop worrying, why do I always feel anxious, have headaches and just want to be left alone. Psychologist, Paul Saunders looks at why we worry.
A good way to change mental health is to educate ourselves on why we have mental health issues. Knowledge is power is an old quote and yet relevant when it comes to mental health and wellbeing. The more we understand the why, the more we can do.
In my work with clients I always aim to give them the knowledge so they can understand the why. This gives them back some power and hope that they can change their situation.
For example, there are three common reasons why people worry: anticipation stress of a future situation; worry that we cannot met expectations – of ourselves or of others; worry due to dissatisfaction such as in present lifestyle or relationships. By understanding why, you worry can help you think about how you can fix it. Once people know why they can then act.
Now some may view this approach as simplistic as mental health is often viewed as a complex issue. Since Freud, one of the fathers of psychology, there have been lots of different theories about mental health and why people suffer from mental health. The different theories have often confused people and made the issue complex for people to understand. The complexity is often caused by a lack of knowledge of how our brain works. Over the last few decades, as technology and neuroscience has advanced, we have been able to understand how the brain functions in a normal state and what happens when we have mental health issues. For example, we can now see how the brains executive functions such as planning, problem solving and thinking stop functioning effectively when we have too much anxiety or depression. This is why such issues create people to feel helpless and sense a loss of control.
When we teach people about their brain and why it happens it helps them see it is not fixed, not purely genetic, and that they can change. When they understand why they worry and how the brain changes when we do worry, they can explore ways to prevent worry or learn how to replace the worry with alternative feelings. These alternatives change the brains activities, allowing us to think again, solve our problems and feel back in control.
Once we understand why, we can take action to change.
Paul Saunders
Psychologist
LN Consulting
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