The 4 Dangerous Myths About Mental Health Keeping People Depressed
This post originally appeared as an original blog post at ty-hicks.com. See the full, original post here.
WE'RE IGNORING THE REALITIES OF MENTAL HEALTH, AND IT'S COSTING US
One of the most severe problems facing the planet has slide relatively quietly under our noses for the last century, and unless we call it out into the light for what it actually is our future generations are likely to bear the brunt even more severely than our current ones are.
We are living at a time when as many as 1 in 5 adults inside the U.S. are struggling with depression, anxiety, chronic stress, or some other form of mental health issue.1 That's a number that will soon be approaching 50 million people.
The percentage of individuals struggling with moderate to severe depression or anxiety also increases for younger adults, particularly college students where the numbers can be as high as 2 out of 5.
Think of how many people you know. How many are in your immediate network of friends and family? 20? That means 4 people you care about deeply are in significant emotional pain.
But how many associates, colleagues, and online friends do you have that you care about even if you speak to them less often? 1,000? That means there are 200 people you know of that are on a daily basis struggling with the everyday realities of human living.
Not only are so many individuals facing moderate to severe mental and emotional challenges, but for too many the situation is much bleaker. Every day, approximately 123 Americans die by suicide – the 10th leading cause of death in the country.2
These 123 individuals that we are losing every, single day are people that we will never have back as sons, daughters, wives, husbands, friends, and contributors to society. As a species, we are collectively paying dearly for our inability to spot emotional suffering where it exists or our unwillingness to have the courage to insist that our loved ones get the kind of help that can correct the issue before it is too late.
In short, although we are living in the world's most favorable set of living conditions in our history as a species, we have the most stressed and depressed (not to mention overweight and overmedicated) generation on the planet.
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
There are four incredible dangerous myths about mental health that are keeping our society from being able to move forward on this issue and ensure we help those in pain be able to leave in peace and freedom.
These myths have grown in their prevalence and danger year by year as our society has become more and more entrenched in what we believe are the best ways to approach mental health challenges. But we fail to realize that the difference between a rut and a grave is only a few feet of extra digging.
4 DANGEROUS MYTHS ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH
Myth #1: Mental health challenges are essentially permanent disorders that can only be minimized and coped with, not eliminated.
The global paradigm surrounding mental health is one in which, when someone comes to understand that they are dealing with depression, anxiety, or some other form of mental and emotional pain, they go to see a traditional talk therapist.
These very well meaning individuals often commit a fatal fallacy in their attempt to serve the patient. When the patient comes in, very often the first goal of the professional is to provide a medical diagnosis for the condition. By looking for specific symptoms that fit a common pattern, they are able to provide a label to the patient about what they are struggling with.
Telling someone that they have "Generalized Anxiety Disorder" or "Clinical Depression" takes what is actually a reversible, temporary psychological pattern and redefines it in the mind of the patient as a part of their identity – a true disease. Just as patients who are told that they are "terminally ill" are more likely to actually die than those with the same symptoms who are not told that their death is inevitable, we must recognize that telling people that they have "disorders" has a severe impediment on that individual's ability to actually achieve quick and permanent change.
It is absolutely critical to not be misunderstood on this point.
The mental and emotional pain that people struggling with their mental health are experiencing is very, very real, and they do need a robust, professional approach to solve their problem.
BUT giving people labels that they have a "disorder" does not serve them because it attributes what is a fully reversible condition as a part of the patients underlying identity.
There is a major difference between "you're dealing with a temporary pattern of depression that needs to be reversed" and "you are a Manic Depressive."
We then tend to make matters worse by presuming that because someone is dealing with a mental health challenge that the best solution will be to provide them a prescription, further engraining the idea that they cannot find a natural and lasting solution to their pain – that it lies outside of their control to change it naturally.
I see individuals every week who have been struggling with their issues for years if not decades and who proclaim very confidently that "I have clinical depression." They have reinforced their belief in their disorder so congruently over the years that the prospect of change seems laughable to them.
