Tag: grieving

  • Break the stigma

    Break the stigma

    I think it was Dr Wayne Dyer who said that if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

    This is true both positively and negatively.

    Do you know someone who has a problem for every solution? Who sees doom and gloom at the happiest of moments? Who is preempting a negative outcome despite things going in their favour?

    Do you think they have a mental illness, or have they just been hurt so many times before, that they are afraid to hope for a positive outcome? Are they simply protecting themselves from being let down again?

    This is how we experience life when we finally give up hope about the future, or we give up hope about being appreciated.

    That absence of hope is what causes us to feel depressed. Depression is a legitimate experience of human emotions after we’ve taken one too many hard knocks from life about something important to us.

    The same is true for every other emotional experience.

    Emotions are not deficiencies. They’re the essence of what makes us human.

    If we ever hope to win this battle against a consistently declining quality of life, we need to stop referring to emotions as mental health, and we need to stop defining the duress that we experience in life as a mental illness.

    We need to reconnect with the human behind the pain, instead of dehumanising them by denying the legitimacy of their emotional experience.

    Break the stigma. Stop the labelling. Embrace the humanness.

  • Break the stigma. Stop the label.

    Break the stigma. Stop the label.

    I think it was Dr Wayne Dyer who said that if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

    This is true both positively and negatively.

    Do you know someone who has a problem for every solution? Who sees doom and gloom at the happiest of moments? Who is preempting a negative outcome despite things going in their favour?

    Do you think they have a mental illness, or have they just been hurt so many times before, that they are afraid to hope for a positive outcome? Are they simply protecting themselves from being let down again?

    This is how we experience life when we finally give up hope about the future, or we give up hope about being appreciated.

    That absence of hope is what causes us to feel depressed. Depression is a legitimate experience of human emotions after we’ve taken one too many hard knocks from life about something important to us.

    The same is true for every other emotional experience.

    Emotions are not deficiencies. They’re the essence of what makes us human.

    If we ever hope to win this battle against a consistently declining quality of life, we need to stop referring to emotions as mental health, and we need to stop defining the duress that we experience in life as a mental illness.

    We need to reconnect with the human behind the pain, instead of dehumanising them by denying the legitimacy of their emotional experience.

    Break the stigma. Stop the labelling. Embrace the humanness.



  • Celebrate the dead. Discard the living.

    Celebrate the dead. Discard the living.

    Ever notice how often people are revered when they’ve passed on, but the same people were neglected, ignored, or even treated badly while they were alive?

    Sometimes the reverse is also true. The one who passed on may have left a path of destruction in the lives of those around them, but because of their social standing or their role in their family, they’re revered to the point of exaggerating their good while dismissing the impact that they had on those who were victim to their ways.

    Some would have us believe that it’s because we must not disparage the dead. Which is true. We shouldn’t.

    But does that also mean that we must exaggerate their good to the point of diminishing the damage or harm that they caused?

    The reason we do this is not out of respect for the dead, but more likely because it draws attention to our virtue.

    It’s easier to demonstrate such kindness towards the dead, because they have no expectation from us to follow through with sincerity or commitment towards how important we say they are in our lives.

    If we were truly committed to establishing good, we would place as much emphasis on remedying the harm that they caused, while remembering the good that they did.

    If we don’t, we end up revering the dead to the detriment of the living, thereby reinforcing the harm that the deceased caused, and further oppressing those who are already struggling with the impact of the harm done to them by the deceased.

    That’s how we enable generational trauma.

    That’s how we create more harm for the victims of those oppressors who have passed on.

    That’s how we become part of that cycle of harm.