Embrace The Fear - Open a Dialogue Lets Talk about Mental Health

I launched the blog with a couple of highly personal articles and one of them seems to have really struck a chord with people.

It's tough to open yourself up to the people close to you, but to open yourself up to everyone is an incredibly daunting thought. The internet/social media and people in general can be very cruel. We have seen it time and time again and unfortunately, with the anonymity that the internet offers, the situation continues to get worse.

You put someone behind a screen, and they suddenly seem to believe that it makes them invincible, allowing them to say things that they wouldn’t dare to voice if they were stood in front of the individual in question. There are reprehensible, disgusting and thoughtless comments made because of that element of anonymity.

Over the last twenty or so years, since the introduction of the internet, social media and the mobile phone, the mental health crisis has gone from bad to worse. Lockdown exacerbated this already growing problem and in between rising suicide rates and the breakdown of friendships due to differing views, we saw a huge rise in loneliness and isolation that has made it harder still for people to communicate the old-fashioned way.

For those of you unsure what the old fashioned way is, in my day it was referred to as talking😉

Unfortunately, with the development of the internet, the Convid crisis, (did I just say that), and the imposed isolation during lockdown, not only have adults mental health been impacted, but our children's mental, physical, social, emotional and spiritual health has been affected in a way that they may never fully recover from.

I speak as someone who has children and who has watched this crisis unfold.

As a mum of two, I have had the pleasure of helping two babies turn into fully functioning adults with their own hopes, dreams, belief structures and relationships.

They make me proud every single day.

They surprise me every single day.

They are my legacy, and they have grown and continue to grow into exceptional human beings.

The reason I bring them up is because our upbringings were very different.

I was the generation that built treehouses and got shot at by the local farmer when we ran across his field to get to the back of the airport to watch the planes taking off whilst we lay on hay bales.

I was the generation that climbed trees and fell out, breaking limbs several times before I beat that tree!

I was the generation that would go out on a morning on my bike with friends, a picnic in my rucksack and not come home till the sun was going down. No phone, no way of my parents contacting me and them never really knowing for sure where I was.

In reality, I was part of the last generation to experience true freedom and enjoy life without having to worry that my mistakes would rear their ugly head on social media or youtube.

My oldest had to learn to balance both those worlds. I insisted on time spent outside with friends, but I also had to accept that the internet would change the way his childhood was experienced.

At the age of 12 he had a mobile phone which immediately changed the dynamic from my point of view.

For him, it was just what the other kids were doing.

For me, I went from the mum who needed to be comfortable with letting him have a degree of freedom, age appropriate of course, to the mum who had to reign in her absolute terror every time she tried to get in contact by phone and he wouldn’t answer.

The abject fear that he was lying in a ditch somewhere or that he had been part of some terrible accident was made worse by the fact that he was uncontactable when he should have been more contactable than ever before.

I would imagine, if you ask most parents my age and older, they will have experienced those same fears, and trying not to impart that fear of the outside world and the damage it could do onto your child is not an easy task.

The invention of the internet was in equal parts incredible and devastating.

The world shrunk overnight.

Relatives in different countries no longer had to use the phone to get in contact with each other.

Face time came along, and you could have face to face conversations with people that you hadn’t seen in years.

Anything and everything you wanted to know was at your fingertips, it was accessible 24 hours a day and those things that could take weeks of research could be found within minutes.

A blessing and a curse, this left everyone in the uncomfortable position of not knowing what was what, and having to filter as best possible.

For those of us like myself who have an alternative view of certain truths, (aka the conspiracy theorist), you could find yourself falling into the rabbit hole and never getting out again.

Trying to work through what was truth, what was lies and what lay somewhere in between was complicated, deceptive and difficult.

My children navigated this new reality a lot better than I did, especially my youngest who hit the ground running as this was all par for the course by the time he started school.

What was never considered with this incredible invention though, was the impact it would have on the mental health of all ages, but specifically of the children growing up with it.

All of a sudden, a bully could enter the only part of your life that was a safe space - your home.

The ability to contact anyone, anywhere at any time had gone from an exciting, incredible thing to something insidious, incredibly dangerous and irreparably destructive.

Bullying is something that most people experience during their school life at some point, and for some it goes on into adulthood, but the internet brought with it a whole new generation of bullies who could destroy you not only outside, but also inside the very place you should have been able to find respite.

