Mental awareness

Mental awareness

zash • Feb 20, 2020

Good morning

I just thought and was thinking about mental health awareness all night (after my friend told me yesterday a devastating news for the sister of our common friend , who died yesterday from liver failure).

She was unhappy and insecure with her body and mind . She went drinking and became alcoholic. Bad experience with man ( ex husband and boyfriends) keep her on the edge all the time . Living alone and without support ( nor from her family that now is devastated).

Do you think that we ( family , friends , partners) could help someone who is in depression?

Unfortunately even now in 21st century people feel embarrassed if they need to go to counsel or psychologist.

My opinion is that no matter how much we want to help we are not professional people , so maybe the best is to help them find the best psychologist?

Do you think the lifestyle could help in this kind of cases ?

There are so many people going into depression and are unable to deal with life issues , thinking that the short escape that alcohol , drugs could give them is acceptable?

I think the same way we go to dentist, when having problems , cardiologists, orthopaedic and etc , same we need to go to psychologist when we have a mental issue ?


Do you think that as soon as we catch it in early stages is easier to cure ?


Have a peaceful and happy Day !!!

Z

Ohio prime​(switch male) • Feb 20, 2020

Z the best thing one can start off with is caring for yourself and others.

It then becomes the foundation that can be built on, much like it is in our Lifestyle.

Best of luck,
Jules

Solidbobtheflamingo​(dom male){Megagem} • Feb 20, 2020

First I have never heard of a cure for depression. It is a chemical imbalance in your brain. This can be counteracted with drugs and theropy but your mileage will vary with both. In my experience it comes in waves and there are moderate times and then bad times.

Next if you have depression it is OK you can manage it but you need to seek help from a professional. If you try and fill the hole yourself you will fail and sink deeper into a depressed state. Do not try and make your partner the center point of you geting well all people fail and when they do it will make you spiral again. It also leads to a very unhealthy relationship of dependents.

Yes family and friends can be a great help and I strongly recommend if you have depression telling the people around you so you can have a good support system. It can make things a lot easier.

Unfortunately yes many people so turn to drugs and alcohol and abuse them when depersed. There is still a big stigma on depression. And if one more person suggests to run it off I am going to snap.

Lastly I do not recommend playing while in a depressed mindset. SCS it is important and I don't personally feel I can hit that standard while I am that state.

MasterBear​(other butch) • Feb 20, 2020

"Do you think that we ( family , friends , partners) could help someone who is in depression? "

Help yes- but take accountability for no.
And be prepared for the outcome to be your help is not followed through and or ignored.






"My opinion is that no matter how much we want to help we are not professional people , so maybe the best is to help them find the best psychologist?" 


Yes. Absolutely. What we think is right could ultimately do more damage.




"Do you think the lifestyle could help in this kind of cases ? "


Absolutely NO. BDSM is not therapy. It is not medication. You bring who you are into BDSM warts and all. Meaning BDSM will NOT help with chronic depression or anxiety. And in many cases makes it worse.


"There are so many people going into depression and are unable to deal with life issues , thinking that the short escape that alcohol , drugs could give them is acceptable? "


I know you are trying to be helpful here, but this truly minimizes the depth of depression. This isnt about not being able to deal. This is a chemical issue in the brain. There is no escape here. When someone is drunk or using -- they are still depressed and anxious.




"I think  the same way we go to dentist, when having problems , cardiologists, orthopaedic and etc , same we need to go to psychologist when we have a mental issue ? "


Should , sure. But one person's issue is another person's baseline. And to clarify here-- I feel it isnt your intent- but depression and anxiety are not mental issues. They are emotional ones with a complex root that include brain chemistry.






"Do you think that as soon as we catch it in early stages is easier to cure ? "


This isnt about curing a person. They may never get well with appropriate therapy and medication .



I realize that you are seeking answers. However, as someone who suffers from depression and anxiety. Who as a sister and mother on anti psychotics who loves someone whose anxiety makes mine look like a fart. Whose dad is schizophrenic and in an institution.


I have this to say.


Managing mental and emotional illness is the responsibility of the one who suffers from it.

we can support, listen, advise to seek help. BUT be prepared for them to not think they need it.



We have a person who is suicidal in our community. Instead of seeking actual help. They play - then they crash- then the community does a 24 hour watch for days.

In my opinion this is not what the community should be doing.


We are not professionals that know how to assess and manage properly.

We are making him worse.

Dunimos​(dom male) • Feb 20, 2020

This is a great subject.. Nd I have a ton of opinion on it, that I will keep most to myself... however,

I do believe we can help, in fact I am in that process now. I had met a young lady, we were establishing a relationship and I began noticing red flags. Her life was consumed with chaos and so I began sorting through these observations. To make a long story short, she is now getting the professional help she needed in large part because of my influence and her trust in me.

