Help others while helping yourself heal

It's not enough to keep your new found knowledge on how to deal with mental and physical afflictions to yourself once you've found a way around a specific problem, help others who are likewise struggling.

The problem may be mild, or it may severe, but pass on helpful ways of dealing with it to others who may be in need. We learn by having been through troubling times. It is the way of healing. You will never know the direction kind words and good intentions will take, nor should you. But be aware, words are powerful when used in the right way.

So go ahead, throw a few of them to wind, and let them land where they land. As an example, Say, "I don't know who you are, where you are, but if you are in pain, depressed, feeling as if there is nothing left for you in this world, I want you to know your are important, you have a purpose in life, and you are loved. Get out of your own way and see what you've been missing by knowing it all.

PS. About the image.

I'm running out of my own art doodles. To fill in a space I offer a picture of a favorite place mat that that I purchased at Goodwill Industries for a few cents. I've had it for years. I have no idea what artist created the lovely fabric!It says nice thing to me, and although it's never under my plate while I'm eating, it occupies an important place. It covers the small bedside table near my bed and it holds my cup of water, my rosary, my cell phone, and a few tissues.

What its telling me -- through my imagination and love of silliness -- that if I were smart enough I would also leave a small writing pad and pencil in its care overnight. In that way I might be able to jot down some of the insights that come when I am awake and I get that 'aha, so that's the way it is' inspiration. Usually, I just forget it and it goes on its way.(When I was younger I would sprint out of bed and jot it down, now I don't sprint easily!)

Most us are problem solvers if we would allow ourselves to be. But first we must admit to knowing much to nothing. Our muse, or our interior messaging system might be turned off if we think we know it all.

But since we are subject to error, and our systems are worn down by age, often we truthfully believe something that is not so. This happens in important areas and in areas of no importance. To the internal messaging system real or unreal, truth or lies, its all the same. No censoring is done. That is left to us. At least it is left to us to discover we have a problem in the way we think and in the way we deal with these thoughts.

Expect to not getting it right all the time but don't jump to conclusions. Accept it along with fading eyesight, less noise due to sound systems on the blink, and other natural occurrences that come with aging. Take advantage of the forced resting periods to think and to be thankful and don't waste one minute of it wishing your were better looking, had more energy, more money and could go places. Accept the notion that the Lord has you where he wants you. Right there talking to Him.

And to the young. You will understand us someday.

Begin healing yourself one thought at a time

Healing of both body and mind Begins with one little thought at a time. Likewise sinking into mental illness starts with one bad thought not corrected and if this is left to send create other false messages, then soon your whole system will be working under false assumptions.

Of course I know that sounds like double talk but it isn't. You're the one that calls the doctor's office and schedules an appointment, or not schedule an appointment, and you are the one that must live, or die, with the consequences. The same way with your mind, it picks up on your false assumptions and petty thoughts and irresponsibility and instead of it forcing you to accept responsibility for not only your actions, your thoughts as well, it will simply go along.

This happens, because no one knows yourself as you do, or as you think you do, so why not be the best your can be. It will take work, and it will be painful! But it is worth the effort and the work, and all it takes is one little thought at a time.

How to begin? Stop trying to rule everyone else but yourself. And in order to be your own boss, you must learn how. Where do you start. Get to know yourself, the good and the bad. Get help if you need to, and stop your destructive habits.

PS: The Image, what of it? It's nothing that is visible, but it is what ever your mind tells you it is. I was just doodling, and while the shapes suggest that with a litte effort they could more resemble people, I purposely didn't bother. In my mind, as I was messing around with pencil and paper, they are struggling souls dealing with their own lives. They knew they needed help, but help is often no farther away than one thinks and believes. Possibly the scribbles represent the hidden darkness within ourselves.

A gleam of light shines through when we begin to understand shadows are dividing lines between what has been and what will be. A black speck on a page of words is a period separating what went before to what is coming after. In other words in writing we think a thought, put it down on paper, and signal it is finished with a period. The next sentence or thought adds more and finally we've talked, or written ourselves into understanding ourselves and how we think a little more. Write out your thoughts and then read them back and see if a gleam of light does not begin to appear!

