Noise: The Myth of Fair Value

Written by Andi Bazaar, Hugo-licharré Freimann, Yevhn Gertz and Jwan Höfflér Conwall | Sept 1, 2023

Sometimes, the people who we want validation and understanding from are those who judge negatively or outright dismiss our struggles with mental health. It doesn’t make it our suffering any less real and can in fact make it worse, we tend to feel lonelier and more uncertain.

It is important to remember that even if other people can’t understand or refuse to acknowledge our pain doesn’t make it any less real or deserving of help, it is okay to schedule therapy sessions or go to a doctor for medications without others knowing.

Mental health stigma hurts people everyday. From those who can’t tell their loved ones they are struggling for fear of being judged, to those who don’t feel safe taking a sick day at work for mental health reasons. Stigma isolates those who are already struggling alone.

When systems and families put barriers on something this important, it can easily make people turn to self medicating, abusing substances or finding coping mechanisms that are unhealthy. We cannot continue to fail those who struggle from something that is out of their control.

REMINDER
"our mental health suffering doesn’t make us act abusive towards people, while some may say that they are that way because of their depression or anxiety the reality is that it is something completely separate. blaming it on mental health is a way to avoid accountability."

COMPREHENSIVE ON DEPRESSION

Let’s talk about a comprehensive topic on depression, how it can manifest/helping those going through it and treatment.

Depression is by far the most common mental health struggle. However, there are also a lot of myths surrounding it that can make it difficult for people to reach out for help or for us to realize when a loved one is going through depression further trapping people in the cycle.

Sadness is not a requirement for depression. In fact, we can have clinical depression without expressing sadness. Depression usually impacts several areas of our life from our eating, sleeping, social withdrawal, feeling numb or angry, low energy, etc.

It is such a broad experience and very much an individual way in which each of us experiences depression that we often feel very isolated when we experience it, we feel as though we are not understood because there is that barrier between our emotions and the world around us.

Furthermore, we operate heavily on energy. When most of our energy is going towards overthinking, trying to make sense of our emotions we are often left with no energy for our regular tasks. We may feel as though simple everyday activities are too much to bear.

For example, we may realize we haven’t showered in a while but also can’t bring ourselves to do it because the task seems to require too much energy. We may stop replying to friends/family not because we don’t miss them or want them around but because there is no energy left.

However, this only strengthens the symptoms we are experiencing. It is a cycle that can leave us feeling worthless, as if our life is on pause while everyone else’s is moving forward. For every activity that is procrastinated, we feel a little guiltier and harder on ourselves.

People around us often fail to understand what it is like going through depression and while meaning well can often make the situation worse. For example, they may use tough love strategies where they force us to get up or guilt us into going out or engaging in activities.

Not only can it be harmful but it may lead to worsening symptoms when the person feels unable to do these activities. The guilt is a fuel to our symptoms and when people around us be it loved ones, employers or society as a whole dismiss our symptoms "it traps us more."

The problem with depression is that it is also hard to find a community that helps us, those going through their own depression are also feeling isolated and cannot help. Those who may not have gone through it may not understand and completely lose patience after a while.

Getting help is a barrier, even more so when living in countries where there are additional hurdles to getting help such as a lack of resources and a high stigma of mental health issues. Therefore, even though we may be aware that we can technically get help, it is hard to start.

As loved ones, what can we do? While it may be tempting to take over the life of the person who is struggling and try to get them up and being productive, this can easily backfire.

"let’s remember that depression saps energy and forcing or pressuring someone will only make it worse."

We may also start to feel impatient because we may keep hearing the same stuff such as them talking about feeling worthless that they have failed at life or that they want to stop existing, it can be scary to be on the receiving end of this talk.

We often try to show them that not everything is as it seems or comparing them to other people, “others have it worse” is a common statement made by people who want to help and while it can come from a place of wanting to help, it does not at all.

Depression is something that can happen to anyone and at anytime even if on the outside, their life may seem to be going well. What we don’t realize is that depression doesn’t comme suddenly, it is usually a gradual process that we notice when it is very entrenched.