As an adult, I struggled to understand why it was so difficult for my kids to block someone who was using the internet to attack them outside of school, but for my kids, sometimes the fallout was worse if they did that. - especially when the direct bullying came from someone within their friendship group.

How do you tackle someone who is supposed to be your friend and who is bringing other friends into it?

Not only that, but the introduction of social media, facebook, snapchat, myspace, youtube. etc introduced the hyperreality of the perfect life.

Endless photos of beautiful people with perfect, flawless hair and makeup, the latest designer clothes and shoes, fancy holidays, big houses and flashy cars. It was hyperreality at its most damaging because it portrayed an image of an unattainable and unrealistic life that nobody could live up to. It became the ultimate lie because instead of selling happiness and love for who you are, it taught our kids that to be happy, you had to surround yourself with material things.

You had to look a certain way. You had to do certain things. You had to be a certain type of person.

As parents, this made an already challenging job teaching our kids that self-worth lies within, almost impossible.

That lesson is a difficult one to get as an adult. I am still learning it and sometimes, I have to remind myself that I am just enough as I am.

Trying to impart that to a child who is bombarded with images 24 hours a day of what life should be according to the world is incredibly difficult, and I suspect is only going to continue to get harder as the internet takes over more and more of our lives.

Sometimes, thinking about the changes we have seen makes me think of Wall-E.

For those of you haven’t watched it, you really should. It’s a beautiful film, but also incredibly thought provoking and as it plays through, there are so many elements within it that you can relate to in today’s world.

Our reality is not really that far from the reality in the movie and that is actually quite a scary prospect.

If you want to really terrify yourself though, read The Machine Stops by E.M Forster. It’s a look at the future, and considering it was written in the early 1900’s, its scarily prophetic and quite worrying!

So, what does all this have to with the rise in mental health issues I hear you say?

You have waxed lyrical about the state of the world but what does this actually mean?

As individuals with feelings, thoughts, opinions, desires, fears and ideas, we have always been susceptible to what others thought.

As much as we would like to think that we don’t need the approval of others to feel like we are living our lives the way we want to, at times, the need for that can become almost overwhelming.

The introduction of the internet, whilst an incredible achievement and the beginning of so many new possibilities for people has also created an inescapable isolation.

It has allowed the poison of other people's hate, damage and fear to seep into our lives in a way that it should never have been able to. It has made our children so much more vulnerable to predators because anyone could be on the other side of that screen. It has introduced misinformation, lies and danger into our day-to-day existence, leaving us fearful and worried about things that we would have otherwise accepted as inevitable.

It has invaded every essence of our being - emotional, spiritual and physical and with that, it has brought a combination of complete elation and utter despair whilst taking no responsibility for the damage caused.

We see a rise in mental health issues as a result of our ever-growing dependence on something that serves only itself.

Something that leaves us questioning whether we are good enough and that encourages us to want more and more without truly understanding the damage that burning need for material wealth does to our soul.

The question we have to ask ourselves is this – Has the cruelty we see online towards others always been there and all the internet has done is to give that cruelty a voice, or has it just given a voice to those who didn’t have one previously, making those the people who shout the loudest?

Are you one of those people who has needlessly attacked someone who went against you because you were sat behind a screen and knew that you could get away with it?

Moreso than ever, we now need to support each other.

The world is changing every day and with that, the isolation is growing ever more prevalent, bringing with it a generation of adults and children who are struggling. The conversation started several years ago, but every single one of us have a responsibility to keep it going, even if we aren’t one of those who is suffering.

We have a responsibility not only to ourselves, but to other people to let them know that its okay to talk. That its okay to not be okay and that asking for help takes more strength than it does to hide away.

We are in the middle of a mental health crisis of unprecedented proportions.

If we don’t keep talking and we choose to stop listening, we are going to lose so many people whose main need is to know that someone cares enough not just to ask but to listen.

None of us should be ashamed of where we are mentally because in todays world, those issues are commonplace.

Nobody should feel the isolation anymore that comes with not feeling that you belong, that you are not enough or that you are not worthy because we should all be supporting and lifting each other up.

Although the blog was always supposed to be a lighthearted look at life as a forty something, I am finding that within that, there are things that need to be talked about so as per the last article on mental health, lets actually start that conversation.

Lets make this a safe space to talk about those things that we struggle with, and maybe, somewhere in amongst those conversations, someone will be able to offer some insight or help that will make something that felt insurmountable, just that little bit easier to handle.

Until next time..........