What Does it Mean to be Mentally Healthy?

Today is World Mental Health Day. As part of the psychology community (of a sort) both as a consumer and a professional in the psychology field, I walk a line between my own personal experience of what some might call 'mental illness' (depression and anxiety) and helping people who might be called or who consider themselves 'mentally ill.' As you can see, I have some ambivalence about the term 'mental illness'. I think the term carries a huge amount of stigma, and that most people who seek help for their mental health issues are not so much ill as out of balance. Obviously, mental illness is real and many people suffer incredibly with severe mental illness. But the average person who takes antidepressants, for instance, or prescription anti-anxiety medications, are not 'mentally ill', they're simply having trouble finding a healthy mental balance.

For me, mental health lies on a continuum. There is no place where we will be perfectly mentally sane - as in, never having a low mood or acting in an unhealthy way, never having negative self-talk, never needing an escape from reality in the form of compulsive behavior -  but there are degrees of imbalance, from occasionally feeling melancholy on grey days to full-blown delusional psychosis. Clearly, on the severe side of the spectrum, people need professional medical assistance. But most of us who struggle lie closer to the other side. We get sad and can't shake it,  get anxious in certain situations, do to much of something (shopping, watching TV, gambling, drinking, eating) sometimes, or make unhealthy decisions rooted in psychological issues we've developed over the course of our lives.  

In my personal mental healthy journey, I've found two things to be of utmost importance in living well with my brain's particular tendencies: Compassionate self-awareness and acceptance. I've learned that to cope well with the cards I've been dealt in terms of genetic disposition, inherent temperament, and the wounds that life has given me, I have to become gently aware of them in the first place. This doesn't mean seeing them as flaws or weaknesses, but as part of me the way my hair, eyes, and nose are part of me. We all know people who hate their hair, eyes, nose, or other body part, and even sometimes go to drastic (and expensive) lengths to fix those things. Generally, even when someone has a full plastic surgery makeover, they're still unhappy, because the unhappiness always went deeper than the particular thing they were obsessed about. For me, becoming compassionately self-aware of the underlying psychological needs that drive me (for better or for worse) means that I can explore those needs in a kind way rather than hunt them down in some kind of search-and-destroy mission that will make me feel broken and weak. I don't believe my psychological issues will ever 'go away'. All that I can do is get to know them and learn to cope better with them. Tools for this, for me, include meditation, mindfulness, getting more exercise and time in nature, getting enough sleep, eating well, learning to connect better with others, seeing a therapist regularly, and yes, occasionally taking prescription anti-anxiety medications.

Similarly, acceptance doesn't mean just lying down in a wailing heap and waiting for my brain to do me in, as I've sometimes felt it wants to; acceptance means understanding who I am and not fighting against that knowledge. I am a person - as we all are - with particular tendencies, both healthy and unhealthy. It would be a waste of time, not to mention spectacularly disrespectful of myself, to want to be different than I am at my core: a good, kind, caring, and light-filled being. When we can accept who we are, we can go about making changes that make us more of who we already are inside underneath all of the psychological defenses and other gunk that drive us to escape the pain around us. This also makes it easier to accept others for who they really are, and not for who we want them to be.  

So on World Mental Health day, I encourage all of us to take some time to congratulate ourselves for having made it this far with the good things that we do have - the love of friends and family, our health (however it may be. As someone once said :"If you're still breathing, you're doing fine"), the lives we've been able to build, and our brains and bodies that have kept us alive. Even though I know being alive sometimes hurts, it's important to take the time to be grateful for what we do have, and to gently acknowledge the places where we could seek more balance. Also, on this day, let's look at those around us - those wonderful, loving, sometimes confusing and spectacularly irritating other beings - and send them some compassion and acceptance as well. Like us, they're doing their best, and like us, they could probably make some changes. Life is hard. But we can live it well, even with mental illness or whatever term you want to use, by cultivating a gentle compassion towards ourselves and others.

Sailing the Seas of the Heart 

For the first time in a very long time, I felt happy. Content, calm, centered, creative, and engaged. After finally getting free of a painfully drawn-out, crazy-making relationship that went on far longer than it needed to, I was finally, possibly for the first time in my life, happy to be single. I felt good, looked good, and was having the time of my life connecting with friends, writing, rediscovering yoga, developing creative projects, exploring my new love of live music, meeting new people, and even becoming reenergized at work.

