Navigating the Inner world and Outer world realities of good mental health: managing the causes of our stress.
Would I feel more settled, less anxious about my daily life and my daily choices if climate change and environmental degradation wasn’t a daily reality staring me back in the mirror of my daughters eyes?
I wonder this as I reflect on the feeling and sensations of tension and anxiety in my body that arise as I contemplate what career move and job should I take next and where I should locate us geographically. Do I prioritise moving to fertile food growing areas, in preparation for potential food shortages in her lifetime? Am I irresponsible staying in a city? Am I ‘being negative’ or is our society in denial? And I wonder if any other parents have similar concerns on how their choices will impact their children in the future; a future that seems so desperately uncertain in a society that doesn’t seem to think our children and their future is a priority for us to care about, or not important enough for us to experience inconvenience or discomfort to our lifestyle ambitions today.
As I filter through options and choices I reflect on what shapes my options; what culture, values and ways shape this collective I live in? Neoliberalism is the ideology that defines the values we cultivate our society with today. It is the ideas that we are putting into practice and committing ourselves to daily through our participation in our society. Yet how much do we, do you, do I actually comprehend and are aware of this as a public citizen, as a community member?
How many of us are in agreement with Neoliberal ideology and how many have no idea that this philosophy forms the basis of what is shaping our day-to-day realties and experiences, and therefore shaping our mental health realities?
It shapes every aspect of our lives and yet it operates often anonymously or unnoticed. Journalist George Monbiot in his article for The Guardian, 2016, acknowledges how it has ‘played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: including the financial meltdown of 2007-8, the offshoring of wealth and power, the slow (and purposeful) collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of eco-systems’ as he highlights how we consider and respond to these crises as if they are in isolation ‘apparently unaware that they have all been catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy’, Neoliberalism.
As these questions arise I notice how they effect me inside; the unsettled sense of relating to a society shaped by a culture and values I don’t feel connected to, that I more often feel unseen and unheard by, that I just don’t believe in yet every day I feel forced to commit my life to living and perpetuating just by nature of being in this society. I say forced, for there is no real alternative option to separate from the collective way, especially when you have children. It feels like there is no escape as any efforts to not participate are demonised or criminalised with the punishment being separation and isolation from either your children taken away or scorned by your own society.
We know how isolation is not healthy for humans, so what alternative option is there for people except to conform?
An effort and a reality that is central to my daily sense of wellness is being a good parent; taking action to provide for the growth and development of my daughter now while leaving her a legacy that reflects the love and care I have for her and that she deserves.
Maybe you too have intricately interwoven connections between your inner world ‘dance of tension and ease’ in connection with these outer world collective human issues? If so, you might be at a similar place to me right now grappling with how to, or what is, a good mental health approach?
From within this living body of myself in this world, experiencing my felt response to this coming together of inner world and outer world realities, how do maintain meaningful and impactful care?
As I sit deeper in my body and feel the interwoven dance of my inner world and outer world landing in my tissues and bones, I surrender to shine a light to acknowledge how my ‘mental health’ swims in this relational space, or wana.
I am interconnected in relation with the world around me and my health flows from what moves here in this relational place where energies meet, exchange and mould into each other and birth impact. Like a call and response, activating and negotiating my life force, my inner and outer worlds in conversation through and within me is shaping my experience, my felt sensation of ease and being settled in my reality, or not.
In the wana of my inner world and outer worlds meeting, in the transmission of them through my nervous system is, for me, a very on-the-ground, felt reality of my day-to-day.
There is a grinding tension. I search for ease. Guided by breath to mirimiri, I dance to move what can otherwise become frozen, dense, held to calcify.
Hidden in my loungeroom I pulse with my felt reality to ease the tension while knowing that if I was to dance myself in public like this, Id be seen as crazy, insane, mentally ill.
Push and shove, glide and groove, its all fun dancing until someone gets hurt. And hurt is all too possible in the collision of our inner world and outer world at times.
This felt hurt or confusion induces distress that courses through my tinana/body, through my nervous system and then flows on through
my nervous system to my hinengaro/mind and from there flows into my wairua/spirit. This is the living process of Mental Health to me.
As a human, this is what I experience and is what Im managing on a daily basis.
But where do I go to treat these outer world stressors that have very real impact and symptoms?
Where can I go and what action can I take to reduce the impact of the continuing unresolved and unabating and individually unavoidable outer world reality created by the collective lives on this planet today? Notions of mental health focused on describing and prescribing for individual realities seems to be the biggest illusion.
