Subtract ( — )

Written by Andi Bazaar, Co-wrote by Yevhn Gertz, Scott-Wynné Schofield and Clayton-Euridicé Schofield | Aug 11, 2023

The reason why certain situations are triggering or remind us of our trauma is because our brain is trying to protect us from another traumatic event happening. If anything resembles the setting in which a trauma happened, we may feel overwhelming anxiety.

If you feel that happening a lot or in settings that impact your quality of life a lot such as work, school or home please go to therapy or even take medications as they will help cope with these symptoms and reduce that hyper-vigilance/anxiety we may often experience.

A big casualty of seeing people burned out around us is our mental health. We feel that we shouldn’t seek help for fear of disturbing our loved ones, isolation (even emotionally) can worsen our mental health and keep us in that cycle. Seeking help is the first step to recovery.

LET’S TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT SOME CAUSES OF MENTAL HEALTH

I realized that I often speak about when someone is already struggling but without talking about risk factors that could precipitate it, so let’s dive into it.

Given the number of risk factors, we can’t cover all of them but we will try to cover some of the main ones. Often, it is a combination of these factors that mainly contributes to the mental health issues. For example, neglecting ourselves for too long because we work too much.

We often forget that our brains are not infinite energy machines. Without proper sleep and rest, we can easily get overwhelmed and crash into a depression or anxiety. Also having neglectful, abusive or authoritarian parents is also a big risk factors for those issues.

Systemic issues such as racism, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia can create huge issues in populations that suffer under these systems.

"Being in a relationship with someone who doesn’t make up happy or feeling stuck can also lead to depression."

A big one is also grief that we haven’t dealt with which tends to come back at a later point, it is important to take the time we need to grieve. Unprocessed emotions in general can pile up like a pressure cooker until we can no longer keep them repressed.

This is why it is important to externalize as issues are happening so we don’t risk further repressing those emotions. Having a social support system is also crucial whether it is family, partners or friends (even those we meet online) as long as we feel safe with them.

LET’S TALK ABOUT ANXIETY

As a category, anxiety is the second leading cause of mental health related issues after depression, anxiety used to provide an evolutionary advantage because our ancestors who were anxious were more likely to fight or run away from dangers such as predators or anything that would put their lives at risk.

We have inherited that trait because it was an advantage. However, nowadays our society is not the same way. We don’t face the same dangers but our brains still see our stressors as worthy of having that anxiety response.

Have an important exam, fearing to lose our job and so on trigger it even though it is not life threatening. It is a disproportionate response compared to the level of threat in our environment, when it happens very often that’s when it becomes problematic.

Anxiety is always about fear of the future, we cannot be anxious about something that happened in the past (that’s depression). We respond to that uncertainty by having an anxiety response. One of the ways we attempt to take control of our anxiety is by controlling our environment, that leads to issues such as “perfectionism” and an inability to let go when we cannot control a situation.

Slowly, we disengage with the world because we cannot our society but we can control our homes and our small surroundings so we withdraw further.

It is important to slowly work on accepting that uncertainty, the future is uncertain no matter how hard we try to control our life. The present is the only timeline that truly exists, accepting uncertainty goes a long way into challenging our anxiety and living despite not knowing what will happen.

Another strategy is to connect with the present. Whenever I feel anxious, I close my eyes notice the sounds around me. The smells, the touch of the seat on my body, anything to connect me to where I am right now.

Deep breathing also helps because we are focused on breathing properly and not those shallow breaths that come with our anxiety. When we breathe deeply (belly breaths where we feel it go up and down), we force our heart rate to go down and reduce the amount of adrenaline released in our bodies. Those are small things that we can do in our life to reduce anxiety and make sure that it doesn’t keep affecting us further.

If anxiety is out of control and affects your daily life, it is time to get treatment. Anxiety is highly treatable and there are many ways to cope with it. Please do not keep living with it unnecessarily and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

Please remember that our mental health is something that is continuous and we always need to take care of it and ourselves because that can end up paying dividends in terms of being healthy psychologically.

LET’S TALK ABOUT EXTERNALIZING

Given the high prevalence of mental health issues happening now, externalizing our emotions becomes more crucial. It is one of the most efficient ways to release our emotions and not repress them but how can we do it well without harm?

In a previous topic, I talked about secondary trauma, a form of trauma that comes from being exposed to people sharing their traumatic experiences. Externalizing can sometimes do something similar as well, when we share our emotions that emotional impact can transfer.