Happiness, I had discovered, wasn’t about who or what was in my life, but about my own inner light. It was about being so comfortable with myself -- including the dark stuff – that I could just accept all of who I was. What started out as an awful summer, with me being just this side of suicidal, ended up being quite possible my best summer ever, filled with love, light, learning, and, let’s see, what’s another ‘l’ word….Langour? Lust? Levity? They all work.

For the first time in years, possibly ever, I was firing on all cylinders. My engine clean, oiled, and functioning perfectly.

And then what do you think happened next?

That’s right: something unexpected. Isn’t that always the way? The details aren’t important, but it was a situation guaranteed to trigger all of my stuff again. The same situation that always triggers me: my insecurity, my deep need for attention and belonging, my desire to be someone’s one and only, my tendency to ruminate, my desperate discomfort with uncertainty of the heart. And, as it unfolded, I realized that this sort of situation is, and will always be, my meditation. As everyone has certain things in life that cause that deep, soul-level discomfort and uncertainty, this one is mine. It’s my edge. But the wonderful thing is that, this time, I found myself being able to stay in Wise Mind – that balanced place where both emotions and detachment are operating simultaneously – almost all of the time. I could feel discomfort, and not react in an unhealthy way. I could see myself ruminating, and choose to continue or stop, depending on how useful the thinking was. I could see what was happening, consider multiple explanations, and set them aside for another time when I have more information. I could revel in the joy and pleasure, notice the moments of disconnection, and yet not grasp for an answer, any answer, that would make me more comfortable. And I've even stumbled a few times, but I haven't let those times take me completely down the dark rabbit hole that has been my pitfall in the past.

Being in Wise Mind in this way is a strange sensation, sort of like being in a sailboat and trying to keep the keel even. It’s never a straight path, and the balance is never total or consistent. But it’s as if all of my senses are alert, the way sailors are alert to the wind and the currents simultaneously, in a complicated and beautiful dance with the sea. They say never to turn your back on the sea. I say I can never turn my back on my heart. I’ve nearly drowned before, and I won’t go there again. But it’s nice to know that I’ve learned, at least somewhat, to sail those waters in which I used to frantically flail and flop, waiting for someone or something to pull me to safety. Now I know that I’m the only who can pull me to safety if I need it. But I don’t need it right now. I’m sailing.

Welcome Home

My two friends and I were waiting in the hotel registration line at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno, waiting to get our room key. It's a long drive, specially for my one friend who had driven his truck and camper up from southern California to pick  me up on our way to Burning Man. We had decided to stay over one night in Reno, then get up before dawn and head out to the playa, after a last night of a good dinner, drinks, and a real shower. As we waited in the shiny, loud, blinky, mirrored casino-slash-hotel lobby, we would have looked out of place except for the Burners who surrounded us. I had on a midriff-revealing tank top and desert pants, and the multiple bracelets, necklaces, and medallions that signify my Burner persona, and one of my companions had a shock of bright pink hair. As we waited, a young-looking, scruffy man with a long, unkempt beard walked by and said "Welcome Home."

"Welcome Home" has become a catchphrase for Burners. When you drive into the gates of Black Rock City, the greeters insist on you getting out of the car so they can hug you, say "Welcome Home", and make sure you know to keep hydrated and not to put baby wipes in the porta-potties. In the first days of Burning Man, people often say "Welcome Home" as a greeting where people in the "default world" say "How are you?"I've often considered why this is. In the beginning I even bridled a little bit at the phrase. "I'm not home," I'd think to myself, "This is an alien place."

But at my fourth Burning Man, I finally got it, and finally felt it. This was home. Not the flat, dusty moonscape with the surreal art sprouting from it like Dali-esque flowers, but the community of creative, inspired, lunatic people who spend months, if not the entire preceding year, getting ready for what is, in essence,  a pilgrimage.  A pilgrimage to the place where we
can fully be ourselves, from the professional men who gather flamboyant outfits to wear in the dust, parading like wonderful peacocks, finally comfortable in their own skin, to the women in the short-shorts and tall dusty boots who can finally give up worrying about makeup and body hair, or who can go all out with makeup, body paint, and jewelry in a way that would label them freaks in the real world. Burning Man is a place to let go of all expectations, all plans, all judgment, a place to be inspired, to experiment, to stay up all night marveling at the show that spreads out before us on 5 square miles of alkali plain. It's a place to create art, to have deep conversations with strangers as the stars, lasers, and LED-lit mile-long strings of balloons wheel and dance above us in the black sky. A place to dance, to wonder, to travel deep into the psyche or to fly high above it, in whatever fashion you choose to do so. It's the only place like it in the world. And because Burning Man is about coming back to oneself, it's home.

