AUGUST 25, 2023 HEALTH GROUNDCOVER NEWS Navigating the path to healing: Tips to triumph over mental health challenges MOHAMMED ALMUSTAPHA Groundcover contributor I dedicate this article to all those who have had to endure, deal with, get well from, and take care of those who suffer from mental health issues, illnesses or syndromes — whatever they may be. The complexities of the world that we live in, this whole planet that revolves around the sun, all of the things that happen and go on around us as human beings can tend to overwhelm us and depress and stress and discombobulate our natural order of things — our mental and emotional homeostasis, I guess in a way. And it sucks, and it has to be dealt with. Some people are just genetically predisposed or predestined for mental illness. A great deal of others might acquire it through trauma — whether it be physical, mental or emotional. A great number of people will actually develop it from physical trauma (like car accidents). Heartbreak, betrayal, whatever drug addiction and negative experiences — all these things can lead to mental health issues, which range from narcissism and bipolar disorder, all the way to depression and psychosis. Now, I, as a human being who has suffered from depression and bipolar disorder, understand that in order for people like me to try to lead any semblance of a normal life, it takes a lot of effort, more than for the neurotypical person, because we wake up in the morning heavy and burdened. We don't just wake up happy, we have to force it willfully by doing certain activities, like exercising or listening to music or ingesting edibles, whatever it may be. This is what I’ve found to be healing for me: Number one has been exercise and going to the gym. That right there was 85-90% of getting well — getting moving, going to the gym, exercising, lifting weights, shedding my body of toxins, getting my circulation going, losing weight. It helps in many factors; the circulation alone gets hormones moving, toxins get kicked out. By exercising we're able to deliver happy hormones to ourselves faster, the weight loss leads to looking good in clothes, posture changes, muscles grow. The gym also takes up time; it's hard work, it's rewarding and you get endorphins. Number two is going to work; stay occupied working. If you're going through depression or mania, it's helpful to occupy a lot of your time with work, even if it’s a remedial task, like putting nuts on bolts, or lifting wheels, just make sure that you get a job and that you have a job to go to. Because when you have a job, you have to wake up in the morning and brush your teeth and brush your hair and take a shower and get dressed, to be presentable so that when you go out there, you end up making your money. Making money enables you to get the things you want. But that's not what we really gain from working. What we gain is that we're able to occupy our minds for eight hours or longer: for those eight hours we’re able to just be engrossed and focused on something (and that's eight hours of peace where we don't have to think about our demons). You know what I mean? So get a job after you work out. A third thing has to be practicing empathetic charity. When I say that, most people will misunderstand it. I don't mean charity as in financial giving and so forth. No, but as in giving people your time and sharing your experiences with people, even if it’s the knowledge of where good resources are. Initially, I used to help out those who are in a lesser circumstance than me, for the sake of making myself feel good by saying, ”Hey, look there's somebody that is in a worse situation than me.” But as I got older and developed, I realized, no, we don't do it for ourselves, we do it because: “Hey, this is a human being that's suffering. And if I were in his shoes, I would want somebody to come and help me to make me feel better.” Good humans still exist, and humanity is beautiful. So just trying to interconnect them to improve their lives and make people feel better, well, in turn, give extremely positive dividends. Actual realization and acceptance is just recognizing that you're human and you're here, and that the world will continue to go on and that whatever injustice or whatever maltreatment you faced did not end your world but only made you stronger. So once you get to accepting things, you can finally get to moving on and moving forward and being a better human being that contributes himself in society. So in conclusion just remember to know and avoid your triggers, both organic and inorganic, as in avoiding people who actively seek to destabilize our peace and mental health. “Striving to be a better man today than I was yesterday, and a better man tomorrow than I am today.” 11 BEAR MYTHS from page 6 because they were all about tabu: things you did and you never did. Stories tell us how we should behave or not behave. So, say winters were really harsh: there were myths told to warn people about being greedy and selfishly hoarding food. We had sacred stories told to children so they knew that it was customary when another tribe was starving during winter and came asking, you had to share with them. We had tripod caches set up in high places (to keep bears out), and a ladder, and the rule was that you only ate enough and never more than what you needed. But some of what we learned came from traditional animal stories that everybody knew carried some moral lessons about how to share with people and survive in a harsh environment. In some cases it’s 80 below zero and all you have is some wood and some fire. Myths came from pressures out of real natural environments. Bears are territorial animals and came to have personalities as legendary figures in Kaska myth, since each one could become old and famous in its own area. One of the stories about Grandpa Mike I love is the time he was about two inches from a bear’s face. He was cutting up a huge moose and slicing it up, and he had blood all the way up his arms. He looked up and a bear was right there - but his gun was on the other side of the moose! So my grandfather had to climb over the dead moose to reach the gun. But he still refused to shoot his own totem animal and just quietly walked away out of respect, even giving up his kill. This became a legend about him, but it tells us how we think about and treat animals and each other in the world. Sacred stories teach us how to live and survive in the world. There’s one famous Kaska legend about a woman’s encounter with a bear. The tribe was packing up to migrate for the season, and this herbalist was the last member of the tribe to leave, but it took her a while to get all her plants and medicine packed up. As she was going up the trail, everyone else had already left. Suddenly a massive Grizzly rose up behind her. The only thing she could think to do was grab her curved knife and as quick as she could, slice it all the way from the bottom up to the chest cavity. All its guts spilled out, and she grabbed her bags and ran down the trail to find the tribe. At first they couldn’t believe it, but they went back and found the body, tanned its hide and set out this huge bear rug. It made her famous, a well-known woman who rose into legend and then became a sort of mythical figure. It’s a really powerful story about a woman and her ability to survive on her own. Today, mythology is being wiped out and there’s this sort of social engineering to create a manipulated, controlled society using technology, without any mythology to tell us right and wrong. We must stand as one mind, body and soul, within a resistance of unity. We must come together as a human race and realize that each and every one of us is an individual who can say no, that we do not have to participate in the social experiment. Society will not survive, being bankrupt in emotions and community, if we have no stories to hold us together. So here’s a word I came up with for our modern society: illuminoligarcorpocracy. We are being strangled and yoked and controlled by big tech, powerful billionaires and governments in ways that nobody totally understands. The concept of mythology is a powerful people’s unification against the onslaught of a new ideology that has been thrust on to humanity. We must counter the reality of this new technological understanding of humans by not participating in the algorithm of insanity. Mythology is a way to get back to the roots and traditions of where we came from. Stories were a way of surviving in the face of the world, back to Greece, Babylon, Egypt, India, all of the world’s traditions. We as Americans have to decide what value the old traditions have for us, from our families and back to the ancestors we came from.
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