Union of Equals

Written by Andi Bazaar, Yevhn Gertz, Hugo-licharré Freimann, Tydalé-Oliver Schofield | Nov 17, 2023

"We all live in this fast paced society that keeps getting more and more demanding, I want to take a moment to talk about why every single one of us would have their mental health suffer at least once in their life and why it is important to normalize mental health treatment."

Sean-luccá Freimann Schofield / Photographed by Timothée-freimann Schofield / MHMTID© 2023

I often get asked why it is important to process our emotions and our past because it can be such a painful process to dig up, live those memories again and feel that pain and grief. On the surface, it may seem counterproductive to dig up something asleep in our minds.

While it is true that processing emotions can be a painful process and one that is likely to create strong emotions that can be unpleasant, it is also the reason why it is important to dig them up and process them.

For emotions/traumas/losses that we have properly processed, we wouldn’t feel a sharp pain/these strong emotions all over again. We may feel a small amount of it but not the intense powerful ones, the reason why is simply because the processing didn’t happen in the past.

It doesn’t mean it is our fault, we may have not been in a safe space surrounded with supportive individuals or even allowed to show our emotions. Therefore, it was in the best interest of our survival to set these traumas aside until it was safe to solve them.

However, as years pass by and issues pile up that are not processed we hit a breaking point for each individual it is going to be very different. That breaking point may seem silly on the surface: “a panic attack in the supermarket” — “not being able to take a shower” etc.

Therefore, we may focus heavily on the breaking point itself and why it is the one that triggered this avalanche of anxiety/depression. However, a breaking point could have been anything, it was simply the drop that overflowed the bucket.

When the breakdown happens, we may feel strong emotions of anxiety, depression, abandonment and feel as though they are coming out of nowhere but they are the emotions that we have repressed and put a tight lid on because we couldn’t deal with them.

For most of us, these breakdowns will happen in early adulthood but they can also happen at anytime. You may also be wondering how can I know that I haven’t processed something if I can’t remember? The main answer is going to be around triggers.

Triggers are situations that elicit strong emotional responses that can sometimes be too strong for the situation that we are in, let’s say someone says I don’t look good in a yellow t shirt and I yell at them for commenting on my appearance.

My reaction and anger is not aimed at just that person but every person who engaged in body shaming or talking negatively about my appearance, the trigger simply brought something to the surface that I didn’t deal with properly.

It is important to note that we shouldn’t gaslight ourselves out of emotional responses, it is okay and legitimate to feel our emotions and let people know when they have trespassed our boundaries.

SO HOW DO WE PROCESS OUR EMOTIONS?

Ideally, it would be with a therapist who would guide the conversation and make sure that we open those past traumas safely and make sure that we are okay at the end of the session. However, not everyone can access a therapist.

• the second option is through journaling.
• mapping out our past and writing down our specific events and memories.
• how we felt at that time, etc. can do wonders for slowly coming to terms and processing these situations.

However, there is a small issue with this option.

A lot of people may engage in intellectual processing, meaning we can write down what happened or think about them but from a third person perspective and disconnected from them. That’s not processing because we are not fully feeling those emotions.

Processing happens primarily on the emotional side. However, please don’t feel guilty or frustrated if it doesn’t happen at first. We may be too numb at the moment to deal with them and that’s a sign that we may need to take a small step back.

However, if there is a way that you process your emotions that you enjoy please engage in it as long as it healthy. Some people record themselves talking and sharing the experience out loud, some people journal then burn the page, some people do it through art.

All of these are legit and good ways to solve these unresolved issues from our past when it was either impossible to do so because of a fear of safety or simply that we weren’t developmentally at the point where we even knew how to process these strong emotions.

I hope that this part helped clarify a bit why it is important and what we can do, please take it slowly though because it can get quite overwhelming.

LET’S TALK ABOUT SOCIAL ANXIETY

It is more common than we think and can come in different shapes and intensity, the pandemic has also increased it a lot given the long periods of isolation that we had to go through. Let’s dive deeper into what it is and what we can do.

Social anxiety is characterized by a phobia and fear of social situations. It can be about going to gatherings, meeting new people or simply going to places that have lots of people such as supermarkets or stores.