I've always noticed the phenomenon of the trip to the playa. As I get ready to leave, I start the process of shedding my "default" persona - the one that allows me to hold a job and to walk down a street without anyone looking at me askance. The one who is polite and professional. The one who cleans the house and worries about the mortgage. The day I leave, I put on the bracelets and necklaces that represent my pilgrimage. The clothes I wear on the trip to the playa are not my Burning Man clothes, but they approach those outfits. I anticipate the heat of the desert, and dress accordingly. As I and my companion drive northeast, the closer we get to Reno, the more Burners we see. People honk and wave on the freeway as we play "Spot the Burner" with each passing car. In Reno, every large store and hotel parking lot has sprouted RV's, campers, vans, and cars piled high with PVC pipe, tarps, bicycles, hula hoops, and other odds and ends. People with braids, dreadlocks, feathers in their hair, facepaint, bindis, and long, colorful outfits wander the aisles of Costco and WalMart, staring and shocked in the fluorescent lights, as the regular denizens of Reno watch with amusement.

Then we travel deep into the desert, joining a long line of cars, and the deeper we go the more of our "default" persona we shed, as someone who sees the ocean for the first time runs towards it, shedding clothes as he goes, longing to dive deeply in. Waiting in line, sometimes for hours, the dust coats us as we play, dance, and talk to the people around us. By the time we've entered the city, we're anointed with dust, baptized in it. Nothing will be truly clean or organized again until we've had time to do our laundry and clean up in a 7-10 days. Then we're in it, and the days rush by, with no alarm bells, no jobs to go to, no bills we can pay. We're in a land of surreality that becomes our reality, so deeply felt that when we leave, it can sometimes takes a couple of weeks to mentally come back to the world everyone else sees. Afterwards, the phrase "Welcome Home" takes on a new poignancy. We miss that parched desert place where we can truly bloom. Things in the "default world" don't shine as brightly, and just simply aren't as interesting. And no, it's not the drugs, since I didn't even drink that much on the playa. It's the spirit of what we, all of us, create there, that we miss when we leave it. And why the Burner community is so close-knit even off-playa. It's not the desert that's home, it's the people.

Welcome Home, fellow Burners, let's meet again soon.

Playa Bound. Again. 

It’s that time of the year again, when 50,000 freaks from across the globe start collecting camping gear, costumes, art pieces, and fetish objects and packing them up into cars, busses, RV’s, campers, and a motley assortment of vehicles of impossible description,  ready and eager to begin their trek into the high desert northeast of Reno, NV. Yes, it’s Burning Man season. The time of year when, for a little over a week, the San Francisco bay area seems devoid of its freakiest denizens. When certain areas of Facebook are eerily quiet.  When people who might ordinarily have gone but couldn’t make it can’t get in touch with 90% of their friends because there’s, generally speaking, no cell phone or internet service out on the playa.

This will be my fourth year going to Burning Man, but not in a row. The first year, I got sick and had other bad experiences that made me decide never to go again. Then, a little over three years ago (about eight years after that first trip), I met a man, fell in love, and let him convince me to go again. It had changed his life, he said. The relationship was troubled almost from the start, and the Burning Man experience, though astonishing and inspiring that year, was also difficult and emotionally wrenching. One Burning Man truism is that if you go with a boyfriend or girlfriend, you’ll either get married or break up on the playa. It’s an intense place for even the best of relationships. Our second year, the relationship had frayed even further, and our playa experience was downright traumatic. I came back stunned with pain and regret and wondered if I’d ever go back. But in January, the day that tickets went on sale, there I was, at 10 am, with thousands of others, buying tickets for myself and friends. 

Now, single again, I’m preparing to make the trek with an old friend who has never gone before. We have weekly phone calls and chat sessions deciding on the details, like who’s bringing the glowy bracelets (him) and who’s shopping for food (me).  I’ve got my outfits all sorted out, realizing that I have too many by now to bring them all. How did I collect all of this stuff?? 

