Taking charge of our healing

Sadness is not a sickness, anxiety is not a disorder

Photo by Romain Robe on Unsplash

Even though I’ve always had an unfortunately sordid relationship with therapists, I’ll never forget the moment I wrote off seeking their help forever.

This is an important story for me to share because it relates to why I’m so passionate about work I do helping people understand themselves to create lives as unique as they are, but it’s equally as important for me to state this is only my experience.

I fully realize some people have had amazing experiences with mental health care providers, and think that’s beyond wonderful.

Some of the people reading this might be amazing therapists, but if so, you probably also know there are a lot of really, really bad ones, and even more important, fundamental problems with the mental health system, or as I like to call it, the mental sickness system.

I believe everything happens for a reason, and my life has taken the path it has because I’m meant to help people do their own inner work, find peace, release the past, connect to their true selves, and ultimately realize their potential.

My reasons for distrusting therapists are many.

When my sister killed herself and her psychiatrist diagnosed her post-mortem as bi-polar, I saw red.

When my mother went to see the same therapist and he fell asleep during one of her sessions, I assumed he was just a bad apple.

I don’t remember much about the litany of therapists I saw during high school and college to manage the grief of losing my sister and father, who died of cancer the year before she left, but I do remember they didn’t help much.

“Take this little pill,” they said.

Deep in my heart, taking a pill to manage grief, a very human experience that apparently nobody with a degree could help me work through, didn’t make sense.

I didn’t know I was grieving at the time. I thought I was just depressed. (Anyway, society labels grief and if you get too sad, or your grieving process extends beyond what people in lab coats consider ‘normal,’ then you’re considered clinically depressed.)

They told me brain chemicals affected my thoughts, but to me it just made sense that if that was true, then changing my thoughts would affect my brain chemicals.

I didn’t know how to do this sustainably in a way that honored my pain — not yet.

It would take many years and a traumatic catalyst to figure it out.

Over the years, I got tired of telling doctors I didn’t want their pills. I got tired of them not believing I could heal myself.

I grew to hate their labels. To me they said — there's something wrong with you.

I always believed in self-determination, the ability to transcend life’s painful experiences.

That requires courage. It requires faith, and the willingness to trust my inner knowing more than any so-called expert.

Then I got cancer. After treatment, I visited the clinic’s oncology social worker.

I loved this woman.

I loved how she helped me reframe things. She helped me sort through the confusion, the doubt and the fear. She made everything seem simple.

And she helped me sort through my emotions — at first.

From the beginning, I made it very clear that I would not, under any circumstances take anti-depressants.

Looking back, I didn’t know then what I know now about the serious side effects, how some people are unable to get off meds once they go on, and how some studies show that long-term treatment with pills actually creates worse outcomes.

And now, a meta-analysis of studies concluded in 2022 the chemical imbalance theory has never been proven, yet most mental health ‘experts’ aren’t up on this current research and continue to propagate falsehoods perpetuated by Big Pharma.

For me, it was a gut instinct. I didn’t believe that my sadness was a sickness.

I felt I had a right to be sad because of the trauma I’d experienced, and believed that I could heal myself. I just didn’t know how.

But at a certain point, this social worker, who I loved, began telling me that my sadness was too much.

She pushed medication on me.

I said no.

And next week, she suggested it again.

I said no.

And a few weeks later, she suggested it again.

At this time, I felt my trust had been irreparably breached. I stopped visiting her and continued my healing journey alone.

Truthfully, I did lose my mind after cancer. Rightfully so. My entire body had been ravaged. Chemo, a double mastectomy, and my ovaries removed to prevent cancer because a genetic mutation elevated my risk. At 27.

As a society, we need to create space for people to lose their minds.

Not on the street or while crying on Tik Tok, but in spaces where people listen rather than push pills.

Spaces where people help you feel rather than tell you to fear your pain because they fear their own.

Spaces where we’re told we can heal and reminded of our strength, not rendered helpless under the myth of fixed neurobiology.

In my life, I’ve found those who allow themselves to break are those who heal. Those who never fully allow themselves to feel are the ones who never move on from their pain.

I often say — who is sick? People who feel pain after trauma, or the society that medicates, labels and denies suffering?

We have a big problem with mental health — but it’s not the stigma against depression, nor is it a stigma against medication.

It’s that entirely too many people are labeled and medicated in the first place.

Almost 18 percent of women took an anti-depressant between 2015 and 2018, according to the CDC.

That’s insane.

The rate of anti-depressant use skyrocketed 400% between 1988–1994 and 2005–2008, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Contributing to that, the US is one of only two countries that allows direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising like TV commercials.

If our approach to mental health was working, we'd be getting happier as a society. Instead, we're getting more depressed and anxious.

Therapy has never been so common, yet people have never been so fragile.

In my opinion, the entire system is deeply disempowering. We’re told we need experts to understand ourselves, even that it’s dangerous to access certain parts of ourselves. While support can help, the source of healing is inside of us.

People tell me MY ideas are dangerous, but it's the system that has blood on its hands.

