Mental Health Support for Everyone
Mental health is an important topic that people fear speaking about. There is a stigmatism in society that having mental health issues is a bad thing. People can judge others for having mental health issues for many reasons. The biggest culprit we are faced with right now is the lack of knowledge. Knowledge to understand how our brains work, what ‘baggage’ or traumas we may carry deep down inside.
We need to remove the stigmatism around putting your hand up and saying, ‘I’m here, I’m in pain, and I need help.’ Mental health can affect many parts of our lives including, keeping jobs, making friends, raising children, self care and other responsibilities.
Adults have found some approaches to avoid, suppress, or defend their pain inside. Some coping mechanisms can include:
- Alcohol or drugs to drown out the voices or images
- Television or phones and tablets to distract us from what we really feel
- Eating in hopes to fill a hole inside us (looking for comfort)
- Starving ourselves helps give a sense of control to our lives when its chaos
- Working out and counting calories in an attempt to exhaust ourselves into control
- Social butterfly, makes us feel attachment from the outside world
- Isolation for fear of being hurt further and losing touch with society
We may try many attempts to avoid the painful feelings inside all of us. But at some point, in our lives those feelings will find a way back to the surface. We may accomplish and overcome our ‘bad habits’ and life looks successful on the outside. But inside we doubt ourselves, we fear being found out or caught showing emotions. Where does that fear come from? Well, humans are social creatures, and history has shown that if you’re not accepted by the group, it could cause your death. Ostracized from society was a death sentence ‘back in the day’. Now adays we can get by and survive without being attached to a whole community, but are we really living when we do this?
Using these coping mechanisms to survive the rest of your life doesn’t work if you want to progress. It can result in living in fear and avoiding things in life that could bring joy and growth. This can lead to a lack of confidence, self- esteem, feelings of inadequacy can begin to creep in.
In an attempt to fit in with those around us our sympathetic nervous system can kick in. This can result in 4 F’s (fight, flight, freeze, fawn), people pleasing, increased anger, resentment, trust issues, wanting to escape, scared of showing our true selves and more.
Without knowing it, some adults suffering from Complex Post Trauma Stress Disorder ‘CPTSD’. Which is not a subject the average person is familiar with. But it is real. Meaning it happens to people in times of continual struggle. The Complex part of it refers to years of this triggering trauma for the individual. CPTSD often begins in childhood and is carried through into adulthood and until death. Or until it is recognized, acknowledged, faced processed, and healed.
Generational trauma (also called legacy trauma) can occur when children living in these toxic environments ‘follow in their footsteps’ and raising their own children with these same conditions or exposure. Professional intervention is needed to overcome such challenges and come to terms with life events in order to move past them.
Some of these traumas and coping mechanisms can be layered within families. Imagine you were abused as a child and to cope with those memories as an adult, you can’t be alone. You do anything to be out of the house by working overtime, going to the gym, going shopping. When you have children of your own, you start to relive those memories as the children grow. You feel anxiety, anger, pain, confusion, resentment and so you avoid those children and you continue your coping mechanisms.
The generational trauma can develop within you from your parents and now into your children. When parents are absent, children take it personally. They don’t understand why their parents aren’t around and they can assume its something they did or caused. This can lead your child to develop the 4 F’s in ways like fawning over you and trying to win you love, or flight by trying to avoid you if you are always upset when you are around that child. Children begin to feel inadequate or unwanted and they carry this into their adulthood and their future families. This needs to be seen. We, as a society need to recognize that everyone is in some way mentally struggling. Some just hide it better than others.
Mental health issues have a stigma around them that people are ‘unstable, crazy, broken, different’.
But the big secret here is that we ALL have them. Children through to seniors struggle with mental health issues at some point in their lives. **
Other Online Resources
The Mental Health Research Canada advances mental health for the benefit of Canadians. Please see their website (Below) if you are curious for more information.
non-profit community mental health centers, Some places require you to register before accessing locations services. Please contact the locations for their requirements.*
Some services are available through phone or website, these are listed below.*
Breathing Room
Online program for youth and young adults who want to learn new ways to manage symptoms, stress, anxiety, and depression.
https://www.breathingroom.me/
Hope for Wellness Help Line
Offers immediate mental health counselling and crisis intervention to all Indigenous peoples across Canada.
Bridge The Gapp
An online resource designed to support mental wellness. https://nl.bridgethegapp.ca/youth/
Waypoint centre for mental health care
Ontario Structured Psychotherapy Program Central North
CarePoint Health
Ontario Structured Psychotherapy Program
Kids Come First, 1Call1Click.ca
https://www.kidscomefirst.ca/en/index.aspx
Get the right mental health, addictions, substance use health and neurodevelopmental health care, when you need it, so you can be yourself.