The Sunday Mail
Mertha Mo Nyamande
MENTAL disorders have been the bane of human existence for centuries.
Why have they been so complex to remedy?
The greatest problem with a human is that it is a social being. It requires other humans to guide, validate and help it to navigate its environments and developments.
We are all born of a mother and a father. As such, these become our primary guides. We are either too scared to challenge or question our parents’ ways or conditioning, or we are too sold on an idea that anything else becomes blasphemous and could never be right.
The dilemma, however, is that we neglect improving on what has been handed over to us. We end up simply copying and pasting the corrupt templates handed to us from our childhood to our own children.
For this very reason, we naturally become so frustrated that we do not develop beyond what has been handed down.
The human being yearns to do more and better than its predecessor. We learn from generations before us. But, if for whatever reason we lacked the skill to do so, it is likely that the flaws are passed down through generations.
These fears of failure are what manifest as anxieties or neurotic presentations, due to the nature of stress and difficulties they cause. Here, we are talking about the guilt and shame of not being able to navigate or control one’s own faculties.
This stress and anxiety, as discussed in previous articles, triggers the production of excessive energy in the form of adrenaline, for use in performing tasks to improve whatever skill.
This hormone numbs any pain and increases focus on whatever threat, perceived or real. When this energy is not used in the longer term, it becomes a burden on the body, triggering the release of cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone associated with rest and sleep to mitigate the burning sensation of the adrenaline.
This sense of sleepiness, and lack of drive or motivation is what is referred to as depression. Anxiety and depression are the core problems in almost all mental disorders.
So, the continuum goes as follows:
Stress — minor difficulty in coping with a particular activity.
Anxiety — significant difficulty coping with various/daily activities.
Depression — mood difficulties with daily life.
Psychosis — altered perception of life, often associated with one or more of the senses compromised.
Personality disorders — rigid and ingrained patterns of behaviour that often makes one’s life or life of others difficult.
These labels are symptoms of whatever underlying mental problem that exists, and these are what psychology and psychotherapy seek to help understand and explain, which helps the individual to map out their own path or learn new ways to navigate back to better coping with situations.
Addictions or other dependencies — drugs, prescribed or illicit; and alcohol; pornography; gambling; obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and other associated disorders — become what is referred to as a maladaptive coping mechanism to manage frustrations of the underlying mental problem.
These problems are often learnt, consciously or unconsciously, in what is referred to as classical or operant conditioning.
We often learn our habits from our environments, and if there are repeated habits that are largely flawed, so will our coping be.
Charity begins at home. Our families try to mitigate our bad behaviours, as they are likely to have contributed to their creation and development.
Parents may have spoilt us too much or been overly punitive to a point that they are likely to feel guilty for the perceived or actual shortcomings, or they become so preoccupied in correcting their own mistakes vicariously through their children despite the consequences — almost in a psychopathic manner.
This is where they no longer care so much for the children’s well-being but more for their own psychological safety.
This is not to say they are at fault, but they would have played a big role in our life’s outcomes.
We are products of our parents, after all, though society also plays a part in social learning. The core beliefs would have formed by the time we engage in social activities at school – usually around the age of three to six.
Psychology and psychotherapy are not about blame, but examining where things went wrong and what can be done to remedy them.
Psychiatry, on the other hand, seeks to help manage the pain of whatever disorder with the use of medication.
Lasting solutions and remedies to these thinking errors that lead to mental distress and disorders come from understanding the what and the why. The how then becomes a lot easier.
Psychologists and psychotherapists are always available to help guide you to your own solutions.
Mertha Mo Nyamande is a psychotherapist. He can be contacted on [email protected] or @ www.i-wellbeing.weebly.com