Mental Health vs. Mental Illness

Pride: It is good to be proud of our accomplishments but at the same time it is not good to be so proud of them that we forget from whence they came. To get so entangled in our own small rewards, inventions, abilities and forget the purpose of our work and begin to believe we did without the help of others and our creator is the beginning of sin. It leads into more of the same and taints our minds into believing we are more capable than we are.

Envy: A healthy mind is not envious. To be glad for others and to appreciate their good fortunes and their well being is healthy; to be envious to the point that we neglect our own work and begin copying or mimicking theirs, is not.

Gluttony: Eating for the sake of eating and not for the nourishment our bodies need is not healthy. The press is full of reports of how not to do this, but few ever mention the nasty word gluttony. They don't do it because they know that some people's bodies cannot process the food and although overweight, they don't want to be callous and uncouth. That's healthy. Working toward better nutrition for everyone is healthy. Living to eat and not simply eating to live, is unhealthy.

Lust: Lust is not love. It is using another person for personal pleasure and that is not healthy. To love others as God loves us is healthy. Lust causes unwanted pregnancies and the killing of unwanted babies. How can that be healthy? That is murder, and the whole affair is not pure and it is not simple.

Anger: Anger can get all of us into trouble and no one in fits of rage can be considered to be mentally healthy. Yet to not get angry at wrong doing and is also unhealthy. There must be less stressful ways of dealing with such intense emotions. People do things when angry, and when mentally not healthy that they would not do when clear headed.

Greed: is another unhealthy mind condition that cannot get enough. They never seem to know when to stop and stop using the fruits of their labor as they were intended to be used by healthy minds.

Sloth: Laziness I suppose is what the amounts to. Nothing much is heard of this word anymore but the word reminds us those slow moving seemingly uncaring creatures. Sluggishness is certainly not healthy, whatever else it is. And who among us has not been lazy at times. We even admit to being somewhat lazy when asked why we did not do such and such, but how many of us will ever admit to sloth?

To answer the question what has sin to do with mental health, I reiterate it has everything to do with it, but probably not in the way sin is viewed by most people. The above characteristics are sinful and aren't we all sinning? And it is this very sin that keeps us from growing mentally healthier and healthier by making every effort to keep to our path and to do the work on earth we were meant to do.

As long as we keep our eyes and ears closed to the truth of our own sin and we use every bit of our energy to hide the fact of our wrong doing, how can we ever hope to be cured of our mental and physical illness? Therefore I accuse everyone, myself included, of being mentally ill at times. Some more than others, of course, no one is mentally healthy to the point they can gloat or brag about it.

The point of the above discussion is to show that no matter how much one denies it, mental illness is prevalent in the world today, and no one is spared.
Before anything can be done about it, each individual -- if they are capable of this much truthfulness within themselves -- must admit to their own signs. To whom do they admit this too? To their God, of course.

Mental Health statistics aren't always true

Ever notice that one once something gets started, duplicates of it are often picked up elsewhere? This is especially true where health care is concerned. Health care reform, while surely needing to be, and most certainly not an ideal model, but something needed to be done, and something was done, and there's no argument there, but the overboard of criticism and is a good illustration of what I am trying to say. And that is, the mindless jumping on bandwagons before examining all the reasons behind the actions being taken.

Specifically regarding mental health, and what prompted this bit of venting, is the easy way assumptions are made. Recently: Bipolar is more prevalent in the U,S. than in any other country, blah, blah, blah. Well of course, it is probably due to the fact that better diagnosing is being done, this country is more populated than many others, and even in comparison with other countries with more people, that statistic means only one thing, this country cares more about its people than its headlines.

Any way, whether statistics are right or wrong, what does it matter who has the most of what, obesity, mental illness, heart disease, and so on, it's what's being done about it that matters. This is the age when it is not fashionable to hide things. Get it out and look at it and see what can be done about it.

