Mind Over Matter

Shattering the Glass Ceiling of Mental Health Concerns

For many, discussing mental health concerns can be compared to talking about a deep, dark family secret—the one everyone wants to keep hidden. While some believe that if they speak about it, a matter becomes more real, by that same token, ignoring mental health (or other concerns) doesn’t mean it will simply disappear.

Studies show that suppressing something is not only quite difficult to do, but it manifests the very thing one is trying to suppress. The more someone tries to suppress sadness, anxiety, depression, frustration or anger, the more those things manifest in their lives. Below are three primary reasons why we shouldn’t allow the stigma regarding mental health to make us hide or bury mental health concerns.

Viewing mental health as a dirty little secret can be harmful to your health. There was a study conducted on the effects stress has on the body. For years, doctors have been telling their patients that stress kills. However, this study proved that it’s actually your perception of stress that kills. Psychology researchers examined two groups of people. In one group, the interviewers told participants that stress can have damaging effects on the body, including up to death. To the other group, they explained that stress has the same effect on your body that excitement does, and is actually not harmful. It turns out that the group that was told that stress can be harmful to their health actually had less stress, but experienced physical complications as a result. The group that was told that stress was no more harmful than the adrenaline one gets when he or she is excited actually had the most stress, but no detrimental physical symptoms. So, as it turns out, stress can be harmful—but only if you view it as such.

We must normalize it to neutralize it because it truly is normal. If you have a functional brain, it will experience a variety of emotions, and they all won’t be happy. Viewing anxiety and depression as something that is abnormal is the very thing that gives it the most power. Normalizing it allows people to be more transparent about what is hurting them so they can seek help as early as possible.

Ignoring our needs decreases our opportunities for our support systems to offer support. It is human nature for people to want their emotional needs met. We want to be in environments that foster love, acceptance, security, empathy and self-disclosure. This means that we want to be able to feel secure enough to talk about our pain, knowing that it will be met with love, empathy and acceptance. If we ignore these uncomfortable feelings, we decrease the chances of giving our support systems a chance to support us.

Whether it is through anger, substance abuse, an addiction to food or isolation, people develop defense mechanisms to help cope with mental health symptoms. Normalizing the conversation about mental health enables us to be less reactive and more proactive about our mental health.

Kela Price is the Founder and Executive Director of Let’s Get Mentally Fit, a 501c3 nonprofit, whose mission is to provide tools to people who want to be proactive about their mental health. She is a mental fitness enthusiast who is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Psychology.