BBR #182: Changing the way we understand and approach mental health

Today we're sifting through the layers  layers of misunderstanding around mental health and self-care. Shifting towards an understanding that health is not a state of being, it is an action, skills to be practiced. 

Health is not an identity, it is the result of consistent actions. We'll get into the challenges of stress and anxiety, learning that state regulation as a skill to be honed rather than a state of being or a way to force discomfort away. 

Maintaining health in your body is oven overlooked as maintenance for your mental health as well. Understanding how you work, how your physiology works, is essential to creating and sustaining wellbeing.  

Get in there and give it a listen for more! 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

what is up? Hello there, my name is jessica patching bunch, you can call me jpb, and this is brain body resilience. This is a podcast dedicated to growth, human development and stressing a little bit less so you can go ahead and live a little bit more.

Speaker 2: 0:27

Hello my friends, and welcome back to the Brain Body Resilience Podcast. I'm your host, jpb, and this is episode number 182. Today, I am touching back to last week's episode with another response from someone on what words they would use to describe their experience with stress and anxiety. This particular response made me think further into the way that we understand and approach mental health, and what they said was I don't know if I'm the best person to ask, because I have struggled with mental health and what I would say is how to get control over my thoughts, or I have no control over my mind, or I feel like I am going crazy or feel crazy. And so, first, if you resonate with any of that, like I do, you are not alone. It is not a problem that you have because there is something wrong with you.

Speaker 2: 1:22

Mental health is largely a state regulation issue, and state regulation is a skill that is learned and facilitated by our actions. Mental health is not a thing you have or don't. It is not an identity, it is a state of being. Health is something you practice. It is not something you are or are not, even though those are the words that that's the language that is used a lot of the time he is healthy, she's really unhealthy. I'm not healthy. We acknowledge more the physical practices of health eat your fruits and veggies, exercise, sleep, hydrate, and even though we know these things are good for us, we don't always practice them, but we know that they are things to do to reach that state of healthy. Unfortunately, and to the detriment of most people in whole, these practices of taking care of yourself are marketed as a way to just get in shape, to lose weight, to change your aesthetic in some way, when they are just the bare minimum that we need to practice health.

Speaker 2: 2:33

And also these happen to be some of the most beneficial things to contribute to mental health as well, because there is no separation in mental health. Physical health, health within our body, is health. The separation only exists in the world that just made some shit up. There is no separation between your brain, your body, your mind, your body, your head and your body. They're attached. And if we don't know anything about our physiology, how we work, then we don't have a mental health disorder for feeling anxious, depressed or stressed and I know that there are going to be all of the whatabouts. Yes, there are more severe forms of these things that often stem from trauma and the body's reaction to storing and adapting to that arousal energy, and that's not what we're talking about here.

Speaker 2: 3:25

There's also the fact that, yes, we live within systems that are not rooted in health and community and well being or just like human centered at all. When we are living in these systems that demand our productivity over our health and a structure that leaves a lot of us struggling to meet basic needs of shelter, food safety, lacking community, the natural response to these is a lack of health and well-being. And so, moving on, when we don't understand how we work, that we have a body that requires care and maintenance to function properly, like if you have a sports car or any car and you don't know how to drive it, you cannot use it properly. If you don't maintain service and tune-ups on your car, it will break down. And this is how it is when you don't take care of something, including you. When we think about our overall health and the actions it takes to maintain our health, it doesn't make sense a lot of the time to say that mental health problems, like when our needs are not being met, when we are not practicing health, that those things should feel good. It doesn't feel good when we are not meeting our needs. When our needs are not met, it feels like shit, and that's just how it works. It's not a mental health problem, it's a health problem. It is a response from your body and your brain to the environment, both internal and external. So first we have to learn how we work, learn about the physiological response that is natural and appropriate to the environment and input it is receiving, and then we can start to build the skills and practice health.