• we may start feeling anxious in anticipation of those events.
• we start to prepare for them or even play those social scenarios in our minds to prepare for the worst.
• we may fear ridiculing ourselves, being judged by other people and are generally hyper vigilant in situations where we are around other people.

This can lead to strong anxiety attacks that make us feel as though we are about to lose control in public or do something embarrassing when we are in public, we also replay social scenarios in our minds and are hyper aware of times when we might have said something awkward.

We may even start to feel frustrated and angry with ourselves because we couldn’t carry a conversation or that we were nervous when interacting with other people. This spiral of anxiety and low self-esteem is continuously feeding each other while simultaneously making us worse.

In terms of what can cause social anxiety in the first place, there are quite a few of them. Bullying is an obvious one, if we were bullied and embarrassed in front of others then we carry that trauma into every social situation we may find ourselves in.

Other forms of abuse from caregivers and people around us can also cause us that social anxiety because we don’t know what to anticipate from people around us and how they may behave in public. For example, we may have been spanked in public or yelled at in front of others.

It is also important to realize the context of culture as well. We are highly connected to how others perceive us and may have seen it with parents and other adults, who place a lot of importance on how they are perceived and are stressed out when they are not viewed positively.

That anxiety from parents is often passed on to children in the form of comparison with other children, whether it is physically, school marks and other factors that can be used to put down children because they are not the “best” at the specific topic of comparison.

Generally, the early stages of social anxiety start early in childhood and only increase as we grow up. It all comes together in early adulthood where it will generally collide with panic attacks and depression, given how prevalent social anxiety may be "what can we do?"

There are a few things we can start doing slowly. First of all, we can start to slowly expose ourselves to social situations and not escaping them when we feel deeply anxious. For example, if I go to the supermarket and have a panic attack leaving would make it worse.

This is because our brains will validate that anxiety that the supermarket is dangerous and repeat that process whenever we go to the supermarket but panic attacks, while scary are not going to make us lose control and generally peak around 20-30 minutes.

Staying and soothing ourselves in that environment (as long as it is safe) through deep breathing, walking around, using our senses to reconnect with our environment, etc. will teach our mind that this place is not dangerous and I don’t need to escape it.

That will lessen the anxiety response over time and we will slowly habituate ourselves to situations that used to trigger a lot of social anxiety, snother path is exploring the causes and triggers in therapy. There is a reason that this social anxiety exists.

It didn’t appear out of nowhere, realizing the trauma behind it and working through it will help us gain an understanding of what happened and regain some of that control that we feel we lose in social situations. Exploring these emotions in a safe environment is important.

Medications such as antidepressants can also help us lessen the impact of the anxiety response as we expose ourselves to more social situations and get used to them. They can be really good tools that aid in that endeavour. Combining them with therapy can also yield good results.

On a final note, it is important to remind ourselves that people are deeply involved in their own situations. When we are in public, most people are so worried about themselves, their life, that they don’t really have time to think or judge even if the worst case scenario happens and someone may judge us for one reason or another, coming to the realization that it is on them and not us is important.

Of course, it may take a while before we get there but please remember that you are amazing as you are.

Sean-luccá Freimann Schofield / Photographed by Timothée-freimann Schofield / MHMTID© 2023

I want to share a topic on coping and reducing some of the anxiety and depression that come with times of crises like these, completely eliminating any form of anxiety or hopelessness is hard right now given what is happening but let’s reduce it as much as possible.

The first thing I want to mention is the need to reconnect with the present.

We can easily start projecting worse case scenarios in our minds, anticipating the worst because it would help us cope better. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help much. It won’t reduce grief or pain but it does add pain and grief in anticipation despite things being relatively okay in the present.

When we find ourselves slipping into that line of thinking or spacing out, we can use our sense to reconnect with our environment.
We can take 2 minutes and count sounds, use our sight to see different objects around us, touch fabrics of things around us.
We force our brain to focus externally, thereby tuning out the overthinking and loud voices in our minds.

This is also a time where we need our loved ones more than ever, talking will not cure our anxiety but feeling supported, loved breaks that barrier of loneliness. In the group supports that we had over the weekend, the feedback was overwhelming positive.