The above sounds as if anger prompted this blog and that is not so. I've been pondering this all week since the last blog, and amidst my prayers for the living and dead souls in Japan, I have tried to think about what should be written here. Believe it or not, thought goes into priorities here and when I blunder, sound foolish, show my ignorance, I fully take responsibility for that too.

The idea that I have about mental illness, after living with it for seventy eight years, trying to hide it at times, denying it at others, studying about it, and finally getting enough courage to talk about and share what I've learned, the truth is, I believe, something most aren't willing to face: That everyone has times when they are not mentally healthy, but when they have more mental healthy time than mentally ill time, they can be said to be more mentally healthy than mentally ill.

When are so called normal people mentally ill? When they blame others for what clearly is their own fault, when they can't distinguish lies from truth, when they are greedy and when they hoard things they cannot use, and on, and on, and on. In fact this is a sick society we are living in. That's nothing new, otherwise would the biggest industry be in health care? One thing for sure,You really cannot separate the mind form the body or the body from the mind. Or from the soul, for that matter.

Until next time, let's look behind the headlines and see what is not said. And in the meantime I intend to do a little homework and see exactly how mental health deals with the the seven deadly sins. Remember, until that first sin was committed, the body and the mind was perfect, and no one was ill!

PS:
True to form I try to find some remnant of my past art work or scribblings to post here, and I ran across this image. It was done in the early 1990s, when I bought my first computer. I was delighted that with my old matrix printer I could print out my poems in various shapes. Words and people are my passion and they take precedence over poems, paints, and whatever. If the finished product is not perfect, at least the intent was.

Mental health as a state goal

Mental Health of course is a national, as well as an international goal, but at its best it begins as a personal choice by the lone individual making up the family, the community, the city, the district, the county, and finally the state, and the country. Or, by those responsible for those who are mentally incapacitated and who aren't to make their own decisions.

What this is leading to, is state care of the mentally ill, with help and direction, of course, from national sources. In other words, states often have peculiar circumstances that make their problems slightly different from problems in other states. They must have the choice of managing health care since they better understood what is needed most.

In particular, and for this topic, I am using the state of West Virginia as an example. Certainly they won't mind being made a scape goat once more for problems they didn't create. But they have, like all other states, plenty mental health problems on their books. Why them and why bring it up on this particular day?

This is the March 9, Ash Wednesday, the first day of the 2011 Lenten season. It is the forty days before Easter when traditionally the Christian religion, and more specifically, the Catholic Church, decides to live a more austere life as preparation for a cleaner slate come Easter Sunday, where once again they hope to live a better life.

Of course, much of this is ritualistic, but no matter, it is far better than skipping over the event as if it never happened. Where does mental health and West Virginia come into the picture? Well it happened like this: I received in the mail, as part of The Spirit, the West Virginia Catholic newspaper, a special insert "Hearts Made Whole, written by the Most Reverend Michael J. Bransfield, the Bishop of Wheeling- Charleston Diocese in West Virgina.

This was written by him to tackle the problem of drug abuse. He notes that in his travels across our state, he has been aware of the overuse of drugs. And in this way, he is trying to do his share of alleviating the problem by making known how serious a problem it really is.

"Bishop Bransfield to Release Pastoral Letter on Behavioral Health:
By Colleen Rowan: WHEELING—In his third pastoral letter, Bishop Michael J. Bransfield calls for an improved response to and care for those suffering from chemical dependency and mental illness in West Virginia.

Bishop Bransfield will promulgate the letter, entitled “Hearts Made Whole: A Pastoral Response to Behavioral Health in West Virginia,” on the Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, Feb. 11, which is also World Day of Prayer for the Sick.

The road to mental Health

The road to mental health is often bumpy and full of potholes, but with work and dedication attitudes and a determination to get at the cause of illness, will, in the long run show results. As with tangible things, things that can be seen and felt, intangibles like thoughts and ideas, can be made more wholesome with right attitudes and right living.