For example, we may only go through a few bad days here and there and end up procrastinating a few projects. We may withdraw just a little bit more from our social activities and it is so gradual that we don’t really notice it at first, nor do our loved ones.

This is especially true because a lot of people are scared to apply the label of depression to themselves. They may feel like it is not bad enough yet to be depression or that it is another issue entirely, therefore making it more likely to wait longer before getting help.

It is important to remember that all the emotions we carry have a price especially when we don’t process them or express them. For example, if I go through many stressors, anxiety and just keep it bottled up, depression is bound to happen because we have run out of bandwidth.

While we may look back at the short term and realize that nothing much has changed in our life circumstances, we often don’t realize the years or decades that it took for us to get there. Depression can happen on its own but it can also be a consequence of other issues.

For example, experiencing a lot of anxiety or trauma can drain us overtime and depression may start to appear as we start to feel more hopeless or helpless. Changing seasons can also trigger strong bouts of depression, anniversaries of tragic or traumatic events can be triggers.

So what can we do when going through depression and what can we do to properly help someone going through depression? First of all, it is important to realize from the beginning that every person is different and therefore their experience of depression will be different.

Some people may get irritated more while other people may simply stop talking or participating in any conversation. For others, the depression may be there but they seem to be going through their life as though nothing is happening.

The most important help is fostering an environment in our relationships where people can feel safe expressing emotions. It is important to remember that while depression can be isolating, there is still that urge to be loved and included. People with depression will drop hints.

THE HINTS CAN LOOK LIKE:

“I am tired of all this”
“life isn’t really worth it”
"what’s the point?”
"I feel like I am a failure” etc

• Truly listening to our loved ones helps a lot because we will notice this talk emerging and can actually help when we notice those first signs.
• Empathy is also a great way to bond with people experiencing depression and showing them that we are there for them. Empathy being key here, because pity and other types of emotions can actually be condescending to those who are suffering usually needing to put them down.

LET’S TALK ABOUT GUILT

A feeling we are all familiar with but can become pathological. However, today we are going to look at it from the lens of manipulation and creating feelings of guilt in others as a mean of control. That can be from parents, partners, etc.

As many of us realize, feeling guilty and being guilty of something bad have no relationship with each other. In fact, most of the guilt experienced is not because we have done anything bad, but because of the conditioning we experienced. Let’s look at how and why it happens.

First of all, guilt is an important part of our moral compass. It allows us to connect with people and realize the hurt we may have caused to help us change. However, in our cultures it is also manufactured from a young age as a means of control/a shortcut to proper parenting.

We can all remember our parents or caregivers mentioning how our "misbehaviours" hurt them or their health and that they can only be happy and healthy if we follow exactly what they say. As we grow up, the guilt inducing behaviours only exacerbate, it becomes a means to an end.

It can be about guilting daughters into helping with household chores and not sons, guilting young adults to get married so they can have grandkids (like they did a good job with the kids they had lol). Despite knowing that the behaviours are toxic, the guilt is often too strong.

That creates a big power imbalance in a relationship that is already naturally imbalanced. It teaches people that boundaries are bad, having an individual identity is a form of betrayal to our families and even worse — it transcends family dynamics and seeps into other settings.

That can come in the form of imposter syndrome when we first start our careers, feeling as though we don’t belong or we are just faking it, compared to other people. That is very much conditioned because we were compared to other kids and made to feel inferior.

• We may turn our workplace supervisors into surrogate parents and feel bad implementing boundaries and work-life balance for fear of disappointing these authority figures. Therefore, we will sacrifice our physical/mental health for people who are looking to exploit us.
• We may even have those dynamics with friends and partners where we would do anything for them and feel as though we have to show them more love than they show us because that is how it worked with our parents. We would do our best to get validation but they would the goal post.

So what can we do? First of all, it is important to remember that awareness is important. We need to know the dynamics that stem from all of this, when we have emotions that come up, we often feel like they are natural and on the spot and we don’t connect them to the past.