Along with the excitement comes the apprehension. Will it be a good year, finally? Will I finally be able to relax into the experience, without being caught up in conflict and bitterness, now that I’m attending as a free agent? What will happen when I run into my ex-, which I inevitably will, since he’ll be camping with my friends?

  I’m pretty sure that this will be the best year ever, the year I’m finally able to be my true self without apology and anxiety. But I remember the years past, the surprising panic attacks that came out of nowhere, the crippling disappointment in a relationship I simply could not make work, the tears, the shouting, the confusion, the sadness, the loneliness, even in the crowd. I wonder sometimes: was it the relationships that made Burning Man difficult, or was it me? Is it possible that it just isn’t the place for me, yet another place where I will never fully belong? I want to belong there. I enjoy the community. The most creative, fun, strong, inspiring people I know are Burners.

Burning Man is a crucible, almost literally. The vast expanse of alkali plain ringed with dark craggy mountains cooks you down, separates your essential self from all the crap that you bring with you. Or at least it does if you let it. It forces you to rely on yourself and others, forces you to let go of the stuff that won’t help you survive, forces you out of your linear mind and into the world of the surreal. It’s like a huge party, a gigantic camping trip, a Dali painting, a spiritual retreat, and a pilgrimage all rolled into one.  If you give yourself fully to the experience, you come back a different person. If you hold back, you wonder why everyone is so enthused about it.

I think the reason I keep going back is that I know I’ll face my True Self out there in the desert. It might not always be pleasant and wonderful, it might even sometimes be difficult and scary. But it will be interesting, at the very least, and cathartic at the most.

I’m looking forward to meeting the person who makes that return trip.  

What Blackberries Taught Me

As a homeowner, one of the things that I've always had a complex about is that I've never been the greatest or most ambitious gardener. I put California drought-tolerant natives in my front yard after a couple of years of pretending like I was going to have a nice lawn, and as many years coming home and wincing at the ugly, weedy, yellow thing that passed for a lawn. I had a lot of ambitions for my backyard, such as lush plants growing along the perimeter, and a vegetable patch up against the side of the garage, which got the most sun. Seven years after I bought the house, I have a few stubby plants growing around the fence, a tiny orange tree (or rather, shrub) that never really took, and the vegetable patch that I had going for a couple of years got totally swallowed up by crabgrass after one summer of not maintaining it. The compost bin I was trying to get started is literally lost within a huge overgrowth of bushes behind the garage. It will take a machete to get to it now.

My gardener friend would come over and shake his head, especially at the thick blackberry vines that were coming over from the neighbor's yard. "You'd better control those," he warned. I did, somewhat. I hacked them back when they got too overwhelming. But due the vagaries of my life, I had not had much of a chance to do yardwork in the last six months or so. And my friend was right: the blackberries had their eyes on my yard. They were subtle, sly. They came in inch by inch, as if hoping I wouldn't notice. And of course, for the most part, I didn't.  Most of the vines stayed politely along the fence, making bushy shapes, although one crept in among my butterfly bush and one snaked in at ground level. I did run that one over with my lawnmower the other day when I was doing basically the only yard task that I ever do anymore, aside from watering.

Last night, out in my yard for the first time in awhle, I noticed something: all of the blackberry bushes had blackberries on them! Ripe ones. Huge ones. I tasted one. They're good, too! I got a bowl, picked for about five minutes and got about a cup and a half of really nice, ripe, gorgeous, juicy blackberries, which I'll serve for dessert when my dad comes over for dinner tonight. As I picked them, I laughed at the found booty.

The lesson? First of all, our perceived weaknesses might also be the doorway to positive experiences. I'm not a disciplined gardener, which I always considered a flaw. But if I had been, I would not now have a stand of gorgeous blackberries literally ripe for the picking, right outside my back door.  Also, blackberry vines never give up. They just keep coming. If I were a good gardener, I'd probably hate them, and do things to keep them out. But blackberry vines are patient. They keep growing, regardless of what we do to them. We can dig them out, cut them up, run over them with our lawnmower, but they keep coming. Might we learn something from the wily blackberry vine about being steady, slow, and relentless in pursuit of our goals, whatever they may be?