It wasn’t because we found a cure or solutions to solving this crisis but because we realized we weren’t alone in feeling anxious or depressed, people enjoyed knowing others were going through similar battles and leaning on each other for this.

Externalizing is so important. If you feel lonely or feel like you can’t trust people around you, write a journal asking for a support network, I will happily amplify it and I am sure many would love to be of support. There is nothing wrong in asking for help.

Self-care is also crucial, I know I mention it a lot but it is important. We may feel guilty in engaging in self-care activities while a crisis is happening but this pandemic has already been happening for more than a year. To preserve and build energy,

We need to take care of ourselves, it allows us to be of help for longer periods of times rather than short bursts until we burnout. We all deserve to take care of ourselves regardless of external circumstances, it is an action that teaches us to love ourselves unconditionally!

While it is important to offer our help, volunteer if we can it is also okay to take breaks and steps back. It is also okay to realize that our current mental health doesn’t allow us to do that at the moment, there is nothing wrong with that.

If we overstretch ourselves, it can backfire on our mental health, boundaries are more important now than before. A lot of people may seek to bypass them (even if accidentally), we can’t be there all the time and it is okay to postpone certain things until we gather energy.

Social media: "it is saving lives right now." — It is so amazing to see the empathy, the support, the organization that surpasses that of governments. It is also a place where we witness sickness and death on a daily basis. It is okay to limit our exposure.

When we are exposed to this all day and night until we sleep, we may see everything as just hopeless and fall into a darkness where we feel there is no solution, no way out. We may feel guilty having the privilege of being able to tune out at times but too much of it can hurt.

It is important to know our limits. For example, I reduced the number of private sessions this month compared to before to organize group supports and to rest more. My mental health is also wavering certain days and I try not to push too much past the limit.

We don’t know how long we may be in this, we need some strength for more in the future. You are all amazing and it is important to remember that no matter how bad it gets!

I want to take a moment to talk about why every single one of us would have their mental health suffer at least once in their life and why it is important to normalize mental health treatment soon, this isn’t all doom because I will talk about prevention too.

First, it is important to remember that criteria for mental health is not as narrow as it used to be. Grief used to not count as a mental health issue, for depression we needed to feel the same way for 6 months before it was diagnosed that way officially.

It is important to remember that grief can count as mental health problem given the suffering we go through, it doesn’t take 6 months for something to be depression. Having diagnoses like these used to delay people getting help and professionals taking it seriously.

We all, at one point or another go through these issues. It can be messy to go through them alone or to be judged for showing emotions of grief differently, having a neutral person use science and unconditional support to guide us through that can make us cope in a healthy way.

Furthermore, we all live in this fast paced society that keeps getting more and more demanding. Job expectations are harder than ever, while simultaneously paying less than they did for previous generations. Burnout is real across the board.

This can easily precipitate mental health problems as well, then we have schools and certain programs that pride themselves on breaking their students’ psyche as a way to show off how prestigious they are. This is complete BS and only damages us further.

We also have cultural and parental issues that normalize abuses and dismiss experiences and traumas which we then carry for years, leaving a trail of depression and anxiety in its path. My biggest hope is that these young generations are actively trying to shift that.

There are also some ways in which we can protect ourselves or be proactive when it comes to our mental health, I talk about the importance of self-care but many of us still don’t apply it. Our brains are not machines that can sustain work all the time and no rest indefinitely.

We need to practice self-care daily the same way we need to sleep every night, it is an important process that allows our brains to relax so that they can function well when we need them to.

Furthermore, we need to remove the glamour of working hard and long hours unnecessarily even something that we are passionate about can become triggering and depressing if we do it all the time without a break or opportunities to disconnect.

Also, the sad truth is that in a capitalist system we are easily replaceable doesn’t matter our job.

The system is made so that it continues no matter what happens. You could be a CEO, Doctor, Engineer or any other job, if you were to burn out or be incapacitated for a while, they will find a replacement in a few weeks maximum.

