Mental Health Awareness Month

May is Mental Health Awareness month and as a Healing and
Wellness organization, it is a topic that is near and dear to our Hearts!  

Science has caught up to the truths that healing traditions have taught for centuries; there is a direct relationship between our mental health (mind) and overall wellbeing. True health is not brought forward in just one aspect of us; it includes befriending, holding, and supporting the whole person – body, mind, heart, and soul.

While there is currently a greater collective movement to prioritize having access to quality Mental Health services in addition to physical support, it is still a facet of us collectively that we are not taught how to directly engage with in an empowered way. Therefore, while we are beginning to honor and place value on the concept of supporting and having compassion for our mental health, collectively we still have hidden stigmas that downplay and dismiss our mental health via subtle shaming and blaming statements like:

• “If they really wanted help, they would find a way to get it.”
• “They should be able to make a different choice. It’s not that hard.”
• “I should have figured this mental health thing out by now; there must be something wrong or broken within me.”
• “I lived through stuff, did the healing work, but I still struggle with waves of sadness or fear. Maybe I didn’t do the healing work right; ugh, it isn’t something that works for me.”

These types of hidden beliefs erode and undermine the well-meaning compassion we are trying to grant to ourselves and others so that we feel empowered to seek help and support when we find ourselves struggling or seeking to better understand and support our overall mindsets.

This month, I invite you into a Healing Practice to help illuminate any different hidden stigmas and beliefs you might have around your own Mental Health and/or Mental Health practices. Remember, we all tend to fall into tricky shadow traps like I gave above at some point, not because we are cruel and want to shadow judge self and others, rather because learning how to befriend and work with the Mental Being is not something that is culturally taught or the norm yet. There is a real sense of helplessness that meets us when we seek to support our own wellness and others because our own system (body, mind, heart, and soul) feels foreign and unapproachable to us at first. When we feel these types of helplessness, we archetypally default down to our shadow survival patterns of hidden division, trying to control, blame, and shame parts of ourselves and/or another.

AND yet we are at an amazing time where collectively we are stepping to courageous evolutionary change and seeking to re-constellate how we work with our “health” as a whole – individually, culturally, and collectively! I love hearing all the different types of conversations we are now having both in the healing and wellness field and in general conversations that include putting value on our Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Health in addition to Physical wellbeing. I believe our Hearts are collectively awakening to a desire to evolve asking us all to explore a few BIG questions, such as:

• How do we develop new ways of supporting ourselves and others that cultivate balanced mental health without getting stuck in disempowering and shaming ourselves or another?
• How can we help dissolve the massive stigmas that having an emotion of sadness or painful thought means you do not have “good” mental health and instead embrace that true mental health means I have the capacity to hold, process, and move through those bigger emotional waves with balance and compassion?
• What levels of willingness do I have personally with exploring the known and unknown barriers that keep myself captive to old ways of being, thoughts, and running the karmic program of “hurt people hurt people”?
• How can I help dissolve the cycle of generational learned helplessness and trauma adaptations within myself so that I can empower my own willingness to both see new choices AND step into committed action with them, therefore offering the same healing presence to another?
• How do I help create lasting change and true healing for myself and others?

Another HUGE tricky trap is believing that our Mind has the solution to these types of questions. It doesn’t. Instead, it is the Heart and Soul Being aspects of ourselves that can help us traverse through the evolutionary conversations and changes needed to dissolve the stigmas and create new culture norms that support mental wellness from the inside out. When we cultivate and strengthen our willingness to engage these types of Soul-Led questions that are bubbling up from our Heart through the Soul Medicines like Grace, Compassion, and Acceptance, we move forward with actions that are in connection with the solutions rooted in love, wholeness, balance, and wellbeing instead of circling endlessly back through our Mental Being’s fearful protective mechanisms that are rooted in division and separation.

Wellness Practice for this month – Supporting our Mental Health – Befriending the Mind

Take a moment and feel into the above list and ask which one of these questions is your Heart calling you into exploring this month.

Take that question into a reflective journal or contemplative practice to help you release any hidden attachments or stigmas associated with seeking balanced wellness support within your own system.

For Example:

Set the Intention – I would like the support of my Heart and Soul to help me perceive – sense, feel, see, hear, and know – the different hidden subtle ways I’m limiting my own inner balance and wellbeing or that of another.

I ask for support in guiding my Attention throughout the day to the different limiting thoughts, hidden belief system or old stories, old habits, or protective mechanism that are based on past unresolved trauma or old paradigms that no longer serve.

When I notice them, I ask for the Medicine of Courage and Compassion to help me flow and engage in a dialog with them that is rooted in curiosity and understanding so that I can help tend to any wounded parts of me, freeing myself up to expressing new ways of being with myself and to another that supports inner balance and wellbeing right now.

Allow this practice to help guide you throughout the month and track what new ways of being want to come forward for you this month that provide you with an opportunity to step into living, loving, and leading your authentic life!

If you would like more sample daily practices that can help you on your wellness and spiritual journey of Befriending your Mental Being, check out our new video podcast on YouTube – Soulful Practices: Pocket Teachers for Living a Courageously Connected Life! Each week I share a new “pocket” healing practice that helps you engage your biggest healing superpower – your willingness to consciously choose how you want to engage and be with your life attuning your Mental Being from default patterns of separation and fear to wholeness and courageous Soul-Led actions!

Looking for more direct support? Check out the different on-demand courses, membership area, and upcoming small group cohorts that we offer to help you on your journey.

Offering light, love, and JOY!

Michelle Holling-Brooks