Thinking...

Yesterday was for sure my worst day.
Having my daughter splurge her own fragile feelings everywhere
In effect accusing me
As her father accused me of
'Being a danger to my children'

Is causing the PTSD I'd dealt fairly well with
I thought I'd managed to disarm most of it...actually.

Is causing it to echo around my belly and chest, the blades of it slicing into my heart each time a bounce takes it high enough...

It is at times like these when the definition of mental health strikes me as shallow.
Well meaning
But ultimately shallow..

The World Health Organisation definition:

"Mental health is not just the absence of mental disorder. It is defined as a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community."

Good mental health means a person is 'self actualizing' as Maslow would put it.

Except Maslow didn't define good mental health as a thing in itself.

I'm not even sure if someone who is 'self actualized' would be contributing in the 'work will set you free' tone of the WHO definition.

The person who is self actualized is following his or her own star and negotiating the path just so long as there is food, water and shelter...with love, generosity and humor and may well be producing something no one wants!

And trying to sell it on Etsy...

In other words, in Maslow's view good mental health grows out of having enough of the basics. It is a social theory of health, as opposed to the idea of strength or weakness of a person. In the Humanistic world this is an existential universe, we make our own meanings...based on the compass we all carry: our core values and beliefs.

To know in which direction to travel you must have food, shelter and light and know how to read your own compass.

So when the skies go out...
When there is no light to see the compass.
No star left in the sky...

Is impossible for everyone, no matter how sane, clever or kind.
Saint of sinner
When you lose your job, your house, your family...your identity.

We are only healthy so long as there is social order
Something to orient ourselves to
When there is food, while the drains work, while there is medicine, where there are people...

And therefore when the skies go black and everyone you love dies, for those determined to appear sane the only way to be OK about this is to be in so much denial there can never be enough 'therapy hours' to connect you to your self, your real, vulnerable, bleeding and bruised feelings...

Without doubt many people live perfectly well in denial.
And I'm perfectly sure as long as they function
They appear to have good mental health...

In synch with your denial, what's the problem?
Just don't talk about that thing that makes me feel...

And so the abuse goes on.
Self now abusing self by shutting all recognition of the wound, down

Therefore I welcome the echo.
It's telling me there is more work to be done..

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is similar to attachment theory, I think.
When a person knows he has secure attachments to run back to, the world isn't so overwhelming when things go wrong.

There has to be an external safety net.

Because things will go wrong...

The WHO definition defines a person with good mental health as able to cope...with normal stresses. So at what point does an individual, or a mental health professional decided this is abnormal and too much stress? From an existential point of view, only the person to whom it has happened can decide..

And doesn't the idea that a person with poor mental health isn't able to cope, separate and differentiate 'us' the strong ones from 'them' ...those who are weak in some, ill defined way.

It feels safer to refuse to honor our own sensitivities and potential to be hurt and harmed by external events. But this is dehumanizing and false.
In my opinion...

Anyway, all in all, we are now entering the zone known as
Blame the parents.

A merry zone.
First real inking of it came yesterday as the good doctor
In response to my daughter's desire to play 'Courtroom' (Transactional analysis)
told us that oft times, over concerned parents cause more problems than distant, uncaring ones...

The policeman who drove us to the hospital had a very different view.

Anyway, this blame the parents refers to Murray Bowen's family theories I guess...the old triangulation of anxiety.

And R D Lang (not K D Lang)

Murray Bowen therapy was basically to get the family to argue, bless him
 :)
Ah, the danger of inexpressible feelings...