While it is true that they have been suffering from depression and their experience is 100% real and legitimate, it is not the case that they "have" a disorder in the way in which they mean. Their situation is not permanent, and they do not have to settle for learning to live with their disease.
Quick, natural, and lasting solutions to depression and anxiety do exist, but no change is possible where someone believes that their problem is a part of who they are rather than something that can be reversed.
The truth is that depression, anxiety, and all other manner of mental health challenges are indeed REAL and deserve an approach that actually serves those in pain by equipping them with proven, natural strategies so they can eliminate their current, destructive emotional patterns not an identity as someone who is inherently "mentally ill" and who must learn to now cope with their limiting conception of their identity.
Myth #2: People who claim to have depression or anxiety need to "buck up," "cheer up," and "focus on the positives."
This myth comes from the complete opposite perspective of mental health but is equally as dangerous.
While it is not helpful to label the experience of people who are dealing with a mental health challenge as an "illness" or "disorder," it is potentially worse to persist in a belief that someone who is seeking help and guidance is "faking it" or merely "looking for attention."
All destructive behavior of any kind is a call for help.
Faced with a culture that consists of two groups of people holding equally destructive and limiting perspectives on mental health, people who are struggling with depression or anxiety fall between a rock and a hard place on their journey to actually achieve lasting change.
While one group tells them that they have "clinical depression" and need some Zoloft, another group tells them that "they don't have depression" and "they just need to be grateful for what they have."
This second approach to the situation is one that lacks distinction and appreciation for the intricacies of the mental and emotional experience of these subconscious patterns. They do not appreciate that the person suffering currently lacks the insight and skills necessary to naturally reverse their current, limiting patterns.
This myth also disproportionately affects younger individuals, particularly men who believe that if they speak up about their challenges that they will be violating an important social value of masculinity and strength. Thus, men are much more likely to not speak up about their pain and instead resolve to "handle" the problem on their own which can tragically mean pushing down the pain until it boils up in forms of outward violence towards themselves or others, even resulting in taking their own life.
When a person gets to such a breaking point and the people in their life suddenly ask "where the hell did this come from?" they fail to have recognized all of the signs along the way that were indicating that pain was underneath the surface all along.
Mental health challenges are the source of subconscious, conditioned patterns of emotion and behavior. Because they are subconscious in nature, the person suffering does not yet know how to naturally handle their situation.
While it is true that depression and anxiety can be reversed quickly and naturally, it is not as simple as telling someone to flick the switch in their brain.
Myth #3: "Yes, I'm depressed. But I have to handle this on my own."
This all too common and all too destructive belief that those in pain endorse is a natural bi-product of Myth #2. By concluding that speaking up about their issue or seeking the help of an experienced professional would be an admission of defeat or result in unacceptable social dings in their status, they seek instead to bottle up the pain and convince themselves that this is "handling" the issue.
At best, this practice is "handling" some of the surface-level effects of the problem but is compounding the source of the issue.
Placing a lid on a pot that is about to boil over will only keep you from burning yourself for a few moments, and when the water actually does spill out the damage will be even more severe than before.
In order to eliminate the true problem, you must go after the source rather than simply try to bat away the effects. When there are weeds in the garden of the mind, you can't pretend they are not there. And you can't simply trim them down to size. You have to go in with a shovel and uproot them from their base.
This is why "quick fixes" or "coping mechanisms" do not work, and these small strategies are very often all that patients of traditional talk therapy walk out with. Because they only have ways to keep their pain from reaching a major threshold in the day to day, the pressure in the pot is slowly building until a more severe breakdown of sorts becomes inevitable, unpredictable, and uncontrollable.
The only true way to handle the limiting patterns of depression, anxiety, and even compulsive behaviors and recurring trauma is to interrupt these patterns where they reside, at the level of the subconscious mind. This is a process that can begin to happen in as little as 30 minutes with lasting results being possible after a few hours of applying the right approach.