So.. no, I am not aqualified counselor or doctor... and yes, just as I would with a family member or friend or employee... or any human being I encounter... I can and should influence them to make healthy decisions without endangering myself or putting my own sanity at risk.

I dont think this always a cut and dry issue... some people like this young lady, have legit reasons to be depressed... sometimes bad things happen and we have to learn to deal with it and it sure helps when you have a network of people to learn on and point you in the right direction.... that may be all it takes. That with the willingness to get better, people tend to get their life back on track.

zash • Feb 20, 2020

Thank you so much for clarifying a lot of the questions.

Firstly I would like to apologise for the way I wrote some of the lines( I never suffered depression and anxiety) , without knowing the complexity of the matter, it was not my intention to minimise the conditions.As well I never had very close contact with person suffering from those conditions .Obviously I had contact with people who are momentary feeling down due to some issue , needing support , advise or just presence ( not being alone ).

I am Capricorn and honestly I am very bad with emotions, I am more pragmatic and probably that why I wouldn’t let emotions to control me . But I know that everyone is different and everyone deal with feelings and emotions how they can .

How can we teach someone to love himself ? I think that is the first step of dealing with this? This is why I asked regarding the lifestyle? I note that no matter of the size , shape , sexual orientation, likes and dislikes etc... mostly of the people within the lifestyle I met or read them profiles seems confident and happy with themselves. Or am I wrong ? Is it just a mask for the outside world?

Thanks
Z

MasterBear​(other butch) • Feb 20, 2020

"How can we teach someone to love himself ? "


You cant teach someone to love themselves. They have to choose that.
For my beloved I have rules about self deprecation and allowing others to put her down. But at the end of the day she has to choose whether to love herself or not.



"I think that is the first step of dealing with this?"

It isnt the first step in dealing with this at all. Confidence is an out come of hard work. Outcome=end product. The first step is recognizing behavior or emotion as a problem at all.


" This is why I asked regarding the lifestyle? "

There are limits to what BDSM can do. People who are inherently unbalanced remain unbalanced. Start adding endorphins. Sex, play, power exchange it doesnt change their natural emotional state.



"I note that no matter of the size , shape , sexual orientation, likes and dislikes etc... mostly of the people within the lifestyle I met or read them profiles seems confident and happy with themselves. Or am I wrong ? Is it just a mask for the outside world? "



You are indeed wrong. It is a mask. But, we all have masks. A work mask. A parent mask. A societal mask. My beloved is an expert at masking. By listening to her you would never know how much she struggles.



Remember this-- another's persons journey is just that. Thiers. They must decide for themselves if they are needing help. And many dont.



You cant save someone from themselves.

Erick​(sub male) • Feb 20, 2020

Well, here is another of my politically-incorrect posts. But, you see, I kiss the high heels of Lady Truth, so I am obliged to tell you this, even though it is not merely outside of political correctness, but is in fact just the opposite. And if you have been taught the politically-correct view of this subject, this is going to drive you crazy. Trigger Warning. Buckle your seatbelts.

1) "Mental illness" (as opposed to neurological issues) is not the result of brain chemistry. It is best described as an emotional or spiritual problem.

2) People can and do overcome it. Which is no guarantee that any particular person will do it. But falsely believing that you cannot do it is not helpful.

3) You can overcome it without "psychiatric help" (that famous oxymoron). And in fact, you are in many types of circumstance more likely to overcome it without the "help" of psychiatrists.

4) Psychiatrists in many cases make things worse. Sometimes MUCH worse. (As does the medical racket in general. Iatrogenic morbidity and mortality are statistically among the leading causes of suffering and death in our "advanced" culture.)

5) S&M rituals do indeed help SOME people with their emotional issues. (But the outcome is unpredictable enough that you would certainly not want to "prescribe" it to anyone.)

I say these things because of my studies of the subject, and because of personal experience. I come from a family of doctors and shrinks, one of whom was well known in psychiatric circles in the 1950s. And many members of my extended family have always been great believers in "psychotherapy" and have always spent a lot of time getting their various neuroses and psychoses analyzed and diagnosed and managed and medicated.

So when I myself fell into a very deep, endogenous, clinical depression in my twenties, my family naturally "helped" me by sending me to the shrinks. I eventually consulted over half a dozen of these "experts" and took numerous "medications" too. Because what they call "clinical depression" really is a nightmare. All the horror stories people tell you about it are true. Every day you feel like slitting your wrists or putting your head in the oven. My own experience in that hellhole lasted three and a half years.

And all of my shrinks constantly told me that I would never get better than that I would have to rely on their pills and their professional wisdom (ka-CHING ka-CHING) for the rest of my life.

