Blogi. Functionally Mental

"In this blog I want to talk about something that is very important, but rarely explored. How our mental health can impact others, and how to recognize it and mitigate this risk. Why? Because if we allow our mental health triggers/symptoms to harm other people, we risk harming our relational ties and burning the bridges to our support systems." (Eliza Escalante)

Eliza Escalante on raamatu "Unseen. Undercovering the Invisible Wounds of Military Trauma" autor, endine USA õhujõudude vaimse tervise tehnik ja veteran, kes on töötanud aktiivses konflikti koldes Afganistanis. Eliza blogi on isiklik, asjalik ning näitab laiapõhjalisi teoreetilisi ja praktilisi teadmisi. Läbivateks teemadeks on normaalsus, ühiskondlik surve, vaimne tervis ning oskus olla aus enda suhtes. 

Kuigi Eliza on sõjaväelise taustaga ning esmane sihtgrupp on tal veteranid, siis see blogi sobib hästi esmareageerijatele kui ka pelgalt tsiviilühiskonna kogemusega inimestele. Blogis käsitletavad teemad ja küsimused puudutavad meid kõiki. 

Mõned väja rebitud katkendid:

•  Food becomes comfort in many people’s lives, as a colleague of mine had once mentioned “Food is proven to make us feel good.  We know, if we absolutely love that Big Mac and it satisfies us 100% of the time, we are going to go back to McDonalds on our worst day and get that Big Mac to feel better again.”  
• Our bodies do not tell our story.  There are “good” bodies with ill minds, and “bad” bodies with flourishing minds.  A healthy mind is MORE important than a perfect body, and I will stand by that. 
• Numbing serves its purpose when surviving our environment requires us to halt all other biological and psychological responses of: fight, fly, freeze.  Also, when our environment requires us to halt many emotions to include fear, stress, anxiety, depression, trauma trigger symptoms and so on.  Numbing is also a systematically pressured and welcomed response. 
•  I have been avoiding writing on Covid-19, though I did start my blog in the midst of this pandemic/ national quarantine. I find myself, like many other times in my life, riding the waves and trying to keep the peace amongst the depressed, anxious and angry. I’ve been accused of being “too calm”, “not taking it seriously enough”, “too anxious”, “making myself sick” etc.  I like everyone else, will be taking it day by day, week by week.
• One defense mechanism isn’t necessarily better than another. These are strange times therefore our psychological defenses are at an all time high, and we use what we are often conditioned to use. We use things that have worked for us in the past. We use defenses that we were taught by parents, peers and so on. NO, you are not wrong for using any one of these. You are not wrong for your feelings.  You are not actually “crazy” for having a normal reaction to an extremely hard situation.