It’s incredible to witness the change in the public’s perception of mental health over the last few years. In the UK we are slowly absorbing the mental health mind-set that we see portrayed by the multitude of American media we all encounter on a daily basis. Gone is the good old British ‘stiff upper lip’ and although I’m not sure we will ever be as welcoming to therapy as the American public seem to be, we are as a culture becoming much more open about seeking help with our mental wellbeing.
I’m beginning to see a bit of a trend emerging that I feel is based on our new heightened awareness of mental wellbeing, that is being reinforced by media and celebrity; its unfashionable to be sad. Whilst we British are much better at expressing our emotions, the emotion that I see people sweeping aside as if it’s not allowed is that of sadness. I’m wondering if all this focus and spotlight on emotions means that people feel that embracing mental wellbeing means that they have to be happy all the time?
At the risk of using the word ‘normal’ ……it is ‘normal’ for all of us to cycle through a huge range of emotions on a daily basis including negative ones. If you imagine an axis plotting your mood level with positive numbers being positive emotion and negative numbers being ‘less happy’ emotions, when you join the points up the line will loop up and down. It may be ‘unfashionable’ to feel sad but it is a very ‘normal’ mood state that all of us should feel from time to time.
If you have a think about what your ‘mood chart’ would look like and feel that your line goes below the horizontal axis too often, more often than when you are feeling positive and happy, then treat this as important information. What makes you sad, what are the triggers and what can you do about the triggers to change them? Emotions are there for a reason, use them wisely.