Corporations, businesses, markets, ads, shops, authors, directors work 24/7 to hook your attention to leave your self, and waste money on buying mundane things of no values.
On my Facebook where winds bring anything that is gathered through my personal information suggests me and maybe you as well to download apps like “Better Help” or get “enlightened” by certain “activities.” Even in developing countries like Armenia you can find the tendency of changing people’s understanding of what mental health is, why one should care about it.
“A state of emotional and psychological well-being in which an individual is able to use his or her cognitive and emotional capabilities, function in society, and meet the ordinary demands of everyday life.”
Remember when you were a kid hearing mom’s screams about brushing your teeth, cleaning your bedroom and so on. Now you have grown up and these kind of screams are absent. But something vast like a universe is missing… what does our ears waiting to hear?
“Be happy!”
“Work hard!”
“Don’t give a f***?”
Why is that we care for physical hygiene, and neglect our emotional hygiene? Even if nobody “schooled” us on what-s, how-s, still if we question and start thinking about why-s, we become part of the greater whole, universal matter where communication is based on acceptance, care, deeper intelligence, connectedness and much much more.
Guy Winch, an author and psychologist unfolds this topic very subtly in his TED speech about emotional intelligence. Winch brings a very good example of health:
“Oh, you’re feeling depressed? Just shake it off; it’s all in your head.” Can you imagine saying that to somebody with a broken leg, asks Winch: “Oh, just walk it off; it’s all in your leg.”
If we agree that are social beings, then our consequences should follow up accordingly. Imagine if we behaved the way we expected others to do. Imagine a grieving friend who lost a parent and our conversation with that friend. Would we act by the shift or support response? Shift response is when we listen in order to answer and support response we give when we listen to understand. And I assume we all understand what these mean and what they trigger. Once the perception shifts from shift to support response, once we understand the depth of the “We are all in this together” then we eliminate the unknowingness of the care we need to provide to us and the other us – our family, friends and beings of our environment.
Author: Mane Matevosyan