Emotional vs Mental Health

I’ve been rewriting some copy on my website. My practice and how I approach it is in transition and I want my words to reflect the subtle changes. Most obvious is on the Home page where I have removed the phrase Mental Health and replaced it with Emotional Well-Being.

I am making this distinction because, in recent years, I think the term mental health has taken on some negative connotations that make me uncomfortable. Primarily, mental health has come to mean symptoms outside the “norm” of human experience whilst ever-narrowing what “normal” is.

Thanks in large part to social media, mental health often involves self-diagnoses of “conditions” whether clinically assessed or not. Increasingly, my profession is pathologizing routine human feelings, behaviours and beliefs rather than just allowing people to people in all their glorious messiness.

Discomfort is not a dysfunction. Anger is not a dysfunction. Grief is not a dysfunction. Fear is not a dysfunction. Nor is confusion, disillusionment, sadness, shame, guilt or thinking outside the box. To name any of these as a mental illness is to negate the very act of living a life. There is no typical against which to assess atypical.

We are living in unprecedented times of chaos and extraordinary levels of stress, doubt, disconnection, and fear. We are not wired to gracefully and competently navigate these shark infested waters of insecurity. Our emotional coping mechanisms are stretched to their limits.

And this is why my focus is on emotional well-being. Naming what is going on, how you are reacting to it, and what is required to strengthen your understanding and self-compassion without having to make it something it is not.

Human beings are resilient. We’re survivors. Our strength is in knowing who we are from the inside out. Life requires us to have faith in our abilities to meet the hard stuff with courage and clarity. I can help with that.

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