Therapy is not defeat

simonalkenmayer:

simonalkenmayer:

It is, I suppose, an easy thing to see; humans revere thought and the mystery of sentience, and before they understood how the body worked, they saw that capacity for selfhood as being merely captured within it. But times have changed, and science has come to the fore. We now know that the brain is a lump of meat, that thoughts have physical configurations, that electrochemical signals can be vulnerable to the smallest of things – even microscopic bacteria.

Thought is not magical. The goo in your skull is not unique and has no significance by itself. What makes you special is the one-of-a-kind arrangement of all these atoms that compose you, and how they all harmonize to produce consistent traits that can be defined as “you”. So please, let us demystify the brain, the mind, or thought in general.

Let us acknowledge that the brain is a physical capsule and is a part of your body, that it can lose optimal functioning due to diet, activity levels, and medical conditions like disease. Let us acknowledge that it can atrophy from lack of use. Let us agree, nay, insist that it can become fixated upon certain habitual thoughts, comforts, stimulus. It can become addicted. The brain is a physical thing with physical rules.

You would not fill your own cavity, or examine your own eyes when they begin to fail. You would not screen yourself for cancer, or perform your own appendectomy. You cannot work on your own brain, the smallest reason being that you cannot use that brain to work objectively upon itself. That is simply stupid.

You can hire a contractor with training and experience, someone who can treat the trauma, the repetitive thoughts, the invasive feelings, at the same time as they treat your physical effects. They can help you see yourself from the outside, help you over those blocks you did not even know you had.

Mental health is not something with which a few broken people deal. Mental health IS physical health, and anyone with a body ought to be receiving help and guidance with it. There ought to be magazines devoted to obsessive thinking, just as there are for nutritional health, advice on how eating can improve cognition, what illnesses can change how the mind functions. Skepticism of your own thoughts should be as skillfully taught as is mathematics. Deciding how and when to tell your brain to shove off, ought to be the foundation of this culture.

It is not a failure to seek assistance with the maintenance of your meat-ball. It is actually perfectly rational, sensible, and utterly essential. Anyone who thinks otherwise is afraid of what they may find lurking within them, or simply does not grasp the concept. It is not defeat. People who attend therapy are not broken. Just because it is “a tiny problem” doesn’t mean you should not bother to address it. Time and chronology mean nothing to the memory, that holds all worlds as one and all moments as the present, and therefore, trauma is never really gone.

There is nothing, NOTHING at all dismal about therapy. In fact, you deserve an award for being good to yourself, for taking ALL of your health, in its entirety, seriously. You are not “half-assed”. You mean business.

That is the opposite of defeat.

Medication is a part of this scheme. Medication is sometimes just as important. Medication for mood disorders and mental health IS physical health. It is medication for a legitimate illness. Especially if your chronic health issue is the cause of the mental health issue.

Do not believe that taking a medication for a mood disorder is defeat, or dependency, or “bad”. It isn’t. It is proactive and rational, and very very wise.

I’ve seen far too many people die from the complications of mental illness. I have watched far too many people hurt themselves, be shunned by others, or face societal retribution for being ill. I have watched them slowly disintigrate. Do NOT let that become you.

Mental Health IS Physical Health. It IS a legitimate medical condition. It is a real disease. It has real treatments. Embrace them and tell everyone who discourages you or put you down to shut their mouths.