That is easy to say, but it will take a lifetime to complete. And all own will have to work with is what was alloted to them at birth. That is why early childhood experiences and gentle guiding helps get those first steps on a firm foundation. A child learns by seeing and mimicking what they see their parents do, so parents, in order to get those little one on a firmer foundation, learn how to be good parents.

Love your children and see that they learn there is a God that loves them and then when they are old enough, watch how they begin to start on their journeys. They will be different from yours, but they are necessary. You can help by being understanding and by letting them know how much you love them. Whatever you do, instill into their little minds that life's road is bumpy, but it is all for a purpose.

Mental health as a first priority

It's always better to look on the positive side of any issue, and what better way to think of the mind. Is it sick or is it well. Most often is is a combination of the two. Hopefully mental health will be above the half way mark at sixty or seventy rather than the other way around.

Although mental illness is not to be ignored and called something else, it is best to use the healthy part of one's thinking to directly influence the negative, or the mentally ill part. While it is true, one can be negative and out of sorts, depressed and not necessarily a pleasant person to be around, and still not be classified as mentally ill, but then neither can they be said to be mentally healthy. Therefore on any given day, one or the other usually dominates.

The purpose of this switch around of focus from mental illness to mental health on this blog is a choice I feel I must make. It is wider in scope and will allow both situations to be aired, talked about, and will generally fit in with my own mind frame. And it will get closer to what I really want to do with this blog. And what is that? To get people to looking at their good mental coping skills first and then to use that positive approach to deal with their lesser, often denied and hidden areas of brain functioning that they prefer not to admit having.

Where to start? Why not with the National Institute of Mental Health.

Creativity and mental illness: How does it relate?

Creativity, creating something new, is nothing more than a way certain people react to their surroundings. This is their way of making sense out of their disturbing influences, and as such is healthy. It can be defined as a method of coping and trying to understand the misunderstood.

Poetry, art, music, sculpting, acting, and most other endeavors can be elevated, and often are, by applying the principles and practices of art to them. Another way of saying that is to say that nearly every undertaking, cooking, sewing, gardening, can be elevated to the status of art by one specially gifted in the venture, and at the same time, in another person remain simply a necessity.

I've long thought that each person has an art sense about them, all they need to do is to find it. It is that something that elevates a person above and beyond the necessities of the day, waking up, eating breakfast, going to work. Creativity needs that too, but it needs that certain something that can only be supplied by those who are tuned to its specifics.

All creation begins with God. He created us in His image, and to the extent that we recognize the source of our creative energy,is usually what separates the simply doing to pass time, from the original work of art. To deny a superior being in our lives is to compare a doll, a copy, with a real baby!

Knowing right from wrong

Knowing right from wrong makes all the difference when dealing with mental illness and the court system. Of course, those filling up jails and prisons are mentally ill, to a degree, and many of them are smart enough to crawl under the umbrella of mental illness to escape their sentence. Likewise a great many, while in prison have seen the error of their ways and have used the sentence as a way to heal themselves.

This topic of knowing right from wrong surfaced today while reading mental illness headlines. It seems that many are shouting that dollars need be spent to to treat mental illness in jails and in prisons. This is good and is something that should be considered, but there is that caution that says, those likely to repeat their offenses should not be so easily turned loose.

In a way it seems this is just another item that can be turned into a reason to generate hostility and a cause that many will want to take up arms against. That method of dealing with mental illness is a sick idea. The courts must keep to their distinction between insanity -- knowing right from wrong -- and mental illness in general. An ill mind is not a safe mind, that is true, but not all ill minds are criminal minds.

A person using a free will to plot a crime of murder, is not a well mind, but most often they know it is something they should not do. Neither should they be allowed to spend their sentence in a hospital with others who may not know right from wrong.