This individualising of mental distress is perpetuated by the dominating western European and Pakeha clinical approach to treating mental health which continues to individualise diagnosis, discuss and create treatment based on individual actions and compartmentalise even further the person into 3 components that we treat separately. We go to a psychiatrist or the like for hinengaro, we go to the movement person for the tinana and then we go somewhere else for the wairua such as religion or cultural traditions, or for some they have nowhere to go to for this ‘treatment’ or support. We also separate the Inner Personal world and sense of self from the Outer Collective World and our social, cultural, political, economic and environmental determinants that impact us and that we daily relate and respond to (this includes the effort of relating through denial).
Does the psychiatrist create a treatment plan that includes actions that remedy or reduce climate impact collectively or prescribe for their client a course of actions to create systems change so they are no longer ignored and disempowered when seeking health treatment?
I know my mental health would be different if these outer world stressors did not exist. How do western European- trained clinicians, the experts upon which all things are validated in our mental health services, impact on these connections between what mental distress people experience and the state of our world? Do these experts have any ideas how to treat this?
Through compartmentalising responses as a model of treatment while creating individualised focal points of ‘I’ we impose a sense of separation that creates a confusion for processing our world as a whole and seeing the interconnected fabric of our felt reality.
So how to manage, what to manage? If I cant stop mass collective destruction do I just think positive thoughts and create a buffer lifestyle of denial and throw myself at it with positive abandonment to alleviate the anxiety of my legacy, (one which I never agreed to be a part of creating in the first place), while the world continues as it is towards what seems now a global majority agreement ie that we are moving rapidly on a pathway to doom and leaving a legacy of hell for our grandchildren. Or do I procrastinate and chastise myself daily with guilt, frustration and hopelessness for living as I do and must to put food on the table and a roof over my daughter’s head and resent myself and my reality and the whole messed up world we live in?
Neither option is satisfying or takes me closer to caring for my mental health. I guess that’s why Im here inspired to write this, to liberate the unspoken, unchartered connection in the mental health space between a person’s mental distress and the collective social and cultural reality we are, by way of our society, forced to live in. While we (necessarily) focus on historical impacts of colonisation on different populations to write our policies today we ignore the present realities of our society that are shaping us. Our policies need to proactively and inclusively respond to what is shaping us now.
Otherwise we are always operating on clean-up solutions, forever catching up to where we are now and never being here in this moment responsive with solutions to today; to the destructive impact of climate change, of systemic inequity cultivated and championed through neoliberal capitalism that dominates every facet of the outer world reality of every individual daily and is paraded and ingrained into us from birth as being the model of success in our modern world.
Id like to know if any researcher is grappling with how to be well, how to feel mentally well and healthy in these conditions? Are our children being educated to perpetuate a society based on Neoliberalism or are
they being educated with an evolved philosophy that has been shaped by the blatant failures of Neoliberalism?
As far as I know looking at my teenage daughters education here in NZ today, it is sadly the former.
These are ponderings I have. Maybe you do also, in inner whispers or in screams?
To you who resonate with what Im speaking to I wish to end my sharing here with some tautoko, rather then just leaving you with the weight of the questions raised in this korero. I can only offer my personal insight and efforts im identifying in this living experiment of our modern world as to how we can care for our mental health in these times and conditions. And that is simply to commit wholeheartedly to your own daily efforts to tend to the stressors occurring in my Outer world as well as in my Inner world.
I choose to not ignore these outer world stressors, I choose to feel them and let them shape me and what I do and inform the choices I make. Just as I tend to my Inner world daily I commit to also tending to my Outer world reality with as much care and commitment.
Daily actions and efforts in little steps, be it through my conversations with other’s or the different efforts of others that I can support or highlight publicly who are ACTIVELY committing to and impacting climate adaptation efforts or reducing inequity.
I don’t avoid expressing and communicating around these outer world and collective societal issues to avoid uncomfortable moments, for the uncomfortableness of non-action is far stronger and more triggering.
This is my reflection, this is my offer, this is also a little challenge to us all to show up and be committed to mental health in both your Inner world and our shared Outer world.
Separating and disassociating ourselves as individuals from these collective realities impacting on us daily because it is overwhelming or uncomfortable is as dangerous as avoiding yourself internally in the same way.
I encourage me and you to commit deeply on the daily to cultivating mental health and wellbeing in our inner world reality and our outer world reality simultaneously, tend to the inner garden and the community garden with equal care and consideration and commitment. Can you imagine what we might generate and create as a society?
Share with me your feelings and thoughts?