World Mental Health Day - our personal experiences and advice about mental health

 

The importance of good mental health is given extra prominence on 10 October when we join with others to mark World Mental Health Day.

 

Whilst we know that mental health should be at the top of the agenda all year round, World Mental Health Day is an international day for global mental health education, awareness and advocacy against social stigma.

 

We thought it was a great time for some of the practitioners here at the Centre for Integral Health to share their experiences and advice about mental health…

 

Maria Franklin

 

We often carry old stuff which affects our mental and physical well being, and the big challenge is how to access and change these patterns, and find out what else might be contributing to how we feel.

 

Often I find that people’s current symptoms can be traced back to significant stresses and traumas in their lives, or maybe also their parents. These may reside unnoticed in the subconscious. By bringing them into our conscious awareness and acknowledging them, we can begin to understand how they influence our current life, allow them to release and start to make a change.

 

Using Kinesiology, EMMETT and Bioenergetic scanning we can start to access these old patterns that are still running and help the body to heal.

 

Ben Calder

 

Mental health has been such an important part of my life and development. From an early age, there have been difficulties in my family situation: separation from my father, lots of house moves, difficulty making friends and maintaining long-term relationships. This led to me having a significant amount of anxiety and suicidal thoughts through various points in my life.

 

Thankfully due to a couple of key aspects, I'm able to manage myself and have created a thriving life and relationships.

 

My key support practices are:

 

• LifeForce Qigong

• Meditation practice

• The exploration of my Shadow Self and how that creates the reactions to the world around me.

 

I have extensively used counselling, talk therapy and relationship therapy to work through my resistances and difficulties, most of which turn out to be how my mind has represented a person or situation, rather than those being the problem of themselves.

 

I really encourage everyone to get support in discovering how you view the world and how changes to that can create more ease, joy and lightness in all areas of your life.

 

Jessika Carrera-Maybury

 

Mental health is a subject very close to my heart. I have suffered myself with depression, anxiety and bulimia. I experienced a very difficult childhood where I faced many challenges and sexual abuse. This left me with feelings of unworthiness and self-loathing.

 

I was determined to self destruct and took a path of drugs and alcohol to escape all these uncomfortable feelings, to numb myself. I finally hit rock bottom and was severely self-harming.

 

This is when I found Reiki and then later Theta Healing.

 

Reiki helped to calm my mind, to switch off all the overthinking and to bring me gently and safely back into the reality I was trying so hard to escape. It gave me peace and space for my mind to just stop. It also helped my physical symptoms of anxiety and asthma.

 

I learned about why these physical symptoms appeared and what they were trying to tell me. It started my healing journey.

 

I then started Theta Healing sessions, which helped me to understand my limiting beliefs and change them. I thought I was not good enough, ugly, useless, that I couldn’t cope and that I wasn’t safe.

 

We worked through these feelings and beliefs and I came to understand WHY I felt like I did. I learned I had a choice and I COULD feel better.

 

Both Reiki and Theta Healing changed my life and this was both inspiring and magical to me.

 

I wanted to help others like I had been helped, so I trained as a Reiki Therapist and I am now a Reiki Master-Teacher, so as well as treating clients I also train and guide others on their Reiki journey. I also started my Theta Healing training and became a Theta Healing Practitioner, I progressed and am now an Advanced Level Practitioner.

 

I am passionate about helping others with mental health issues because I have been there myself. I know how it feels to struggle on a daily basis with those feelings of overwhelm and internal pain. I know just waking up is sometimes the hardest thing.

 

I know how it feels to want to stop the world and get off. I know the tiredness of just getting through each day. Just surviving.

 

And I know it doesn’t have to be this way... there is hope.

 

Lucy McIvor

 

We all have mental health, just as much as we all have physical health. What I'm interested in is what prevents people from pursuing the help they need mentally?

 

Is it still the stigma behind 'mental help’?

Is it comparing your need for help against other 'more extreme cases'?

 

Whatever it is, don't discount the benefit talking has, no matter how undeserving you feel what you have to say might be.

 

When we talk we release our thoughts, and gain another perspective. When we suppress our thoughts and emotions, they get trapped inside us without any way out, which can manifest itself in many ways, both physically and mentally, and later on in life.

 

Aside from talking, self-care is so important.

 

Self-care needn't be luxury holidays and expensive spa breaks. Self-care can be as simple and as free as allowing yourself a 5-minute meditation break. Or a walk

in nature with your music on.

 

If you are one of many feeling like you don't have enough time for self-care, take a look at your schedule for the next week, be honest and write down everything that you have spent time doing each day.

 

At the end of the week look at it and see firstly, if there is any time spare, and secondly what you are spending your time doing, and ask if it is beneficial to your mental health.

 

Then make a conscious decision to allow yourself some time. You can't pour from an empty cup.

 

Franziska Cecchetti-Pretsch

Mental Health is the theme that is coming up in all of my sessions.
As a social worker over many years I have been with many different people in deeply stressful situations in their lives.

And now, with systemic constellations work, I feel I have even more tools to go deep into the patterns and causes of mental health issues.
Very important for me is always to see each of you as an individual with a unique situation.

What causes stress for you is not the same as everybody else and needs to be looked at in your unique circumstances.
We look systemically into how things are related to each other and how certain dynamics, often unseen, can cause your mental health to suffer.

My most important point to make: Don’t think you have to deal with this alone.
Don’t feel ashamed to reach out for help. We all have been in situations where our mental health has suffered.

The sooner you reach out, the earlier you can get the support you need. Take the first step and contact us. Don’t go through this alone.