The US's suicide rate jumped by 30 percent from 2000 to 2016, according to the CDC.

This is what happens when you have a disease-based model of mental health care, where the money is in people staying sick and on pills rather than healthy, happy and thriving.

This is what happens when you pathologize normal human responses to sickness, death and trauma.

This is what happens when you take a field — psychology — that originally focused on exploring the psyche, the soul, and turn it into a cold science.

And the science we're being told isn't even proven!

We’ve created arbitrary diagnoses that aren’t based on any verifiable tests or lab data.

(People often argue that you can have a diseased brain, and use illnesses like Alzheimer's as an example. But with Alzheimer's, brain scans show the progression of disease. There are no quantifiable tests for mood disorders.)

We’ve allowed pharmaceutical companies to mass market pills that cause serious side effects, including suicidal ideation even though there’s little evidence these pills work better than placebo.

“Analyses of the published data and the unpublished data that were hidden by drug companies reveals that most (if not all) of the benefits are due to the placebo effect,” ​writes​ Dr. Irving Kirsch, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School.

“Instead of curing depression, popular antidepressants may induce a biological vulnerability making people more likely to become depressed in the future.”

So the question becomes — what do we do?

How do you heal? What do you do when you feel sad or negative or stuck in life and unsure how to breakthrough? How do you continue to grow, to walk your unique path in life and create happiness, health and success in the unique way you’re meant to?

Most experts lack the expertise to help us.

For me, the answer has always been holistic:

• Strategic inner work through journaling

• Spirituality through meditation and prayer

• Physical health through movement, food and other wellness practices

Learning how to feel my feelings through the Feeling Awareness meditation technique I teach, asking the right questions in my journal to unravel my suffering, and cultivating vibrant strength through a healthy lifestyle has transformed my relationship with myself and with life.

A healing lifestyle has given me the ability to embody what I've always intuitively known to be true:

There's nothing wrong with any of us. The pain we feel has a purpose and a message. Underneath of it is deep peace. We can live any kind of life we want to, as long as we face our trials with courage.

Journaling and meditation have given me the ability to shed my painful past and turn it into something beautiful.

These practices are just as important as diet and exercise if you want to be the best version of yourself.

I'm now devoted to teaching everyone how to work with their innermost thoughts and feelings to facilitate growth.

My goal is to help you understand yourself through these simple, powerful practices so you can create a life reflecting your greatest hopes and dreams rather than your deepest pains and insecurities.

I'm not a hand-holder type of guide. I'm here to give you the tools, a roadmap for exploring your inner world, so you can adventure around and figure things out for yourself.

I’d love to know…

What is your experience with the mental health system or self-healing? Share your experiences in the comments below.

Today’s guided inner work on self-trust is the last free set of prompts!

After this week, they will be for paid community members only.

I want each of my weekly blogs to be a slice of self-care for you. I want my words to be a portal deeper into who you really are, and I would love for the time you spend exploring the prompts in your journal to be a highlight of your week, an indispensable tool for exploring your potential.

So grab some tea, light a candle or sit outside, and let’s dive in!

Today we explore shifting from self-doubt to self-trust.

Knowing what you believe to be true in your heart while staying connected to a deep well of peace within has never been more important considering today’s chaotic, polarized, fear-fueled world.

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Guided inner work

1. In what what area of life do you most doubt your inner guidance? Why do you doubt yourself? Are those doubts true? What is the higher truth?
   

2. In what area of life do you most trust yourself? What thought patterns or beliefs support that self-trust? If you applied those thought patterns or beliefs to the areas in which you experience doubt, what would that look like? (If you can’t think of an area of trust, think of something small you could start working toward.)
   

3. In what ways do you react when consumed by doubt? For example, you may search for answers while mindlessly scrolling, consume an excess of information which confuses you more, or perhaps ask too many people for guidance or advice. How does it feel in your body? This is simply to create awareness around existing patterns.
   

4. How would you like to respond when consumed by doubt or uncertainty? One way I like to respond is by reconnecting to my body. I process the feelings of doubt, anxiety and uncertainty instead of reacting to them. (Sign up to my email list to receive a guided Feeling Awareness meditation to learn how.)
   

5. What is the trigger for you to realize that you’re lost in doubt? What will make you realize you need to return to center? This can just be an intention to cultivate more awareness.

6. Consider identifying an affirmation to remind you to trust yourself.

   Possible affirmations:

   It’s my birthright to be happy and healthy

   The more I follow my heart, the more it all works out

   I may doubt my smaller self, but my higher self always knows the way
   
   

Thank you for reading!

Can’t wait to chat with you guys in the comments. Leave a note with your thoughts or experiences. Our conversations are the heart of this community, and you never know who you may inspire, or who will have words of wisdom to help you create a breakthrough.

If you found this post valuable, consider liking, commenting or sharing to let me know. It helps more people find my work and means so much!

Love you all so much,

Suzanne

This article was originally published in 2020. I thought it was a great way to introduce Substack readers to my overarching philosophy.