This is one small attempt to set the thinking straight about any attempts to use the mental illness labeling to avoid incarceration. When a crime has been committed, justice must be served. A more hopeful setting is one where the prisoner has the time, and the safety, of learning about themselves, why they did what they did, not the time to plot how to undo the system that put them in prison.

Yes, treat the mentally ill, but be sure everyone involved knows the difference between right and wrong. That is a lesson society, as a whole, has been reluctant to learn.

After writing the above article, I also uploaded it to a website where I usually post article. Check it out at Helium.com. I added several sources of information readers can look to for more information. These I looked over briefly, but have not have actually read.

PS: The piece of art is something I found among my papers and I don't remember exactly when it was done. I most often keep my art dabbling, although I am never sure why.

When is Mental Illness not Mental Illness?

Mental illness is a sick mind the same way physical illness is a sick body. Both of these can recover, and both of these may be permanent, or transitory and they affect the over all health of the mind and body to varying degrees, at different times and at various degrees. And at the same time it near impossible not to have these two conditions overlap, one causing disturbances in the other.

The above need be said if the topic is to be answered, when is mental illness not mental illness? A mind is well when it has the capacity to understand the possibilities of its own sickness. It must guard against mental illness constantly. A mind can become become suddenly ill, was born that way, or it can gradually develop into a full grown illness, much like an undetected cancer can do. As an example, when a mind finds itself blaming others constantly for one's own wrong doing and not even admitting or even realizing that at least a part of the fault lies with them.

Admittedly, these may only be tainted lifestyles and many will argue that blaming others is a coping mechanism and is far removed from mental illness. It relieves the stress from one's own guilt. That may be true, but when getting down to the nitty gritty of mental illness, this refusal to take a look at one's own irresponsible behavior is definitely not leading toward mental health.

Mental illness is not mental illness when we can stop our finger pointing long enough to help others who are in stress, or who need our help. And that happens to such a degree when tragedy strikes that there is indeed hope of recovery for most of us.

Therefore mental illness is not mental illness if we can see what we did wrong to others and say, I am sorry and mean it. A lesson has been learned. But being human, and therefore subject to mental illness, we may again do the same thing, but maybe it will take longer, and will occur under different circumstances, but
we will again see our mistake and attempt to overcome.

When we can put ourselves, or attempt to put ourselves into the other's shoes and truthfully answer, to the best of our ability to know the truth, even though their shoes may not fit our dainty feet, and to answer the question what would we have done, honestly, truthfully, and with the grace God gives us to know the truth,
we will be on the road to recovery if we say, much worse.

The road to mental health is a long one, a long sentence we we must serve and one often where there is more darkness than light. Help comes in many forms, but first it must be recognized as being, not something apart, something that afflicts others only, but part and parcel, of us all. When one hurts or lives in darkness, we all hurt.

The Tower of Babble: Wrong or right messages

Today, a word of explanation about Headline Hunting. What exactly had I in mind when I created this blog and entitled it Headline Hunting? That is easy to answer. It dealt with my habit of reading only the headlines online each day to quickly learn what what was going on in the world.

Headlines fascinated me. and as a writer, reading them have become somewhat of a hobby. Although I find many that could be made into something other than what was spelled out in black and white, I choose not to. To do so would make someone a butt of a joke, and that has never been my intent.

Therefore, I elevated my purpose of headlines to those whose message I wanted to share with others. That is how mental health, as an ongoing theme, eventually took over Headline hunting on a regular basis. Say something that matters, I told myself. What do you know that others need to know, I further told myself.

Answers don't come easy. I had to admit I know mental illness. I know mental illness from many different angles. I know it as a sufferer of an inherited Bipolar condition; I know it as a nurse working with patients who often manifested mentally ill symptoms; I know it as a member of a family with mental illness when growing up.

And now confession time. The above was not something I cared to talk about freely, however. I much preferred other subjects and still do, but after a lifetime, almost eighty years of living among, dealing with, running away from, I have learned the value of the truth. It is truly the only way to freedom.

