ElizabethAs May comes to an end, and Mental Health Awareness month along with it, I thought I would share some thoughts that have inhabited my mind during the past month.
I wanted to make this post something about personal growth, but honestly, May has proven to be 30 days of stagnation. I feel exactly the same now as I did on May 1st. And you know what, that’s ok. There are going to be months where growth seems nonexistent. There’s going to be times where we plateau. If you find yourself in this same place, please know that you are not alone and don’t be discouraged.
However, I have been giving the mental health of America a great deal of thought as May progressed. On one hand, I am very happy to see that mental health has become a priority for most people and that the stigmas around mental illness are changing. On the other hand, I am very worried. Our society seems to be making anything and everything some form of trauma, which in turn is making our society weaker mentally.
Nowadays, if an experience caused you any negative feelings at all, it is classified as trauma, but this is not what trauma is. Psychology Today defines trauma as such: “Unlike ordinary hardships, traumatic events tend to be sudden and unpredictable, involve a serious threat to life — like bodily injury or death — and feel beyond a person’s control.”
To sum up this definition, a traumatic event is one that is sudden, unpredictable, threatens your life, and makes you feel out of control. This is a very specific type of negative experience. By making every “ordinary hardship” a traumatic event, we as a society become weaker. We start to see ourselves as victims and seek to avoid all possible stress under the guise of putting our mental health first.
I understand that stressors put a great burden on our bodies, and that by avoiding stress we can be more healthy. But it is impossible to avoid all stress. At one point or another, stress comes, and we as humans must be equipped to deal with it.
Currently, our society has become to obsessed with being mentally healthy that they are making themselves mentally weak in the process by victimizing themselves and living life in a bubble of safety.
In conclusion, we must stop creating a society where people categorize everything as a trauma. This creates a victim mentality and lessens the severity of real traumas. Mental health is very important and should be a priority, but it cannot come at the expense of making our society weaker. Hard times are coming, and we need a community that is as mentally strong as it is healthy. In the end, your journey towards being mentally healthy should not make you weaker in the process.
