Mental Health Awareness Month (May) still has a few days left.
Each year it focusses on connection, self-care, mindfulness, therapy, self-reflection, and sleep—all good things. Ironically, sponsor Mental Health America recommends using social media to spread the word about the importance of mental health—sort of like encouraging people to drive drunk to AA meetings.
From a marketing standpoint, their cheerful approach is probably best. However, let’s remind ourselves of common ways we undermine our own mental health. There are obvious ways—misusing alcohol, participating in violence, dangerous sex, isolating from loved ones, gambling more than we can afford. Here’s some free advice: don’t do that stuff.
More subtly, there are everyday words and ideas we use that lead us away from mental health. Unfortunately, many of them come from the therapy industry. Let’s look at some.
WORDS AND IDEAS
Like every profession, therapy has its special language and technical terms. Unlike most professions, the general public periodically adopts terms and ideas from that language.
Taken out of context, many of those terms and ideas lose their meaning. Examples include narcissism and passive-aggressive, each of which apparently now mean, to lay people, “selfish jerk.”
Some recent additions to therapists’—and, inevitably, the public’s—vocabulary are vague, confusing, or simply bad ideas dressed up in clinical vocabulary. Some of these words and ideas have gone through “definition creep”—they start out with a narrow meaning, and end up meaning almost anything. That usually leads to trouble for consumers of such words.
These problematic words and ideas include:
~ Trauma
Trauma describes the response to a deeply disturbing experience that challenges one’s sense of security and the world’s rationality, overwhelming someone’s ability to cope. Shock and denial are typically involved. Watching a friend get shot, for example, would be traumatic for almost anyone.
When trauma becomes a synonym for “I was really uncomfortable,” or “I was so confused, I didn’t know what to do,” or “I resent being treated badly,” the term loses its meaning.
Unfortunately, some therapists now say that prior trauma excuses unhelpful contemporary behaviors like poor self-discipline and low self-esteem. The public loves this get-out-of-jail-free card: “That’s my trauma response” is replacing “I wasn’t in the mood,” “I was lazy,” “I wanted to say something mean,” “OK, I’m not perfect,” and “I wanted to be self-indulgent.”
Result: less self-reflection and development of adult emotional skills.
~ Triggering
This is a current way of describing oneself as a walking time-bomb: “Since Joe’s infidelity five years ago, I get triggered whenever someone comments on a pretty young waitress. I get kinda mean.”
Most of us have unpleasant, even terrible experiences. We don’t like being reminded of them. But life has other ideas. You’re infertile—the streets seem filled with baby strollers. You’re unemployed—the roads seem filled with Teslas. Your mom was an alcoholic—the world seems to be floating on alcohol.
We can learn to deal with reminders of our worst experiences. Instead of using “I was triggered” as an excuse for bad behavior, we can develop the skill of tolerating reminders we don’t like.
If you have frequent conflict in your life because you (or your mate) get triggered a lot, competent therapy ought to help you grow. However, if the therapy doesn’t have the goals of (1) you get triggered way less often, and (2) you manage yourself well when you are triggered, what’s the point of the therapy?
~ Sex addiction
Most sex therapists agree that there’s no such thing as sex addiction. It’s a concept that’s used primarily by addictionologists and psychologists (and lay people) without special training in sexuality.
Some people labelled “sex addicts” have a diagnosable mental health problem: obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, autism spectrum disorder. They may be described as having compromised decision-making.
Everyone else labelled “sex addicts” are simply making decisions they or their partners disapprove of: repeated infidelity, massage parlors, porn use, online dating sites or sexting with chatbots.
And why do people do sexual things that they disapprove of, or that they’ve promised to stop? The addiction model allows them to say they’re out of control. But they’re not. They just don’t want the consequences of being in control. Without their sexual acting out, they might be lonely, depressed, anxious, touch-deprived. They might be forced to confront a dysfunctional marriage, or a sexual orientation they find unacceptable. These problems all deserve adult problem-solving, rather than temporarily medicating with poor sexual decision-making.
~ Erectile dysfunction (E.D.)
True E.D. is when you can’t get an erection under ideal conditions—a partner, place, and time that you prefer. By contrast, lacking or losing an erection when you feel guilty, angry, anxious, depressed, or when your back hurts is not E.D. That would be like assuming you had stomach disease because you got sick from eating bad fish.
With today’s popularity of Viagra and the demonization of porn (which virtually every American male uses, especially when young), many people’s expectation of erections-on-demand-regardless-of-circumstances are unrealistic.
Doctors now prescribe Viagra to young men who couldn’t get erect when drunk last Saturday night, or to men who can’t get erect while feeling guilty with a sex worker. Receiving this prescription proves the guy has E.D.; when it doesn’t work, that proves the guy really has E.D.
While all this misdiagnosed E.D. is good for sex therapists’ business, it’s bad for many men and their partners.
SKIP A.I?
If you need mental health support, skip A.I. and go to an actual therapist. Find one through a personal recommendation from your physician, dentist, lawyer, clergy person, or best friend. Interview several. Get someone with experience. Don’t skimp on the fee—as with most things in life, in therapy you typically get what you pay for. Besides, you won’t be in therapy forever.
If your therapist says or does anything that you don’t understand or don’t like, ask about it. Remember, therapy does work. You just have to find a therapist who can help with your particular difficulty.
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