Freedom? What has that to do with mental illness? Everything. One is locked into one's own body and must cope to the best of one's ability. When one is programmed from birth to old age with mental aberrations that keeps one from progressing normally, physically or mentally, then one is locked out of a normal life.

The only way out is the truth. It is the truth that belongs to each one individually and cannot be programmed from without. Those on the outside trying to help can do only so much and they know that. They work from the premise of teaching the mentally ill person, if they are teachable and can think coherently, at least part of the time, how to help themselves.

Fortunately for me, thinking and writing and learning has been something I have always liked to do. In other words, I don't know much, but I am willing to learn, if that learning is compatible with what I know of myself, that is.

Therefore, the title alludes to the fact that not only do we often hear the wrong messages from those around us, we have not learned how to deal with them on an individual basis. Or maybe we take the easy way out and go with the crowd, take a pill and stop the psychic pain, deny there are problems while perpetuating problems for others in the meantime. These are temporary fixes that guarantee more problems.

Today's title, therefore, harks back to the Old Testament tale of God becoming irritated at the people of the world being so desirous of Heaven, that they attempted to build a stair way to it. He made each speak a different language and they no longer understood each other. They had no other choice but to dismantle their stairway and stop taking the matter into their own hands.

The moral of the above illustration is this: God speaks to each person individually since He created them this way. What works for one may almost work for another, but a few nuts and bolts -- no insults intended -- may be slightly different. Nations are made up of almost likenesses, but not quite. They are made up of a bunch of ones, but no two are exactly alike. But they are basically better prepared to understand their own next door neighbor than the friend on the other side of the world one met online, or through an email.

And with that explanation we are brought back to the present and to the predicament the world if finding itself in today. What is right and what is wrong, who is responsible, where is it happening, when will it stop and so on. In other words, how do we deal with mental illness?

Do we deal with it by denying that everyone of us, at some time, however infrequent the occasion, have been guilty of wrong thinking, wrong doing and then covering up the fact. Mental illness exists as societal problem and as long as the perpetuation of greed and schemes to try to cure all of us by raising money to throw at it, exists, eradication will only continue to elude a world in need. Money helps, but if only used the right way. To feed, clothe, educate and protect people.

The right question to ask is this message right or wrong? What message? The lies or the truth we tell ourselves, the lies or the truth we tell others, the lies or the truth we refuse to learn...

Overuse of Drugs

Most certainly medicine is being prescribed too freely these days. That is a known. And that is not to say medicine is not important and that we are a fortunate world to be living in such enlightened times, but when is enough enough. I believe we have reached that pinnacle. Medicine should be a second choice, not a first choice. The first choice should is to see if there are alternative routes to a cure, and not a cop out with drugs. In other words,seek the cause of the symptoms first before concluding that a powerful drug is the best choice.

When I ran across the headline stating that a study concluded that "newer anti-psychotic drugs were being overused, I immediately agreed. The article by a WebMd writer Brenda Goodman is an excellent one and traces the uses of these drugs back to their beginnings.

"In adults, for example, the use of any antipsychotic medication -- old or new -- remained relatively stable from 1995 to 2001. But from 2001 to 2006 use of the medications doubled, the study showed, indicating that doctors were becoming quicker to turn to these powerful drugs."

Those are startling facts, and it would do all of us good to stop and consider what is wrong with our society that this is happening.

PS:
The image is from a yarn creation. It is not a refined work of art but was a free-hand rendering of a coarse yarn on a piece of fabric that I sewed into a pillow. With my limited skills at embroidery, I attempted to depict an apple tree with a little by picking apples and placing them in a basket. It is now a pillow in my living room.

How does it relate to the overuse of anti-psychotic drugs? This is the best I can come up with at the moment: An apple a day may not keep the doctor away, but it could go a long way in helping the immune system do its work seeing over the health of the body. And a healthy immune system may make anti-psychotic drugs unnecessary. Well, its a thought anyway, probably not an earth shaking one, but we can't all be scientists, can we?