However, the guilt we experience is very much like a parasite that has been put there on purpose as a means of control. Therefore, relying on the emotion of guilt as our moral compass doesn’t work and we need to continue establishing boundaries despite feeling it.

We can start relying on other things to make our decisions rather than the emotion of guilt. For example, we can keep lists of logical evidence in favour/logical evidence against before making a decision so it is not driven by guilt.

Overtime, it helps to stop believing lies that induce that guilt and therefore control. For example, when a parent says it is killing me that you are not married. We start to realize that it is biologically impossible and that we should not make a life decision based on guilt.

Once we realize, the mechanisms of control especially in a supportive setting like therapy where we have someone there for us unconditionally, we can use it as a stepping stone to resist that mechanism of control. Furthermore, having a good support system is important.

For example, if we have good friends we can trust, we know there are people we can rely on even if other people try to isolate us. If I only have my family around, then resisting will make me feel too alone, but the more people I have around the more I can implement changes.

We also need to be patient and empathetic to ourselves. We have been trained/brainwashed to feel those emotions and having a goal to stop feeling it right away is unrealistic but taking action despite that guilt (first for small things and then bigger ones) will help that spell.

It is basically exploring our life and environment for the first time as adults rather than when it should have happened as kids, we feel guilty at first but realize after trying that there was nothing bad about it, helping us further explore. That’s why it is good to start slow.

Furthermore, seeking that independence and access is going to help a lot. If we are able to move to another place or be physically away from the people who induce those feelings of guilt, it becomes easier as they have less access to us. However, it is not a requirement.

We can work on it even while being in the same environment, it may take longer but we can get there. It is something we can all accomplish even if it takes time and we go through external resistance from people who don’t want to lose control and internally from guilt.

I hope that this part can help shed light on guilt, how it is manufactured and why it opens a path for caregivers and future people we meet to take advantage of us as well as how it can change overtime. It is a deep unlearning process.

LET’S TALK ABOUT TRIGGERS

It is a word that is used in many contexts but still not very well understood. At its core, a trigger is something in our environment that leads to an emotional response within us. So what are they and how can we be aware of/manage them?

One of the main jobs of our brains is survival which means it learns and protects us from situations that were harmful to us in the past. This is especially true for issues that happened during our childhood when we were vulnerable.

Triggers happen when a situation is close to something traumatic that happened in the past, enabling us to go into fight or flight mode in order to survive that threat. In our evolution, it played an important role to save us from dangerous situations.

They also have levels. For example, certain situations can lead to full blown panic attacks while others can make us feel down and we only realize it later after the trigger happened. One of the most important things we can do is keep a list of those triggers.

That awareness can be so important, it allows us to operate from a place where we know issues in our environment that are harmful to our mental health. For example, a common trigger in many of us is people yelling because it happened a lot during our childhood.

So how can we use that knowledge to help our mental health? Let’s say I had a stressful day where my mental health is already low, watching a movie or videos where there are people screaming can trigger even more anxiety. Therefore, we know to stay away from that.

That awareness of these situations is crucial because we often go through multiple triggers without realizing how much they impacted us. When we are aware of them, we can manage them better. Understanding why these triggers impact us is also important.

For some triggers, they imprinted in our brain because they happened multiple times. For example, a parent yelling often when we were kids can make us defensive or angry as adults when another person yells. For others, it only needs to happen once.

How can we deal with them and is there a way to reduce them?

In our day to day life, we can certainly reduce them, especially when we are already overwhelmed. Constant exposure to known triggers can lead to a lot of anxiety and even depression or numbness after a while.

However, there are certain triggers that we simply cannot avoid because they are outside of our control. Therefore, understanding why they happen and working with a therapist through the roots of those triggers can reduce its emotional impact. Safe exposure can also help a lot.

It teaches our brains that we do not need this situation anymore. For example, if crowds are a trigger for me, I can slowly start to voluntarily go into crowds, have the panic attacks and then wait in the crowd for the panic attack to subside on its own.

It removes the fear factor overtime but it is also uncomfortable to go through that the first few times, that’s why it needs to be done in a safe manner by doing it in slow steps or with people we already feel safe with before we attempt to do it on our own.

