Have you ever heard someone say to you with depression or anxiety, "Calm down, that's just on your mind, be strong, do your part" ? I listen to it all the time. I believe that nothing makes a person suffering from depression or anxiety more angry than hearing these things.
When someone with these symptoms hears this, the first thing they think is that what they feel is not valued, that people do not understand what they are going through or that they are minimizing their suffering.
There is something we know since we are 4 to 5 years old, everyone knows it, but few take it into account. And it is that the brain is an organ, an organ like the heart, the lungs, the intestines or the liver, and it has its particular functions. It is an organ that needs blood supply, oxygen, glucose, nutrients and defenses, like all organs. It is also made up of cells.
Everyone knows that, but when it comes to talking about mental symptoms, nobody takes it into account. Many will know the antipsychiatry movement, which said that mental illness was a social product; This was abolished when the brain was finally seen as an organ that also gets sick.
When studies of the brain are carried out in people with anxiety and depression, a clear difference is observed with respect to the brain of people without symptoms. This shows that mental symptoms have a representation in the brain, circuits are affected, they work differently. Sure, the symptoms are in the mind, but the mind is in the brain. This does not mean that people with mental symptoms are different from people without symptoms, it is like saying that people with heart damage are different from those with a healthy heart.
So the next time you hear someone say that mental symptoms are nothing, that they are only in the mind, you can respond that it is like saying to someone with asthma "your symptoms do not exist, they are only in your lungs", or " That hypertension you have is not real, it is a product of what you think of your arteries. ” It is as illogical as that.
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I wish you the greatest blessings.
Guillermo Mendoza Vélez www.SaludMentalyEmocional.com
