Mental Health Week: Creating a Victim Mentality
This week is Mental Health Week in Victoria, Australia culminating in World Mental Health Day on October 10th. The theme for Mental Health Week 2008 in Victoria is “Mental Health: What Do You Know?”, asking each of us to expand our awareness and knowledge of mental health.
Gaining awareness of and knowledge of mental health conditions can make things worse. Like someone researching disease symptoms on the internet, you might find you have some of the indicators of a condition. So suddenly, your understandable anxiety about the economy, becomes full blown General Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Now, you’re not only anxious about the economy but even more anxious because you think you have GAD.
And, once you have this awareness, then what? I looked through a lot of the events for Mental Health Week and found that only a small number were about fixing the problem. What’s the point of educating you about something but not empowering you to do something about it? If you can’t do anything about it then you feel helpless and abdicate any responsibility for your part in healing yourself. This creates a victim mentality. “I’m a victim of this condition so there’s nothing I can do.” Top psychologists have admitted that this a significant flaw in the current mental health system.
I’ve written before about 6 Human Needs Psychology and why some people don’t tap even when they know EFT can help them. The six human needs are: Certainty, Variety, Significance, Love/Connection, Growth, and Contribution. We all find ways to meet these needs but some ways are empowering and improve our life while others are disempowering and hurt us or make things worse.
Let’s take someone who is labeled as having General Anxiety Disorder:
| Certainty: | They know for certain why they feel this way. It’s this GAD that makes them feel anxious not anything they can do about that. They’re now certain they’re going to feel anxious every day. |
| Variety: | They get to go to different support groups and different specialists and try different treatments without really having to take responsibility for their part, or having any real expectation this condition is only temporary. After all they’ve been labeled with this condition and there’s nothing they can do about it. |
| Significance: | I have this GAD which sounds very important. I can use this an excuse anytime I don’t want to take responsibility for myself. |
| Love/Connection: | This is a big one. I can feel sorry for myself because of this GAD. I can connect with all the other people with GAD in online forums and support groups. I can get sympathy (a low quality version of love/connection) from all my friends and family because of this GAD. If I didn’t have this GAD who would I connect with? |
So being made aware of this condition without being able to do something about it actually reinforces the victim mentality.
By the way, if this article is pressing any of your buttons and bringing up issues for you, wouldn’t that be some great tapping material?
I’m not suggesting that these conditions don’t exist and that they don’t have severe consequences in a person’s life. I am saying that giving people an awareness of a condition without giving them tools to help themselves is a problem.
At least some of the Mental Health week events talk about coping strategies. Something is better than nothing, but most of these are band-aid treatments which don’t address the underlying cause of the problem and create lasting change in a person’s life.
Thankfully, many people who come into the practice have had enough of being told there’s nothing they can do and they just have to accept their condition. They’re not accepting the verdict that their only option is to take drugs or just cope with the condition for the rest of their lives. These clients don’t accept that they are a victim of their condition. They question “the experts” and do their own research, and make up their own minds about what is and isn’t possible for them. Chances are if you’re reading this, I’m preaching to the converted.
When you accept responsibility for helping yourself you continue to educate yourself about the many alternatives, such as EFT, but also diet, exercise, hypnotherapy, meditation, and so on. Accepting responsibility for your part in the healing process, rather than the learned helplessness of a victim, is the first step to true healing.
Related Posts:
- Why some clients do not tap even when they know EFT will help them
- Don’t Watch the News
- Using EFT with a Doctor’s Diagnosis
- Identity Statements and EFT
- Fear of EFT Working
Tags: 6 human needs, anxiety, mental health
October 8th, 2008 at 11:10 am
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October 8th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
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October 8th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Hi Rod,
Another great post. To me the only value of knowing what the medical classification is of a problem is then for that information to help toward a solution.
Too often this isn’t the case. Many people I know of have been given a diagnosis and then asked “so what now?” Often the answer is nothing, nothing can be done from a conventional medicine point of view.
I know of a mother who was asked to bring her child in for further tests to diagnose what the true cause of his problems were. The mother asked, “so how will that help my son?” The doctor said it wouldn’t but that they (the medical services) would have a label to put on the problem. She refused to let the doctors label him and instead sought a solution herself.