It means that there is a risk for someone wanting to help out to themselves become depressed or anxious, si how do we find the right balance? If you are the person externalizing, the best way to do it is to find multiple people to externalize to.

That way it doesn’t fall on one person in particular and we can rotate through our support system, which allows each person to rest and recuperate their energy. Another thing that we can do is ask them whether they are ready to help.

They may be too busy or already low on energy. When we ensure that they are receptive and have energy to help us, it becomes more efficient for the helper and the person being helped. If our social circle is not big enough to rotate through, there are other solutions.

Self-externalizing methods are those that don’t require the presence of another person, journaling is a big one. It allows us to externalize and keep track of patterns and progress, another one is talking out loud to ourselves or our pets.

Having a professional who helps us can also be very important, that can provide us with a safe environment and a treatment plan that helps us recover. Now let’s look at it from the perspective of the person who is helping out.

As our loved ones are struggling more and more, we feel the need to be there for them to the best of our capacity. Sometimes though, we may overdo it. We may overextend ourselves or feel guilty if we say no, but that can backfire and cause mental health issues of our own.

Despite what others may say, establishing boundaries is the healthiest thing. We can’t be there for people 24/7 and it is okay to say I will get back to you later. There is nothing wrong with that, we need to be aware of the amount of energy we have left and not risk burnout.

Even when are helping, it is important to mention if there are any triggers. Certain things other people say can trigger us and it is important to let them know early on so that there is no miscommunication. If you are helping out right now, adjustments have to happen.

In order to maintain a healthy balance, when we are exposed to more stressful situations we need to adjust our self-care and relaxation time accordingly. It is the counterweight to all these emotions we are taking in, without that balance we risk our own mental health.

I hope that this part clarifies a little bit options for healthy externalizing and healthy ways to help those around us without harm occurring to anyone.

LET'S TALK ABOUT RELAPSES

After talking about recoveries, it seems fitting to talk about relapses. They are the other side of the coin, the one we don’t like to think about or talk about much but it is very much part of the recovery process.

In fact, when we look at graphs of recoveries mental health differs from physical health. For the most part, in physical health, recovery is linear unless it is for chronic conditions. For mental health, it is almost always up and down but the trend is still upwards. However, at any point during our recovery process, we run the risk of relapsing.

These can be due to many factors from new stressors, new trauma or it can happen for no outward apparent reason at all. When it comes to recovery, there a few stages.

• precontemplation
• contemplation
• preparation
• action
• maintenance
• relapse

This model was first designed for recoveries when it comes to substance abuse and addictions, to normalize the fact that relapses are part of the journey and it is only fitting that it can also be used when it comes to our mental health.

The fact that we don’t talk about it often is a sign of stigma because we are expected to go for treatment, recover and live happily ever after. We tend to see those who relapse as people who perhaps didn’t follow the treatment plan or weren’t strong enough to hang on to their recoveries.

However, relapses are common. A big part of that is also due to the fact that our mental health is very cyclical (think economy). There are periods of high recoveries and there are periods of dips.

• Sometimes recoveries coincide with a natural upward trend and we assign the recovery to treatment but then the dip happens like it would have eventually.
• Sometimes, it is because as soon as we start getting better, we go back to the behaviours that used to burn us out and therefore we relapse.

However, as mentioned above a lot of those relapses have no specific reasons and it is important to acknowledge and normalize that because it is part of the journey for recovery.

When I look at all my clients I ever had since I started my career decade years ago, there is about 34% relapse rate out of approximately 300~ clients.

This is a very significant number, many of them felt bad or thought something was wrong with them because they couldn’t hang on to their recoveries. This just goes to show that recoveries can be messy with relapses in between, it doesn’t mean that you will always relapse or that you will never be able to sustain it.

Sometimes we need two rounds of therapy, sometimes more. We are all so different when it comes to how our mental health manifests that it is hard to put an individual timeline for recovery.

If you have ever relapsed, please don’t feel bad about going back to therapy or treatment or to think that you did something wrong. It may take a bit longer but you will absolutely recover.

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/Co-writer)
• Scott Wynné Schofield (Publisher/Co-writer)
• Henrie Louis Friedrich (Analyst)
• Jwan Höffler Conwall (Art Interior Design)
• Hugo-licharre Freimann (Ass Director)
• Shot at GQ’s Studios by José Schenkkan and Benjamin Schenkkan Joseph
• In appearance by "Clayton Euridicé Schofield" (Model)
• In collaboratiin with The Me: You Can’t See