Thoughts on mental health classes

After taking a mental health class for one semester, my biggest gain was not how many words I learned to regulate my emotions, but the fact that I finally had the courage to admit, "I'm not happy because I'm being pretentious." I also got a set of emotional coping toolkits that don't require me to carry on or force myself to be "positive."

To be honest, I took this class purely to get the credits for the public elective course. My previous stereotype of this type of class was that of "giving me chicken soup". It was nothing more than the teacher standing on the stage and saying, "Be positive and optimistic, and don't be afraid when encountering difficulties." It sounded overwhelming. In the first class, the teacher did not use PPT, but showed a clip of a street follow-up. People of different ages were asked, "When was the last time you were in a bad mood, and how did you deal with it?" Some said, "I forget when I get busy." Some said, "It's all free time, so I just let it go." Another high school student said, "I don't dare to say, my mother said I just don't want to dress up in school." After the lecture, the teacher did not judge, but just said that regarding emotional processing, there are actually two different ideas in the academic world: Psychoanalytically oriented scholars believe that negative emotions are signals sent by the subconscious, and suppressing them will only create bigger problems, and you have to follow the emotions to find the root cause. ； Scholars from the cognitive-behavioral school believe that there is no need to struggle with tracing the source. First, adjust behavior and reverse irrational cognitions, and the emotions will naturally come around. “No one is right or wrong, you can try it yourself and use whichever one is more comfortable for you. ”I felt at that time that this lesson seemed different from what I thought.

I had the opportunity to try it out last month. I stayed up all night to sort out the group assignment data, but the teammate responsible for compiling it deleted it by mistake. The deadline was the next day. I was squatting on the steps downstairs of the dormitory, my mind went blank, and tears fell down my face. Before I changed, I would have scolded myself first: "You can't handle such a small thing, you are so useless." But that day, the "emotional dissociation" method taught in class suddenly popped up in my mind. I pulled myself out half a meter and stared at my emotions: Oh, now my chest is tight because of anger, and my nose is sore because of the pity for those three all-nighters. What I have is "emotion", not "I am a failed waste". I first tried to write an emotional diary for ten minutes along the lines of psychoanalysis. As I was writing, I realized that what I was most worried about was not actually not being able to hand in my homework. It was because I was afraid that the team leader would think I was unreliable and that it would cause everyone else to get low marks. Once I figured this out, I immediately got up and solved the problem using cognitive behavioral methods: I first synchronized the situation with my team leader, dug out my previous backup data on the cloud disk, and spent two hours reorganizing it. I handed in the assignment half an hour earlier than originally scheduled. It was only when I lay in bed that day that I realized that most of my previous internal conflicts came from the self-attack of "not allowing myself to be sad", rather than from the difficulty of the matter itself.

Later, I read the annual report issued by the psychology center of our school. It said that the proportion of students who have taken systematic mental health courses is 37% higher than those who have not taken the course. It does not mean that people who have taken the course have more psychological problems. It is that people finally no longer regard "being in a bad mood and needing help" as a sign of "I have a mental illness". It is as normal as taking medicine when you have a cold or clearing the memory when your computer is stuck. A female clinical student in the class shared that she always forced herself to be the "perfect senior". She didn't dare to refuse requests from junior students, and she didn't dare to say anything no matter how tiring the work assigned by her instructor was. She even struggled to eat. It wasn't until she fainted in the laboratory one time that she discovered that she had been sleeping only four hours a day for more than a month. The teacher didn't say empty words like "You have to learn to say no" at that time, so he asked us to do a small exercise: each person wrote three principles on paper that you think "must be achieved", and then crossed them out one by one, leaving only one in the end. The last thing the classmate left was "I must sleep seven hours a day." She cried as she wrote this, saying that this was the first time she had put her own needs first in her growth.

Of course, this does not mean that this lesson is omnipotent. A male classmate in the class directly criticized him, saying that he was so anxious before the last exam that he had insomnia for three consecutive days. He tried abdominal breathing and mindfulness meditation as taught by the teacher, but it didn't work at all. The teacher was not angry at that time, but just smiled and said that there is no magic pill that applies to everyone. If you have tried more than three adjustment methods, but none of them work, and your mood has affected your eating and sleeping for more than two weeks, don't force yourself to do it. See a professional counselor for intervention directly, and follow the doctor's advice to take medicine when necessary. "What I teach is just a small medicine box for home use. If you really get seriously ill, you have to go to the hospital." ”

I still have two sentences that I jotted down in class in my cell phone memo. One is "There is no right or wrong in emotions, only whether they are seen or not." The other is "You don't have to force yourself to be the master of your emotions. It's good to be your friend." It’s quite interesting to say that my cat sneaked out last week and I couldn’t find it for two hours. I sat downstairs and shed tears. Before, I would have scolded myself, “What a big deal it is to cry like this.” But that day I just sat there quietly and cried for ten minutes. After crying, I wiped my face and went to print out the missing cat notice. Within half an hour of posting it, my aunt called me and said that the cat was squatting at the door of her unit building. You see, taking a class will not make you free from negative emotions. You will still be sad when you should be sad, but you will no longer be dragged away by emotions, and you will no longer take all the faults on yourself. That's enough, right?