Myth #4: Traditional talk therapy and medication are the only and best ways to handle your mental health issues.
When the Model T came out, it was instantly scorned and ridiculed. The idea that some new approach to transportation would emerge that could replace the traditional horse and buggy was laughable to the majority of the population.
Humans habitually scorn new ways to improve their lives that they do not fully understand because they fear confirming their suspicion that they may have sunk so much of their time and energy in an inferior approach all along.
We would rather stick with the pain we know of our ineffective method than consider the all too painful idea that we could have actually solved our problem had we made a different decision.
But all superior ideas and methods earn their due. It would be unthinkable to trade vehicular transport for a horse drawn carriage today. We would laugh at the idea of giving up the internet as a way of life when just a few short years ago it was dismissed as another fad.
We fail to recognize that we have been approaching mental health the same, ineffective way for the better part of 100 years.
In our company's work with individuals suffering from all sorts of mental health issues, we have found that at least 8 in 10 individuals who have attempted traditional talk therapy to handle their issues did not get strong or lasting results.
In fact, the vast majority of people surveyed who have attempted therapy as a solution report that treatment only truly enabled them to “vent” and get things off their chest, but that they never truly felt like they were getting at the source of their issue and tangibly making progress towards a desired goal.
WHY IS TALK THERAPY SO INEFFECTIVE FOR MOST?
To be clear, therapists are not bad people, and many of them are truly effective. But the sad reality is that most are not. They may appear "effective" to a client in helping minimize pain or increase coping, which do have merit, but therapy rarely if ever results in a profound and lasting transformational change.
We will never advance our culture and truly eliminate the pain people with depression and anxiety are in unless we call this fact out for what it is and shed light on the methods that actually lead to proven elimination of the problem in the vast majority of cases.
While there are innumerable schools of thought and approaches to talk therapy, most therapy is based on two fundamental principles that severely limit its effectiveness:
1) The idea that people’s problems can be described in terms of medical disorders that deserve diagnosis, in many cases medication, and that these disorders are essentially permanent parts of who the patient is. Thus, the inherent belief is that the goal of therapy is to help them cope and minimize the symptoms since that is the best it can hope to do.
As we learned, this is Myth #1 and one that ensures the client will not get lasting results. If you go to see a Doctor for a broken leg and they believe that your leg will never be fixed in full, you’re certainly not going to get your leg fixed so long as you insist on seeing that doctor.
2) The idea grounded in the education of therapists today that all therapy must remain essentially “non directive” in nature. This creates an assumption that the real goal of the therapist is to provide a safe space for the client to speak about their problems, and the client is expected to arrive at new conclusions about their issues largely on their own.
I don’t know about you, but if I have a broken leg I want a Doctor who is going to tell me what needs to happen in order to solve the issue. Of course I want a Doctor who will listen, be attentive to the details that matter, and ensure I feel safe in his doctor’s office. But I need someone who has true expertise, confidence in rehabilitation, and a proven plan to get me there. What about you?
In our work with innumerable clients from 5 continents, all suffering from all forms of mental health challenges, the undeniable pattern that emerges in their testimonies about how they have already attempted to deal with their problems is that talk therapy has simply not been effective in getting lasting results.
Even for those individuals who saw as many as 7 or more therapists over the years, they found that the non directive approach was consistently the primary theme of the "treatment."
For a person in severe emotional pain, each year that passes without full elimination of the problem means another year of a half-lived life.
WHAT ABOUT MEDICATION?
The number of people on antidepressants has been on a steady rise for a number of years.
In 2014 and 2015, approximately 1 in 10 adult individuals in the U.S. were on some form of pharmaceutical, while in recent years this has climbed to approximately 13%.
When you think of the reality of this situation, it is rather bleak: Over 1 in 10 people are on medication for depression while 2 in 10 are still dealing with a moderate to severe mental health concern.
Do you know someone who is on anti-depressants who is still depressed? Almost all of us do. I can tell you that the vast majority of people we have consulted with have shared that this is their exact plight.
