A Well Mind

The Tools for Attaining Mental Wellbeing

Lisa Parkinson Roberts, PhD

• Publisher: PublishDrive
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781775594864
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Nutrition, Dietics & Bariatrics

A Well Mind provides a holistic approach to mental wellness that explores how we can begin to feel better mentally by improving how we care for our physical health. Author Lisa Parkinson Roberts has struggled with mental health, and here she explains the tools and expertise which have helped her regain control of how she feels. Improve your eating, sleep, stress management and exercise routines, and ultimately your mental health, with this essential guide to feeling the best you can in your mind!

PART 1:

BECAUSE WE ARE HUMAN

CHAPTER 1:

Shame

'You are imperfect, you are wired for struggle,
but you are worthy of love and belonging.’

Brené Brown⁶

A feeling I am intimately familiar with is shame. Throughout my youth and early adulthood, I lacked control over my emotions. I have experienced screaming meltdowns many times; on the street, in my neighbourhood, in my home, not caring who witnessed the ugly pandemonium flowing from my mouth. It felt so good to unleash the mayhem within, but then shame would descend and I would angrily justify my behaviour.

It’s embarrassing to think back to some of the scenes that make up my story. But I have worked hard to get to a place of knowing that my past doesn’t define me, nor does my struggle with mental health and wellbeing — just as your past and struggles don’t define you.

When I was working in academia teaching nutrition and physiology I felt I was drowning in shame: I didn’t feel adequate to be teaching my students health-related content when my mind was so utterly broken. Often I felt so inferior and tarnished because my mind ‘came out of the box’ broken, rather than ‘normal’.

The shame we feel when we don’t behave appropriately or if we don’t live up to societal norms can be debilitating. We need to overcome the sense of shame so we can move forward. And to get past shame we must employ self-care.

Self-care is crucial and can be defined as any activity that is deliberately adopted to take care of our mental, emotional and physical health. The health of our mind and our emotions is of fundamental importance because our mind and emotions dictate how we feel, how we behave and how we interact with the world. If we have a healthy and well mind, we are more likely to practise self-care and be able to relate to others in a healthy way.

An important point: you don’t feel shame when you have the flu; rather you simply take care of your body until it passes. We need to care for our mind rather than heaping shame onto ourselves when its health is letting us down.

Shame changes the way we see ourselves, and this in turn can have a profound impact on our relationships. The saying is true, others can’t love us until we love ourselves with all our imperfections.

Shame drives us to view ourselves in a negative light, and the antidote to shame is to accept ourselves warts and all. Difficult to do: we are so tough on ourselves.

A note: the sense of shame can be a result of mental illness and can also contribute to mental illness, in particular depression and anxiety.⁷

So, leave shame behind now, whatever your circumstances, and accept that you are worthy of self-care. Whether you are currently suffering in your mind, or just want to feel the best you can, my words here are to guide you to care for your mind. To protect and heal your mind is the goal.

Before we move on, I want to stress that I am not downplaying the severity of mental-health disorders — not at all. I have been in the depths of mental hell and have clawed my way back. I don’t take mental illness lightly, but I believe we possess a degree of control over how we feel in our mind — and I want to help you take control.

What is mental wellness?

Of course, possessing a well mind also connotes the lack of degenerative diseases of the brain, such as Alzheimer’s, or other dementias. However, those diseases are not at the heart of this exploration, so I don’t discuss neurological pathologies in this book.

Now, you might think that the prevalence of diagnosed mental illness is rapidly shooting up; I did. Actually, it’s not. According to data from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) derived from the Global Burden of Disease study, there has been little change in the incidence of mental illness since 1990. Perhaps we feel that the prevalence is increasing because we are talking about mental health now, which is great — but talking does not solve the issue. Regardless of the static state, the extent of poor mental health is huge, with 970 million people suffering from a mental or substance-use disorder in 2017.⁸ Those kinds of statistics are alarming and indicative of much suffering and mental pain. But how has it reached that level of significance?

We will explore this question throughout the book.

We must also consider that although serotonin is an important neurotransmitter and plays a role in how we feel in our mind, there is no clear way to measure serotonin in the brain; we don’t know if blood measures of serotonin reflect brain levels of serotonin. In regards to depression, if a chemical imbalance is responsible for depression, then why don’t the treatments that target the neurotransmitters (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors or SSRI) work for everyone? And why don’t they work faster? The health and wellness of our mind is a complex interaction of several factors.

We are generally exposed to mental illness in the media and public health campaigns, but what about mental wellness? What does it mean to be mentally well in the 21st century? Is mental wellness simply the same as not having a mental illness? Physical wellness can be described as taking care of our bodies for optimal health and functioning. I propose that the definition of mental wellness is taking care of our minds to achieve the same: optimal health and functioning. Before we meander through some tools needed for mental wellness, let’s discuss the stigma associated with mental suffering.

Stigma and power

After the birth of her first child, Beth suffered terrible mental anguish. She would be woken by her crying newborn and then drown in a sense of dread. She didn’t think she could get through another day. Beth had experienced anxiety in previous years but had never considered that she might be susceptible to post-natal depression.

Beth had what others would consider the perfect life. She had had a successful career, met and fell in love with a wonderful man, fell pregnant easily, and didn’t have the financial pressure of getting straight back to work after her maternity leave ended.