I hope this part was able to explain the impact of triggers on our mental health and what we can do to manage them and eventually recover from them.

MEMORY LOSS

After tackling procrastination, let’s talk about a related topic that can trigger a big worry in people whose mental health is not well, memory loss. Yes, it is a very common symptom and side effect of mental health issues. Let’s dive deeper!

Creating new memories and remembering previous memories is an important component of our identity, it is the library that makes up the autobiography of our life and anchors us into our life. However, when our mental health isn’t doing well our memory gets impacted in two ways.

The first is recounting old memories, we may feel like we have lost our memories. The good news is that those memories are not gone at all and will come back once we get better. This is related to priming, priming is when our current experiences/moods impact our memories.

If we are currently feeling depressed, it primes our brain to recount previous times in our life when we were feeling depressed. Priming is a mechanism that helps us recount previous memories that will help us in our current one, to find a solution.

FUN TANGENT

We can use priming to our advantage, if we are trying to study for an exam or presentation we can replicate as much as possible the conditions of the exam and presentation including lighting, sounds, etc leading to better recall during the main event.

However, due to the long term nature of most mental health issues it means that our memories may be silenced for a long time, making us feel further disconnected from ourselves and our identities, further deteriorating our mental health. Treating the root cause is important.

Getting treatment for our depression/anxiety/trauma etc is going to be crucial because once we get better, we will get our ability to recall prior memories on top of our mental health getting better. The second issue with memories has to do with consolidation of new memories.

If we go through our day feeling depressed, anxious or numb, we are more focused on our thoughts, emotions and physical symptoms than our environment or people around us. This tuning out of our environment means that we are not able to save anything that can become a memory.

Furthermore, another important component of consolidation of memories is sleep. Our memories move from short-term to long-term memory during our sleep, where they remain in the long-term memory forever but one of the biggest ways that mental health impacts us is through sleep.

If we are not sleeping enough/getting quality sleep, it will disrupt this process, therefore leading to new memories not being properly consolidated. Again, treatment of the original causes of these issues is going to be crucial. However, there are things we can do to cope.

The first coping mechanism is going to be reconnecting with our environment. We can do that many times per day by purposefully engaging our 5 senses and counting different sights, sounds, smells, touches, tastes for a full minute and repeating it as needed.

We explore our environment through our senses so when we force ourselves to use our senses, we reconnect with our environment, therefore being more likely to create new memories. The second coping mechanism is using priming in our favour.

For example, we can use a certain smell that we know triggers good memories or going to a place that reminds us of good experiences. By doing so, we will realize that our memories are not gone and that we can remember them when we give our brains a little help.

I hope that this part helps clarify the relationship between memories and mental health and realizing that memory loss is most likely temporary and will return to its full glory after we get better.

LET’S TALK ABOUT PHYSICAL MANIFESTATIONS OF MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES

We often underestimate the impact that our mental health has on our bodies and it can quickly become overwhelming because as mental health gets worse so do physical symptoms and vice versa.

We think of mental health as something that is psychological. However, mental health is also very biological. Our stress levels, intensity of depression and trauma will have physical manifestations almost all the time. Sometimes it can be mild, other times it will be severe.

Moods and emotions will result in the endocrine system being impacted, this system impacts all our honours. When stress levels are high, adrenaline and cortisone would be released. These would directly impact the nervous system including heart rate, breathing rate, muscle tension and especially the digestive system.

Given the presence of neurons in both our brain/stomach, the link between these organs is the strongest in our bodies. This is why the number one complaint for people who go through mental health issues have stomach issues.

That can come in the form of diarrhea, constipations, IBS, nausea, increase or decrease in appetite and other forms of digestive issues such as acid reflux. They can be very debilitating because the pain and strong discomfort will also reduce our quality of life a lot.

Another way in which mental health manifests physically is through dissociation, many of us have gone through mental health issues so severe and long lasting that it shifted the way we interact with our environment and the way we perceive it.

