It's #MentalHealthAwareness week so I'm going to stick to the topic for the next few days.
But not to the script, eh? 😉
We all know the script – something along the lines of: You need to look after your mental health, because it's not going to do it on its own. Reduce stress. Get outdoors. Connect with others. Eat well. Exercise. Get rest. Set healthy boundaries.
In other words, work hard at it, and you'll succeed.
Now I'm truly for all of those good ideas (it makes sense for me to do most of them myself!) but I wouldn't say they're a prerequisite for ‘good mental health’.
Because if they were, and it all worked like that, well then, wouldn't all of this increased ‘awareness’ of the problems—and solutions—mean that our mental health as a society was much improved? That there'd be fewer mental health problems?
[Cue embarrassed silence.]
Maybe the script isn't working, not because people aren't trying hard enough, but because it's all based on a false premise?
Could we all be very innocently… deluded?
Let's ask the psychiatrists
A while ago I read a book called The Self Delusion, as it was recommended to me by a colleague. To my mild disappointment, it wasn't so much about the illusory separate ‘self’ identity (one of my favourite topics to write about), but more about how we're biologically more connected to the world (and other people) than we fully realise.
But there was a fantastic bit, right near the beginning, where the author, Tom Oliver, was making the case for what a delusion actually is. Seeking generally accepted advice, he discovered that the technical definition:
“…according to the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual (DSM-IV; the professional psychiatrist’s bible of personality disorders) is ‘a false belief that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and in spite of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.’”
Ha. Read that again. According to the people generally seen as knowing how the mind works, they're saying they consider you to be deluded if you don't believe what the majority believes!
🤯
After pondering whether it might be more rational “…to label any belief as delusional if it is objectively untrue, irrespective of social norms,” the author goes on to perform a little thought experiment:
“Imagine a future world where only a few people survive under the guidance of a cult leader, who they all believe is Elvis Presley reincarnated. Would those people be deluded, even though they all share this same belief together?
If your answer is like mine, that they would surely still be deluded, then you would probably also agree we should base our definition of delusion on the contravention of objective truths.”
Right on, brother! ✊🏻
History repeats
As a species, we've been wrong about so many things, it's unreal. (For instance, there's no way I could go back into practice with all my original medical school textbooks from the 1990s now – knowledge has moved on too much.)
But we have suffered even more fundamental delusions:
- We used to believe the sun revolved around the earth
- We used to believe that bad smells caused infection
- We used to believe that the earth was flat
Until we figured out how stuff actually works.
And it's my assertion (and that of every other Innate Health practitioner) that we've got the whole domain of mental health wrong too.
The ‘delusion’ here is that mental health is something you earn, by performing a whole load of recommended practices. That if you get the outside right, the inside will follow.
But I'm not sure it works likes that. And I'm not alone (or ‘deluded’ as the DSM-IV would make out) 😆
I'll be gently questioning some more of these assumptions we hold over the coming days, but if you're curious, and you like to listen, then I highly recommend the very aptly-named Psychology Has It Backwards podcast, because Christine & Judy gently unpick this shared, culturally inherited ‘delusion’, one episode at a time.
Start at the very beginning (Episode 1) and listen with an open mind – you might be surprised by what happens!
Here are links on various platforms:
- Apple podcasts
- Spotify (Sort By Oldest)
- The Psychology Has It Backwards website
💟
Giles
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Giles P Croft
If it's always there, why would you have to work at it?