Welcome to Resiliency Counseling and Consulting (RCC) and my field of dreams! You’re cordially invited to join me on a journey of improving mental wellness in your life, community, and world.
Whether we’re aware of it or not, we grapple daily with challenges that impact our mental wellness and overall health. Unfortunately, even with our friend Google at our fingertips, most of us struggle to handle these challenges in positive ways.
Our mental wellness can have far reaching effects not only on our overall health, but on those we interact with daily. It’s the ripple effect, which sadly, is often the sharing of negative emotions or information.
However, as individuals become more informed on how to take care of their own mental wellness, they will in turn have a positive impact on of those around them, thus creating a positive ripple. So, lets’ get the ball rolling to find out how RCC can improve mental wellness for you, your family, and our communities.
In therapy to help people envision where they want to go in treatment we often use something called the miracle question. Clients are asked to describe how life would look if they woke up tomorrow and their issues were resolved.
This is the miracle question I ask you today: What if you woke up tomorrow morning, turned on the news and watched the baffled news anchors as they read story after story of positive news
A news report where child abuse had been eradicated, a day where no violence occurred, people had access to nutritious food, healthcare was affordable, and peace abounded. I’m sure that many of you are saying “Yeah right!” or “I think she has been visiting with Alice and the Cheshire Cat in Wonderland!”
Maybe it’s ambitious, but I have always been a bit pushy and stubborn. We may not see 100 percent eradication of most of the societal struggles we face, but shouldn’t we still do everything we can to get as close as possible to that goal?
I mean the reality of me ever running a marathon, (ok even a half marathon) without a large dog chasing me the entire way is not happening. However, that shouldn’t stop me from exercising for my health or setting other goals.
Mental health is one of the most misunderstood experiences in our society and is at the root of so many of the issues we are all looking to resolve such as violence, poverty, and substance abuse.
As a society, so many things that used to be taboo are now openly discussed and shown on television. We have been able to send people to the moon and splice DNA, but the mere mention of mental illness makes people very uncomfortable.
To top it off, if we do get any press or are featured on a show, it is most often portrayed as the most negative and extreme situation. Postpartum depression is a prime example. Every year millions of women struggle with postpartum depression and recover. Thanks to the media, the only thing that comes to most peoples’ minds is Andrea Yates, who due to postpartum psychosis (which only occurs less than 1 percent of the time) drowned her children.
While we have come a long way in mental health treatment since the dark asylum days of the past, the stark reality in the US is that people continue to wait in Emergency Room holding areas for sometimes weeks to get admitted for help. It’s time to raise the awareness on the true state of mental health as well as dispel inaccurate information that leads to stigma.
As Mark Twain once penned, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
Certainly, it’s important to me that mental health be better understood, mental health education be funded, and mental health programs accessible to all–but not just because it is my profession.
Full disclosure: I’ve experienced mental illness at every touch point of my life. I was raised by a mother with bipolar disorder, nurtured and deeply loved by a grandmother with paranoid schizophrenia and continue to walk with family members through the hell that is addiction.
I’ve personally struggled with a lifelong anxiety disorder and experienced a debilitating episode of postpartum depression after the birth of my son. In all the roles that I’ve been touched by mental health, none has brought me to my knees more than watching my own children suffer from the grips of these disorders. Then, to add insult to injury, try to get appointments and treatment in a system that is both broken and back logged due to more red tape than my post will allow words to fit.
So, to say I have a dog in this fight is a gross understatement—it’s more like an Alaskan dogsled team! No matter what the news feed says, we are more united on the causes that matter to our children and world than we are led to believe.
I know this to be true because I interact with remarkable people every day who truly care. Some live in my backyard and others all over the world, but they’re on the front lines everyday of these issues. They are teachers, healthcare workers, pastors, business people, parents and so many more.
With increased knowledge people just like you will set the world on fire! So, if you have been wondering what YOU can do to help improve mental wellness in your life and your community…THIS IS IT! Joining this movement is as simple as hitting LIKE on our Facebook at RCCforYou and share away. Welcome to RCC my friend I look forward to sharing this journey with you.
Until next time…may you be well, and may you know true peace.