The environment may seem as it is distorted, as if we are viewing it through a veil or that things take on a dream like quality. This phenomenon called derealization is very unsettling because we expect our perception of reality to be stable and not something that shifts.

Depersonalization is the same phenomenon except it is related to our bodies. We may hear our voice differently, perceive our limbs as though they are foreign to us, giving us a feeling of being out of our bodies. Although these situations are harmless,
they induce more anxiety.

These forms of dissociation happen often with severe anxiety/trauma. Speaking of trauma, it has the ability to shift the make up of our brain to an observable degree, certain areas of the brain may temporarily shrink until we get better and recover.

All of these create a negative feedback loop. Our mental health gets worse, so we have more pain, dissociation, making us worry about our physical health, thereby making mental health worse. This is when another form of physical manifestation happens. Numbness!

We often see numbness as being us not feeling our emotions. However, it also manifests physically. This is our body’s way of shutting down the emotion centre of our brain in order to allow us to cope better and rest from the intense emotions we felt.

However, because numbness slows us down a lot it will also make us more sluggish, tired, our reflexes are slower and we process/react to our environment more slowly. This can be detrimental to our social/professional and other areas of our lives.

While these symptoms can be reversed in the short and even medium term (a few years), when they stretch for the long term (5 to 10 years), they can increase the damage to our bodies, especially for the older population.

This is why it is important to understand as much as possible the link between mental health and physical health. They are not separate, they function together. The link goes the other way as well, if we have the flu the reduced physical capacity will impact mental health.

We may feel more depressed and anxious when we are sick. That two way communication is constantly happening within us and this is why it is important to recognize and treat our symptoms considering both the physical and psychological.

Regular check-ups at the doctor will help in terms of understanding our pain and finding solutions for them in terms of meds. Medications can also be prescribed for mental health, along with a recommendation to see a therapist to get at the bottom of our issues.

When we treat the situation at the physical and psychological level at the same time, we tackle the vicious cycle on both fronts, leaving us with the ability to recover and make long lasting gains quicker and more efficiently. In the meantime, there are things we can do at home.

Certain coping mechanisms can help a lot, deep breathing allows us to slow our heart rate and breathing rate when we are anxious, making for a less intense physical reaction. Deliberately reconnecting with our environment helps a lot as well.

If we start to feel ourselves spiralling, let’s use our five senses to forcefully reconnect with our environment by counting and paying attention to différents sights, sounds, touch the fabric of our clothes, feeling the seat we are on, using our smell and taste.

These force us to completely pay attention to our environment, leaving our attention focused on it rather than the spiral. This will help slow it down or even help us forget about the spiral we were on, challenge your thoughts logically when they happen as well.

This can be done by writing evidence for/evidence against our thoughts logically and writing a new/more logical thought to replace the previous one and giving us perspective so that we don’t as easily believe the thoughts that stem from our anxiety/depression/trauma.

PS: we also see this link between the physical and psychological happen very strongly during PMS. During the few days leading up to a period, anxiety and depression symptoms may be completely exacerbated because of the hormonal process that occurs.

I know that this part ended up being quite long but I hope that you found it informative and can start your journey to recovery by focusing on both the body and the mind. Best of luck, I know all of us can have better mental health and I hope you all have an amazing weekend x

A SPECIAL THANKS TO:

• Andi Bazaar (Writer)
• Mark J. Levstein (Co-Editor)
• Yevhn Gertz (Director Photography/Co-writer)
• Dr Oliver Schofield, MD (Consulting)
• Dr Seth Gryffen, MD (Consulting)
• Timothée Freimann schofield (Photographed)
• Clayton Euridicé Schofield (Editor/Journalist)
• Scott Wynné Schofield (Publisher)
• Henrie Louis Friedrich (Analyst)
• Jwan Höffler Conwall (Art Interior Design/Co-writer)
• Hugo-licharré Freimann (Ass Director/Co-writer)
• Shot at GQ’s Studios by José Schenkkan and Benjamin Schenkkan Joseph
• In appearance by "Jwan Höfflér Conwall" (Model)
• In collaboratiin with The Me: You Can’t See