The first two weeks were fine; she and baby bonded beautifully. But after her husband went back to work, things started to slide downhill fast. She was soon obsessing over whether everything was sterile enough for her newborn, whether she was feeding correctly, whether the house was clean and in order. Beth was exhausted and before long she didn’t even want to leave the house, leaving her more and more isolated.

The guilt that accompanied her mental torment was intolerable. She was told that she should be feeling on top of the world, and she saw other mothers in the street seemingly happy and content. Her mother-in-law told her to just be thankful that she had a healthy baby and commented that women had it much harder back in her day. Beth felt so embarrassed about feeling unwell in her mind, especially because she had really did have an easy life, and the shame led to deeper depression. Eventually, after watching her state worsen, her husband took her to their local doctor.

The medical appointment was highly uncomfortable for Beth and she felt as if she was being treated like a crazy person. Her doctor explained that medication was the recommended pathway to recovery and that he would write her a prescription; her husband agreed that it was the best way forward. Beth argued and argued that she wanted to try other strategies first and that she needed some more help from her husband with the baby and some more sleep to just feel human again. She felt completely shut down by both her doctor and her husband as they told her that she wasn’t in any fit state to make those kinds of decisions.

I have experienced stigma many times and it is always demoralising. Like Beth, I’ve had someone dictate what I must do and take to regain mental stability, and have endured questions regarding my ability to make sound decisions, all adding to feelings of failure and shame.

Stigma is a terrible thing. Unfortunately, media has painted a picture where most violent criminal offenders are mentally ill. This may be accurate, but no context is given to the spectrum involved in mental illness. I argue that there is a spectrum for all illness of the mind, and those who are prone to violent criminal acts due to pathology are at the pointy end of the spectrum. Few travel there, and many do so with the help of illicit drugs.

In the past I have grappled with embarrassment, and been scared out of my mind when contemplating divulging my mental-health challenges to more than a couple of key people (clearly I have moved beyond that in writing this book). Yet ask me about the time I fractured my ankle, or caught chickenpox from my kids in my late twenties and I’ll go into great detail about how I stayed in bed for a week and spent days bathing in vibrant red anti-itching lotion. Even now it’s far more acceptable to speak about physical ailments than mental.

Stigma: a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person.

Synonyms: shame, disgrace, dishonour.

Independent of severe mental illness, there are a number of potential factors that can prevent us from feeling well in our mind: stress, lack of social support, loneliness, poor gut health, poor dietary choices, hormone imbalance, inflammation, childhood trauma, shame, rumination, betrayal of trust, sleep disturbances, screen time, alcohol abuse, unnoticed head injury, thyroid disturbances.⁹ I would bet that each and every one of us has experienced at least one (if not more) of these factors.

We may go to our doctor because we feel discomfort in our mind, and at our consultation our doctor might consider our set of symptoms and diagnose a disorder. It’s not that simple, as we see through Beth’s story. Beth knew what she needed. She needed support and help with her newborn. Instead she had her power taken from her.

And so, many factors can contribute to an unwell mind and can lead to symptoms listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), used worldwide by clinicians and psychiatrists to diagnose mental illness. The current version DSM 5 has received much criticism in the psychological health arena, with assertions that it will lead to ‘massive over diagnosis and harmful over medication’.¹⁰

The gene-based model embraced in allopathic medicine would have us believe that if we are sick or suffering with a broken mind, we are lumped with that for life; it’s in our genes, right? No. We have an element of control over genetic predisposition. We can both prevent and heal.

No such thing as normal

I’m sure we can all think of people who seemingly have it all together? But do they really? Struggle in our mind is part of living, so you can be sure that everyone will struggle internally. To be human is profoundly hard.

Also, we can assume that none of us is unique in terms of what we struggle with, but we do have different ways of showing our struggle. For example, I tend to be stoic in front of others, hiding behind a mask of ‘It’ll be right’ even when nothing feels like it will be right again. Others may call a friend and cry, or seek therapy, or self-soothe in addictions (I am prone to this as well), or hide behind rigid and controlling behaviour. We all have a defensive scaffold so we can hide and withdraw. These are our coping mechanisms.

I have been told by those who haven’t lived with me, but are aware of my diagnosis, that I appear so ‘normal’. It makes me curious as to what the collective definition of ‘normal’ is.

I’m absolutely passionate about this: when it comes to mental health, there is no normal. In fact, a study published in 2018, The Myth of Optimality in Clinical Neuroscience,¹¹ by Yale University Psychology Department, debunked the term ‘normal’. The authors make an impressive argument, stating that differences and variety in living species (the same species) are far more common than uniformity.

The authors conclude that despite popular belief, no universally optimal profile of brain functioning exists. And it gets better when they state: ‘we propose that, instead of examining behaviours in isolation, psychiatric illnesses can be best understood through the study of domains of functioning and associated [complex] patterns of variation across distributed brain systems.’

What this means is that attempting to define a people by their divergence from some model, from a psychiatric perspective, is a really sad way of disempowering that person. How can that person connect with their true self, if their true self is not considered normal?

We may go to a doctor with symptoms of anxiety, and then be assessed in a linear, one-size-fits-all approach, all while the world is expansive and in a perpetual s...