I also totally agree that for some having a diagnosis can lead to the person just staying put with their problem and not seeking any further solution. Some however as you say, refuse to take the diagnosis.
I had a client who was diagnosed with GAD and told that it would be there for the rest of her life and she should just get used to it. We worked on it about a week after the diagnosis and in one EFT session she had improved so dramatically that the GAD symptoms had gone. If she had have accepted the doctors diagnosis, her issues would have indeed been there for life. There are so many EFT stories like this out there.
I do think that we need to take responsibility for our own health, as you say.
All the best,
Tania
October 9th, 2008 at 7:31 am
I completely agree with what you say regarding victim mentality and believe that the healing of a person comes with self responsibility. I wrote about it here from a homeopathic perspective
http://www.thehomeopathiccoach.com/g/30489/are-you-a-good-homeopathic-patient.html
Once the patient has given themselves up to psycotropic drugs, the dependency on the drugs for their improvement (which is often not forthcoming) , means it is even harder fro them to feel empowered around their own health issue.
At the same time, it’s really diificult for a patient suffering mental health issue to feel anything but ‘disabled’ due to the lack of information available around alternative options like EFt and Homeopathy.
Great post Rod. Thanks for sharing
Sam
August 19th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Definitely worth the read
May 24th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
I feel very saddened by this article. I came across it while researching for my assignment and was surprised. Yet I know I shouldn’t be surprised as I’ve heard some pretty sad responses to Mental Health issues.
Education and awareness is a key to reducing the ‘victimisation’ of people with mental health disorders. Through knowledge and exposure the ‘Gap’ between people with a mental health disorder and those who don’t have it is made smaller, the smaller the ‘gap of difference’ the more there is no need for there to be ‘normal’ or ‘victim’. Different doesn’t have to be negative, the more we understand and are made aware of these disorders the more the ‘difference’ is just that ‘different’ not negative.
You talk about ‘taking responsibility’, many people are relieved to understand their symtoms and yes, even put a name to it because they feel they have a far better chance at working through it and having a better life. If there are people, and I’m sure there are, who are using it as a crutch and an excuse to shirk life’s responsibilities, then that’s no different than many many people all over the world that use all sorts of addictive things to live their life, be it workaholics, control freaks, substance abuse, you’d be lucky to find one human being who isn’t addicted to something, be it good or bad. The type of person your describing is not everyone who has GAD and I feel the only thing your article is doing is adding to an already ‘negative’ gap between people who do and people who don’t have a mental health disorder and that negatively only helps one side of the gap. The rich need the poor, the healthy need the sick, the controllers need the passivists…
We need to lessen the gap between these differences and this is done through education and knowledge.
DIFFERENCE IS NOT DEFICIT
May 25th, 2010 at 7:16 am
@Shelzy you obviously feel very strongly about the issues and I hope this passion is channeled in constructive ways. In your research, I invite you to step outside the framework you are being educated with to see a broader perspective of the mental health industry.
Start by reading a book called The Mind Game from Phillip Day http://is.gd/cnDQ6. Then investigate the treatment of depression with Vitamin D and the treatment of schizophrenia with Vitamin B3.
Watch this TED Talk from Temple Grandin http://is.gd/cnE4G who was diagnosed with Autism and would have been institutionalised by the “system” if not for her mother’s determination and then her own to use her unique abilities to help make the world a better place.
And another TED Talk from psychologist Martin Seligman on what does and doesn’t work with modern psychology in which he openly admits that the industry has created the victim mentality that I wrote about above and how to move beyond that http://is.gd/cnE4G
My invitation is open to you to go beyond the text book education you are receiving and with this broader view use your passion and make a real difference.
May 25th, 2010 at 8:10 am
Hi Rod..
I will get around to looking at them but I think you mistook my reply in meaning that I agree with the medical treatment or medical way of treating these dirorders and I wasn’t meaning that at all. I was just meaning that the education and knowledge of these disorders not necessarily medical but from sufferers and organisations there to support others who suffer is very important. I have worked in Mental Health and would not slightly be satisified with the system.
May 25th, 2010 at 9:30 am
@Shelzy Yes I did interpret your comment that way so thanks for the clarification. I can see that education has value if it helps people understand what’s happening to loved ones and friends. I remember working with a youth who’s father did not understand his issue and contributed to regression every time the youth went home. Educating the father would have helped to avoid this.