When it feels like the world is caving in on you and there is no where to escape to. Drowning in our pain and sorrow, we withdraw inwards, our external existence is just too heavy to bear. Because suffering is meant to happen in silence, any outwards expression is frown upon. The further we retreat, the harder it is to find our way back, urging ourselves beneath our emotions.
Society does not want to see people suffering, it makes others too uncomfortable. Best to keep anything like that behind closed doors. So we created asylums, places where those who suffer, can be silenced even further. There is no treatment there, just suppression. If you cannot for into society, then you will be shut down.
If you are lucky enough to be discharged, you re enter society completely drugged up. Addicted to medication, whose side effects are what identify you as ‘crazy’.
The first line of treatment, for anyone who suffers with their mental health, continues to be medication. Medication that switches you off from everything, from yourself, from life. You become a shell of your former self. No longer able to feel and definitely unable to express who you are. Finally, fitting into a society, that does not have to deal with people who feel too much.
Pharmaceutical treatment in mental health, is all about preventing people from expressing themselves. Why? Because that, is what will ultimately heal them. We have to remember that if we are well, they have no business. So keeping us in ill health, is in their best interests.
And we have been conditioned to help them!
When we experience traumatic circumstances in life, we so often internalize how we are feeling. Because we are taught from a young age, to not get upset, to stop crying. When we see someone upset, the first thing we say is, ‘don’t get upset, it will be okay’. Seems pretty harmless, but actually we are preventing them from expressing how they feel and telling them that their feelings are not valid.
Allow these suppressed feelings, to build up over time and we really begin to suffer. Our mental health, physical health and spiritual health. If only we were actually allowed to express ourselves freely, instead of being told to see health professionals, who follow protocols that medicate us, instead of exploring ways in which to heal us.
Our healing lies in our ability to express ourselves, in whatever shape or form that we need to. Within a safe environment, where are needs are recognized and honored, where we are seen and valued.
But instead, we are shut away from the world, made to feel invisible and drugged up until we are shut out, from our own lives.
When someone is lost or as some like to say ‘losing their mind’, the only way they can find themselves again, is if they are supported and given the opportunity to feel, the opportunity to be seen by others. If they are given the space to express, to finally let out everything, that they have been told to hold within, then they can begin to heal!
