Over the last few days I’ve been thinking a wee bit about
what it is in life that makes me happy, what makes me tick, what keeps me
feeling well and balanced. I think it’s
come out of the fact that I’ve been having to adjust my expectations of myself
a bit: I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather with an ongoing, unresolved
health issue – nothing major (as far as I’m aware!) – but enough that it has an
impact on the way I’m living my life. In
recent years, physical fitness and keeping in shape have become really
important to me, and a huge part of my identity (see this post about my days of
racing my bike!). Now that I’m not
feeling so on form, I’m having to accept to the fact that at this time in my
life I’m not destined to be super fit and doing intense exercise nearly every
day, which not only means changing my lifestyle a little but also adjusting the
very identity for myself that I’ve formed over the last few years!
Another side-effect of my slightly ill health is that I’ve
found myself choosing to spend more time at home, especially in the evenings,
when usually I’m out and about all the time.
This is in a quest not to over-do it, but I fear I may have been
under-doing it as a result! Naturally
this doesn’t have the best effect on my mood, hence the philosophising about
what I want out of life - which, of course, isn’t such a bad thing – silver linings
and all that!
So, what have I come up with? Well, firstly the fact that I can still do
gentle exercise to keep in shape, which is a lot more than can be said for a
lot of people so I should stop feeling so sorry for myself! AND that time not being spent exercising can
be spent doing other things that are important to me, of which there are plenty
to keep me occupied (blogging being one of them)!
I’ve put my vague sense of discontent over the last few days
down to being too inactive and just generally being fed up of not knowing quite
what’s wrong with me physically (if anything) and how best to deal with it. And it probably is those things. But still, I got myself thinking about what I
want to achieve in life. I’ve got the
best job I’ve ever had and it feels like the best things I could be doing right
now. Every day I help people on their
journeys towards healthier lifestyles, which is pretty much the stuff of my
dreams. But I’ve realised it’s also
important to keep alive my quest to be a part of radical change in the world of
mental health. To Western civilisation
move away from the horrifying grip of medical psychiatry and start treating
distressed people as people and not diseases.
At a work event recently a discussion about mental health
cropped up. Currently the service I work
in does not explicitly support people through mental health difficulties
(although this may be a by-product of supporting people to make lifestyle
changes for the benefits of their physical health!). The upshot of the conversation was that our
service is non-clinical, which makes mental health fall outside of its
remit. Anyone who knows me well (or has seen my posts such as Freedom and The Stairway to Heaven... may well
guess where I’m going next with this…!
Mental. Health. Is. Not. Clinical. That’s what I think! Some of you may be sick of hearing me talk
about it, but it’s something I feel very strongly about but have not put much
time or thought into recently, so now seems a good time to bring it up
again! Antidepressant prescribing has
been rising at great speed over the last couple of decades, with accelerated
increases from 2008 (the year the economic recession hit, in case you didn’t
know). Can we really be so naïve as to
think this is a result of a pandemic of the horrible ‘illness’ of
depression? No. People are more stressed because of job insecurity
and financial hardship; kids are bombarded with pressure to do well
academically, look good and be ‘cool’; we are all constantly glued to some form
of electronic communication, stifled by it without even realising, unable to
truly connect to our actual surroundings and the people we love. Are drugs really the solution to all of
this? I’ll leave it to you to answer
that question…
Now, to get back on topic (sorry!). I was thinking this evening about how my
aspirations in life, my dreams, have changed.
Two years ago I was convinced that all I wanted to be was a clinical
psychologist and I’d do whatever it took and never give up till I got there. How crazy that seems now that I’ve come to
realise how fervently I contest the clinical conception of mood and mental
state! But deep inside I haven’t really
changed: my dreams of being a clinical psychologist were born from an intense desire
to make things better in the world of mental health. And that desire couldn’t be truer today. And it’s no coincidence that I’ve ended up studying
and working in public health instead of clinical psychology: public health is
the art and science of promoting health and preventing illness, and it is
helping people realise how the art of resilience, the science of exercise,
nutrition & neurology and the joy of a balanced and meaningful life can
help keep mental health in check, and that remembering these principles and
treating the person as an individual when difficulties strike can curb this
mental health crisis that modern Western society faces.
So, with that in mind, I’m picking myself up, dusting myself
off and reconnecting with the things that make me happy: starting from now, I’m spending my evenings
writing, listening to delightful music and seeing friends; I’m planning to go
to Raw Fest next month; I’m exercising when I can and not being too hard on
myself when I can’t. And I already feel
a heck of a lot better for it!
The beautiful piece of music this post is named for