In our work with clients from all over the world, the evidence is undeniable. At least 8 in 10 of our clients report that medication (regardless of what it was) did not produce for them strong or sustainable results.
Most individuals report that medication caused them to feel worse or other bad side effects, and many report “not feeling like themselves” or feeling “numbed out” or “zombified.” Others who did get results initially report that they kept having to increase their dosage or switch to other pills.
Rather than actually treat the problem at the real source, our society is piling pills on people, thus placing band aids on the broken leg – but band aids that have the risk of creating even more pain or unpredictable side effects.
IS THERE A BETTER WAY?
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." – Mark Twain
In short, yes, for those who would 1) choose to look at the situation in solvable terms, and 2) place a higher priority on seeking out the methods that are proven to work rather than ascribing to the outdated and faulty majority view.
So long as someone believes that they have a permanent disorder and identifies as being someone with a mental illness that is relatively unchangeable, they will never be able to fully recover.
And so long as we truly believe that traditional therapy is the only medium by which people can get help, our society will not progress on this issue. People will continue to remain feeling aimless and helpless as their problems persist and their bills for treatment and medication pile up.
While the merits of all alternative services must be evaluated on their own merits, we have been blessed to have a 100% success rate with the clients we take on who meet our strict qualifications.
By no means is working with our company the only option people have, but they must be aware that indeed they do have options besides therapy and medication. They must also recognize that nothing improves without taking a new form of action.
If you or a loved one is suffering, it is vital that they understand these myths and seek effective forms of help. Our team will never be able to serve every individual suffering on the planet, and not everyone will meet our specific qualifications that ensure our clients’ success either, but for those that are absolutely ready to make a change, we do offer a proven path to a limited number of clients a year.
THREE STEPS TO CREATE LASTING CHANGE
If you would like to be considered to be a client or know of someone who may be a good fit, you should understand that our proven process consists of three basic steps:
- Help you identify the subconscious characteristics of the limiting patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior that you are “stuck” in.
- Help you learn the natural and powerful ways to interrupt these patterns so that they no longer persist in your daily experience.
- Adopt and implement the simply, quick, daily strategies that, over time, will results in replacing your old, limiting emotional patterns with ones that support and empower you automatically.
But to be 100% clear: results are not possible for everyone.
In our experience, you can only get true results if you meet three specific qualifications, and as a service that only takes on individuals that we are confident we can provide a solution for, we do not consider clientele who do not meet these criteria.
It is also important to recognize that, unless you meet these criteria, you are unlikely to actually resolve your issue no matter what service you enlist, whether it is ours or someone else’s.
Success is only possible for people who are willing to 1) Be open minded and coachable, 2) Be decisive and take new action, and 3) Make eliminating their depression and anxiety an absolute must.
Results can never be guaranteed for someone who does not meet the above qualifications, and each individual case is different. In our experience of several years, a full, natural, recovery is possible with approximately 5 hours of work completed over a 60 day period. Some get results much faster and some take a few extra weeks, but we've never had someone who met our criteria and committed to our process that did not get the desired result.
We have had several individuals who have reported feeling “anxiety and depression” free months after they had a single coaching session with our team as well.
TAKE NEW ACTION TO GET NEW RESULTS
What has already been done has gotten you to where you are now. In order to go somewhere new, you must do something new.
You must also recognize that mental health issues will not get better on their own – time spent waiting in indecision and hoping for a break tends to inevitably compound the severity of the issue.
If you would like to get more clear on the real source of your problem and learn what some of your options are for tangibly making progress towards your goals, please book a free 45-Minute Breakthrough Consultation with a member of our team.
It will be the most valuable 45 minutes you’ll invest in your own mental and emotional wellbeing.
If you know of a loved one who is in pain, book the call and our team will be happy to support you as well in helping your friend or family member the best form of help for them.
DISCLAIMER
The contents of this post are for general, educational purposes. Nothing stated in this post is individual or specific medical advice.