Jobs are also meant to provide us some quality of life, hobbies and self care in exchange as well, so if we spend all our time working we are not benefiting from the results of our labour. Finally, we need to normalize cutting off people.

To be honest, I am happy that more people are completely okay with blocking or ghosting people they find problematic. We need that because our mental health is not meant to sustain that level of toxicity for a while, no matter what. No free pass because someone is “family."

Finding a house with a roommate or moving in with a friend, anything is better than being in a toxic environment. It doesn’t matter how much guilt family or partners use, it is okay to leave for your own well-being because you don’t owe them anything.

In conclusion, while some pain is inevitable in a way there are many things we can do to prevent many of the issues that most of us go through often. We can minimize those problems as much as we can and seek help as early as we can to have as many happy days as possible.

I WANT TO DEDICATE A WHOLE TOPIC TO SELF-ESTEEM AND SELF-EFFICACY

Self-esteem is an evaluation of our own worth whereas self-efficacy is an evaluation of how well we can accomplish take and work, whenever our mental health suffers both of these tend to also suffer.

We often link them to depression and it makes sense given that during episodes of depression, we often lose motivation and see ourselves as worse than we are. However, all mental health issues cause a drop in these two not just depression.

Self-esteem and self-efficacy have been decreasing globally because we tend to value things that are very superficial and easy to lose when things don’t go well. For example, when we value ourselves in terms of our jobs, or grades or how well we look they can be lost easily.

For example, even the best of us can have bad grades or have bad work performance once in a while or gain weight or things that can affect our outward beauty because our societies value these standards. It is easy to lose our self worth and it tends to be fickle.

There are always unusual standards by which everything is measured and it creates automatically a competition with peers, we have to be the best in school, the best looking possible or the best at our jobs. Anything less and we think we failed because there is someone better.

We try to push ourselves harder compete in impassible standards that are always increasing, that means that any satisfaction of achievement is short lived because there is always something better to do. These standards set for by our societies and parents are never ending even when we are the best, we have to outcompete what we just did.

That means that burnout is constantly around the corner and what does burnout create?

Well it creates a lack of attention, temporary memory loss, trouble concentrating and a lack of productivity. Suddenly, the facilities that society values are temporarily lost to us. That means that everything just spirals down even further because we can’t get the motivation to do anything and we doubt how well we would do things if we tried.

Furthermore, we may experience traumas or any other environmental difficulties that trigger those symptoms as well. It is very important to move on from these impossible and short term ideals to tie our self-esteem and learn to love ourselves as we are, our worth as humans beings doesn’t come from our achievements or beauty, but is something internal.

The more we teach that, the more we will create more balanced and happier generations of people. The key is to tie our self-esteem to something that doesn’t change in the short-term. By doing so, not only do we decrease our likelihood of going through this again but we also create a more robust self-efficacy in our tasks and work which is exactly what society tries to value. We just go about it completely the wrong way.

If you are in therapy right now or even if you are reading this but not suffering from psych issues, it is still a good idea to slowly unlearn your self-esteem to your school, work or body and start learning to love yourself as you are. That can mean more self-care because you are worth it.

• don’t tie your self-care to achievements.
• you don’t need to achieve something to do something nice for yourself.
• congratulate yourself or pat yourself on the shoulder for doing anything you are proud of whether it is taking a shower today or just simply getting breakfast for the first time in a while.

When we realize that all the good small things we do that are right, we get an endless source of pride and self-efficacy. Those are behaviours that we can start today and with time we will internalize them and they will act as a good protective factor towards our future mental health.

A SPECIAL THANKS TO:

• Andi Bazaar (Writer)
• Mark J. Levstein (Co-Editor)
• Yevhn Gertz (Director Photography/Co-writer)
• dr Oliver Schofield, MD (Consulting/Co-writer)
• dr Seth Gryffen, MD (Consulting/Co-writer)
• dr Khaan, 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)
• Hugo-licharre Freimann (Ass Director/Co-writer)
• Shot at GQ’s Studios by José Schenkkan and Benjamin Schenkkan Joseph
• In appearance by Sean Lucca-freimann Schofield (Model)
• In collaboration with "The Me You Can’t See UK" (TMYCSUK) / @tmycsuk