Neglecting yourself

We have a terrible history of neglecting ourselves physically and mentally.

Few of us have healthy physical routines and even fewer, have good mental health practices, instead buying into the notion that 'putting your head down and bum up' is what you need to do.

Fortunately, good mental health practices are becoming more mainstream as we evolve and understand what we need to thrive as humans.

For this article I think it's important to highlight what I believe are the reasons behind our reluctance or perhaps ignorance to good mental health practices. Reason that are somewhat interwoven with each other and hopefully they open you to some blind spots you may have within yourself.

Firstly, Cultural or societal behaviours;

Where I'm from in Australia, we have sayings such as 'shell be right' and 'dust yourself off' in situations that are tough or challenging.

The intent here is to assure the person they will be ok and in essence they likely will be but in these types of moments, we dismiss the source of pain.

This approach can start from being a toddler when a child falls over, perhaps hurts themselves and a parent will run to help and sooth them but will say, you will be ok, your tough. Cmon, don't cry. This only teaches the child to dismiss pain.

Our aim is to build resilience in our child. To be tough but all we've done is guided them to avoid the pain.

We should instead be guiding them to see it, accept it, sit in it, communicate it and ultimately let it pass. Experiencing the pain, letting out the associated emotions, unfiltered, and communicating them is the only way to let it go for good.

Emotional pain is real pain, and it can cause physiological reactions so it's then only natural that our minds, being hard wired to keep us safe, identify situations or causes of pain then try to avoid experiencing it.

Avoidance is fulfilled by excuses and being dismissive by saying things like oh I'm fine or don't worry about it. But avoiding it only serves to push it down, it doesn't go away. IT's like rubbish you keep squashing into the bin because you don't want to take the bin out yet!

The fact is, we are afraid to confront these pains because we feel shame or guilt

Shame – we can really feel deep pain around shame and the parameters around which we experience shame are from our conditioning also.

We can be ashamed of the emotions we feel because we behold a belief that the emotion is weak or casts us out from what is 'normal'.

As an example, for men, showing emotion can mean we are weak, it's a threat to the masculine image we need to uphold.

For women, emotions can mean they can't cope and even be as harsh as they're sensitive or even crazy.

To feel shame is to experience having done wrong by the expected behaviours of your tribe.

In todays terms, there are broader expectations on us than the basic tribal rules of 10,000 years ago but the underlying principles are the same. Today's society, including the inner nucleus of our closest relatives or friends, in general implies a moral code or standard of behaviour which is conditioned within us depending on our upbringings, environmental influences, culture.

Shame also comes about when we break the rules and values, we hold dearest to ourselves. THE very guiding principles we live by, the sense of security these give us, the foundational principles to our survival. When we break or go against these rules in some way, we shrink, we cower even just within and feel less worthy under the gaze, either perceived or real, of judgement from our tribe.

Guilt – guilt can be uncomfortable and lots, or even most of us, have failed or struggled to admit our guilt at times. It dints our ego, and our ego doesn't like that.

Our egos want to hold up a certain image of what we want people to think of us. It wants to hold up an image of what WE want to think of ourselves. If we sense our vulnerabilities are being called out, our ego will jump in with a reaction 'to ward off attackers' for its perceiving a threat to our survival so we then find ourselves avoiding the associated feelings, and emotions.

At the heart of good mental health and feeling good in life, is experiencing your emotions fully and talking about your feelings. As hard as it may be to push through any of these, it is well worth it.