Speaker 2: 5:21

There is such a rise in mental health issues that are being diagnosed in kids and young people, and this generation of kids has been raised on screens, overstimulated, from the time they're infants, not learning to be bored, not learning to sit with their feelings, their imagination, not learning to self-regulate in that way, not learning to move their bodies. They're not out, playing in neighborhoods and all of that, and we then pathologize them and tell them that there's something wrong with them when their needs are not being met. Most of us lead sedentary lives. I go to the gym like four to five days a week and outside of that, if I am not very intentional about getting my walks during the day, that still qualifies me for a sedentary state or sedentary life. I can't think of words. We are meant to move. Our brain adapts, it learns and it grows with movement. We also learn and adapt to lack of movement and other basic needs, and the symptoms from that are what we call mental health issues.

Speaker 2: 6:34

Adults of today around my age or older, like myself, were probably not taught about physiology and taught by you know. We were taught by previous generations who also didn't know and were taught to ignore themselves and their needs and that passed on to us. Things like stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about, or children are to be seen and not heard, unless you're bleeding. I don't want to know about it, things like that. It does not let you know that your needs are important. It certainly doesn't teach you about how to care for yourself and what that looks like, what that means, and so our incredibly unnatural way of life is making us stressed and we wonder what the fuck is wrong with us. Nothing. This is a natural response to unnatural world and rhythms and the capitalism drone culture that we have been inundated into, that we have grown up in, where productivity and this culture where we work and work and work and hustle and prize ourselves for how hard we work and how overworked we are and how stressed out we are and how we have super high stress threshold, and those are like badges of honor that we wear, and the only cookie you're going to get from that is the breakdown of your health.

Speaker 2: 7:58

And then, all of a sudden, we're overwhelmed with anxiety, chronic fatigue, can't sleep, stomach issues, digestive issues, high blood pressure, constant tension, headaches, racing thoughts all of these things that are associated with chronic stress, and we wonder what is wrong with us. I don't know what's happening. I need to fix it real quick so I can get back to the grind and prove that I'm successful, valuable, have something to offer, deserve love, whatever. These are experiences of my own, and I know I'm not alone there. Nothing in the body is all of a sudden.

Speaker 2: 8:36

By the time we are noticing these symptoms, there has been a buildup of stress that we have not dealt with. These are not sudden issues that we just like have. These are the symptoms your body from screaming for help and attention, because we have refused to listen to anything before that. We have refused to just participate and take actions towards our health on a daily basis, and learning to listen is a whole ass skill again that most of us probably weren't taught. Health is an action, it is not a state of being. And those actions are skills that we have to learn and practice Movement, nutrition, sleep hygiene, nervous system hygiene, time in nature, learning how to breathe and learning how your breath is directly tied to your nervous system state. Learning to practice stress, because if we are under stressed, we will be stressed out by everything. Your brain needs the experience, the reference points that you are capable, that you have encountered this situation or something similar before, and then come out alive in order to feel safe, in order to adapt. Alive in order to feel safe, in order to adapt, in order to know that you can handle what's happening, in order to build that resilience to stress.

Speaker 2: 10:06

And so, while the root cause of our health problems may not be our fault, it is our responsibility to control what we can and actually participate in our well-being to meet our basic needs. And I know I'm saying that from a place of immense privilege, with access to the things that I need from outside sources to meet my needs. And we cannot immediately control that and we cannot immediately control that. What we can do is focus on the things that we can control, which is how we show up for ourselves and build the tools to move forward with, so that we have the capacity to build community and the capacity to change the systems that are keeping us sick. That is. I'm just going to leave it there. That's all I've got for today.

Speaker 2: 10:58

I am wishing you a beautiful week. If you found this episode useful, as always, please do share it with a friend so that they might also find some use in it. And if you are wanting help in learning about your physiology and how to build the skills of practice health for your mind, for your body, the manager stress mentorship is built for exactly this to help you learn science-backed tools to regulate stress and mood so that you can build mental resilience, increase your focus and energy, sleep better and then generally just feel better in your life. All of the resources for that are always in the show notes and you can reach out on Instagram. Send me a message there. I always love connecting with y'all. We'll do this again until next week, peace.