On Mental Health and Repression

In a world of dumb stigmas the stigma around mental health has to be one of the dumbest. We all go through shit on a daily basis. We’re human beings. We’re in a perpetual state of social and emotional osmosis with our surrounding environments. Every interaction and experience we have shapes us whether or not we're aware of it at the time.

So why do people get squeamish or dismissive when the topic of mental health gets brought up in conversation? Perhaps they don’t want to hear about the struggles others are going through because they’re afraid it will remind them too much of themselves - it will hit too close to home. Mental health is something the crazies deal with in institutions and in the offices of psychiatrists. Spoiler: we’re all crazy.

The mental health stigma makes sense in the context of a culture of repression. The conditioning is to sweep it under the rug, to hurry along, to medicate, to numb out. Sensitivity is seen as weakness. But sensitivity defines human experience - it’s one of our greatest strengths. We need to be cultivating it as such.

I’m not talking about ‘taking things personally’ sensitivity, although that’s often what sensitivity gets boiled down to. The sensitivity I’m referring to is less egoic, more infallible. A visceral sense of feel. A compulsion toward authenticity. A perceptive quality that informs how you experience the world. A certain innate resonance with or understanding of things. In its freest form it’s a force that begets creativity and love.

But when we start repressing sensitivity, disregarding how feel, we get ourselves into a whole rack of trouble. We cut off our intuition. We kill our ability to empathize. We become less like humans and more like zombies. We become disembodied. Our personal health and societal health suffer in all dimensions.

The field of psychoneuroimmunology studies the mind body connection and it’s impact on health. The science actually isn’t controversial. It’s clear how mental health and physical health don’t exist in silos. Emotional centers of the brain are physiologically intertwined with the immune system, the nervous system, and the hormonal apparatus. They can’t be separated or treated in isolation. It’s one system.

When we repress emotions and lack healthy outlets to express ourselves, the situation compounds upon itself. As Dr. Mate mentions in the video above, a recent study showed that over a 10 year period women who were unhappily married and didn’t express their emotions were 4 times more likely to die than women who were unhappily married and did express themselves. The non-expression of emotion was associated with a 400% increase in death rate.

Many of us become so acclimated to the culture of repression that it feels totally normal. We feel that in order to keep things together our circumstances mandate that we keep quiet and stay in line. But, in the words of Jiddu Krishnamurti, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” We tell our spirit to ‘hush’ to cope with circumstances and expectations and in doing so we make ourselves sick. Repression itself becomes the disease.

What’s the cure?