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So many brilliant academics in the field of mental health investigating this and that, so many professionals with endless studies and reports or a psychiatric bible full of labels… Meanwhile people are continually killing themselves, each other, or their natural environment. Overloading with drugs, whether from official or unofficial sources, just to try and make it through the day. Psychological problems are the only problems. You can become paranoid, you can become split, you can become paralysed because of fear — but this is nothing to do with reality. If you are functioning consciously you wouldn’t make yourself miserable, would you?

Whenever I have worked in the area of mental health, as well as having been there and wore that label myself, most of us have no idea what is/was making us so depressed and unhappy. We had no awareness of what responsibility really means; no idea that we were creating enormous amounts of suffering when in fact there is no need.

I recently worked with a young man who had tried to commit suicide. He did not know what triggered his suicide attempt, he was only told he had mental health problems but without any explanation of what this actually means. No-one had ever asked him what was going on in his head. He had no idea that everything he had thought, projected onto and blamed his father for, was in fact the very things that he was actually doing. His behaviour was identical it was just in a different form.

When this young man opened his mind and really considered this, his first reaction was anger. How could he possibly be like his father?! But when all the behaviour and stories were broken down, he finally saw the reality and started taking full responsibility for the way he was behaving. It did not excuse his father’s behaviour however it helped him understand his own anger and resentment.

It became a turning point in his life and after many years of holding a massive resentment against his father and making his own life hell, in fact such a hell that he tried to end his own life so severely, he is now making amends and starting to get to know his father for the first time in his life – a revelation and such a burden lifted.

Your mind can only function from the data that has been put into it. If you are very closed minded ignorant and /or irresponsible, then you can only be a victim of life rather than being part of life.

If you are irresponsible you will be in a state of reaction and when you react you will do stupid things.

If you are responsible for everything in your life, then you can make it the way you want it to be.

I believe that if the education system put self-awareness as a top priority into the school curriculum then they would not need to spend billions of pounds on mental health issues; but maybe that is the way they want it. If everyone was self-aware what a very different world we would live in – there would be no need for a social system or a government. Now that is a profound thought…