But by chance I was in those days doing coursework in the history of Western philosophy, and in that context came across Thomas Szasz, the most eminent of the early psychiatric critics. Szasz in turn led me to Laing and Breggin and Foucault. (And also to psychiatric literature in general: Pinel, Charcot, Freud, Jung, Krafft-Ebing, Piaget, Erikson, Frankl, Ellis, Perls, Rogers, Kinsey, Fromm-Reichmann, etc.). And eventually it dawned on me that the theory and practice of psychiatry MIGHT BE a pile of horse manure, and that I MIGHT BE better off without it. So I stopped going to the shrinks and taking their pills and their advice. And--lo and behold!--I got well.

I do know people who have--to all appearances and according to their own testimony--benefitted from psychiatry. But I also know people who have apparently profited from knitting and crossword puzzles and caring for pets and going to fortune tellers. And religion often works wonders too--if you happen to be a believer.

The point is: People shouldn't be so quick to believe in "authorities"--especially when the authorities have a vested interest in getting you to believe in them, and especially when the history of their supposed accomplishments is actually a parade of blundering disasters.

Island girl​(sub female){Yes owned.} • Feb 20, 2020

Erick, I'm sorry, I am completely incapable of providing a short answer...

I fall closer in with your camp I think and that is because of my own experience as well. The first thing I have to say is that no two people are alike, and to lump all "depression" into one group is a mistake. There ARE people who have a chemical imbalance. Then there are people who, for instance, who feel that they are between a rock and a hard place and don't feel like they can find a way out. Their thoughts can begin to spiral down, and a poor self-image can do it as well. A great deal of improvement can happen when people change the way they think.

I guess I was lucky. At a bad time in my life, I managed to find a therapist that was willing to provide me with the tools I need to pull myself out of a hole. Thing is, I needed to WANT to do it. So perhaps for many of us, the drugs could be a first step toward health if it is necessary.

Later, I had another bout that landed me in a hospital, a relationship that had gone bad... Thanks to that, I was on some nasty drugs. They told me I'd be on them for the rest of my life... sound familiar?

I'm putting the bulk of my experience into a blog post, it doesn't need to be here. It will be findable if anyone really wants to read it.

I was crawling my way out of the pit when Master found me. I had lost all of my self-esteem and I was terribly shaken by my stay in the hospital. He gave me the tools to change how I thought, and what I believed. Those tools made the most difference. I got off the medications and never looked back. If I'm having an issue now, it is because of something that I'm not dealing with, not because of a chemical imbalance. That was never my issue.

Frankly, most of the people I know that are experiencing some sort of depression are choosing to be there. They are glass half empty sorts of people and they are comfortable being there. The devil they know is far more comfortable than the one they don't. I've tried to talk with some of them, and it doesn't work. All I can do is lead by example. If one of them asks for help, I'll be there in a heartbeat, but in the long run, they have to do the work and they have to want to change. I can't do it for them.

Erick​(sub male) • Feb 21, 2020

Hi, Island Girl--

You say so much that I wholeheartedly agree with that I am a little puzzled that you nevertheless, if only in passing, maintain your allegiance to the "chemical imbalance" idea. I don't suppose I can change your mind about that, but I'll offer a few observations anyway:

I personally do not at all abjure the judicious use of some drugs--licit or illicit--to alleviate despair. Benzodiazepines, which I was given by prescription, helped me a lot, pro re nata, when I was deeply depressed. (Though the neuroleptics I was given were UTTERLY POISONOUS. It is no wonder that nobody wants to take those things.)

And if you look at the professional "indications" for the use of benzos, you will see that "chemical imbalance" is listed. The benzos are said to "correct the chemical imbalance." But that's an unwarranted inference. In other words, it's poppycock. You might just as well say that when a businessman has a double martini at the end of a tough day of arguing about the terms of an important deal, he is "correcting a chemical imbalance."

What the "chemical imbalance" idea boils down to is that it is sometimes possible to measure chemicals in the brain that correspond to emotional states. Very well. But that is correlation, not causality. To say that the chemicals cause the emotion is not only an unjustified assumption, it is on the face of it actually less likely than the possibility that the emotion causes the chemistry.

Also: We should always be careful to remain open-minded in our notions of what exactly constitutes a "balanced" outlook on life. I won't insist that happy people are always imbeciles and gloomy people are always insightful and contemplative--because that's obviously not true. Surely not. But it does happen that way often enough. So if we had a magic happy-pill that would alleviate all the emotional difficulties of people like Churchill, Lincoln, Newton, Van Gogh, Beethoven, Schumann, William James, Woolf, O'Keeffe, Plath, Sexton, Lowell, Berryman, Hemingway, John Nash, Lester Young, Jonathan Winters, and Judy Garland, should we medicate them and make them more "balanced"?