BREAKING POINT (CHAPTER. 2)

Written by Andi Bazaar from the creator of “Mental Health Youth Crisis: #MoreThanIDid” (MHMTID) x TMYCSUK

After tackling procrastination in the chapter one, let’s talk about a related topic that can trigger a big worry in people whose mental health is not well memory loss. It is a very common symptom and side effect of mental health issues, let’s dive deeper!

Creating new memories and remembering previous memories is an important component of our identity, it is the library that makes up the autobiography of our life and anchors us into our life. However when our mental health isn’t doing well, our memory gets impacted in two ways.

• The first is recounting old memories, we may feel like we have lost our memories. The good news is that those memories are not gone at all and will come back once we get better, this is related to priming. Priming is when our current experiences/moods impact our memories. If we are currently feeling depressed, it primes our brain to recount previous times in our life when we were feeling depressed. Priming is a mechanism that helps us recount previous memories that will help us in our current one, to find a solution.

Fun Tangent:
We can use priming to our advantage, if we are trying to study for an exam or presentation we can replicate as much as possible the conditions of the exam and presentation including lighting, sounds, etc leading to better recall during the main event.

However, due to the long term nature of most mental health issues it means that our memories may be silenced for a long time, making us feel further disconnected from ourselves and our identities, further deteriorating our mental health. Treating the root cause is important.

Getting treatment for our depression/anxiety/trauma etc is going to be crucial because once we get better, we will get our ability to recall prior memories on top of our mental health getting better.

• The second issue with memories has to do with consolidation of new memories. If we go through our day feeling depressed, anxious or numb we are more focused on our thoughts, emotions and physical symptoms than our environment or people around us. This tuning out of our environment means that we are not able to save anything that can become a memory.

Furthermore, another important component of consolidation of memories is sleep. Our memories move from short-term to long-term memory during our sleep where they remain in the long-term memory forever but one of the biggest ways that mental health impacts us is through sleep.

If we are not sleeping enough/getting quality sleep, it will disrupt this process therefore leading to new memories not being properly consolidated. Again, treatment of the original causes of these issues is going to be crucial. However, there are things we can do to cope.

• The first coping mechanism is going to be reconnecting with our environment, we can do that many times per day by purposefully engaging our 5 senses and counting different sights, sounds, smells, touches, tastes for a full minute and repeating it as needed. We explore our environment through our senses so when we force ourselves to use our senses, we reconnect with our environment, therefore being more likely to create new memories.
• The second coping mechanism is using priming in our favour for example "we can use a certain smell that we know triggers good memories or going to a place that reminds us of good experiences, by doing so we will realize that our memories are not gone and that we can remember them when we give our brains a little help."

I hope that this part helps clarify the relationship between memories and mental health and realizing that memory loss is most likely temporary and will return to its full glory after we get better.

Let’s talk about dissociation, what it is and why it happens and what we can do about it.

• “Dissociation" is a distance that we feel within ourselves where we may feel as though we are completely disconnected from our thoughts, emotions, and identities. It is almost as if we are external viewers of our life, unable to do anything about it, an invisible barrier within ourselves and between ourselves and reality. There are many forms of dissociation but the main two that occur the most often are derealization and depersonalization.
• “Derealization" is a form of dissociation between ourselves and the world, we may feel as though there is a veil and barrier between us and the world. Things look slightly out of shape, 2 dimensional rather than 3D and colours may be slightly different.
• “Depersonalization" is the form of dissociation that is within us, we may feel as though we are unable to feel connected with our bodies. We may look at our hands and feel as though they belong to someone else, that we are outside observers of our own bodies rather than within it.

First of all, it is important to realize that dissociation is harmless in the sense that it doesn’t mean we are “losing our minds,” or that this is going to be the permanent state of our minds moving forward. However, it is also extremely scary!

We rely on the perception of reality and “self” as forms of stability in an otherwise unstable and uncertain world, when that is taken away from us it exacerbates further that fear and can create a perception of identity crisis where we feel we don’t know ourselves.

However, this is a mechanism that our minds use to cope with severe levels of trauma and anxiety. When we are going through traumatic events or extreme anxiety our minds are basically sending us signals that things are not going well at all, it is an alarm system.

These symptoms of anxiety and trauma takes a whole lot of energy, our bodies are constantly in that fight-or-flight mode, adrenaline/cortisone are activated, leading to tensing of the muscles, fast heartbeat, shortness of breath, sweating, etc. This is meant to prepare us.

Our minds treat all forms of danger in a similar way, they cannot distinguish between a physical danger, psychological or social one. The main goal is survival and that fight-or-flight network gets activated when a threat is perceived or one that is similar to our past.

It can be being near someone who harmed us in the past, being afraid of the future, experiencing regular panic attacks. While they may seem illogical at the moment, what it means is that our minds have identified a threat that resembles something we went through in our past.

However, these can only be sustained for so long before there is a breakdown and that is when numbness and dissociation come in. We touched earlier on the vast amount of resources and energy it takes to trigger this alarm and that is why it can only go on for so long.

Once that breaking point is reached, we go into learned helplessness. This is when our minds believe that is there is no escape from that threat and the best it can do is disconnect from any further pain that may occur as a last resort for protection.

That dissociation is a complete withdrawal of those emotions as a last form of protection and because of general exhaustion in our bodies and mind from that repeated anxiety, this is when that severe depression may come in. When we are in the dissociative phase,

The world stops making sense, we can’t find our “identity” (even though it is still there and will be there when things get better). During this hopeless phase, we may feel as though our life is worthless or that we are doomed to be a shell or zombie version of ourselves.

However, there are certain things we can do and we are going to divide them into two categories: treatment and coping mechanisms. Treatment is important here and no amount of coping mechanisms will solve this but they can definitely help during the worst moments.

In the treatment aspect, medications can be an important tool. They can help alleviate that intense depression and hopelessness helping us feel more motivated and more likely to engage in activities such as going to therapy, working and being a little more social.

However, the main limitation of medications is that they cannot help with the root cause and are therefore a good add-on to therapy. In therapy, we will explore the traumas and anxiety that led to this and use certain approaches such as CBT and EMDR.

CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) will help us restructure the way we think about our past and future and help us acknowledge and validate our anxiety and trauma while also working towards slowly changing how we perceive it.

In terms of coping mechanisms, there are a few things we can do.

One is reconnecting with our environment, while our vision may seem strange during periods of derealization our other senses are usually still functioning well. We can touch, listen, taste, smell, etc.

Things in our environment to reconnect with our environment in a more meaningful way, for example "we can count all the sources of sound we can identity, we can touch every surface from our clothes, to furniture, to certain textures."

This exercise allows us to feel more present in our environment while simultaneously taking the focus from all the thoughts to external stimuli in our environment, talking to other people, especially people we trust can also help us feel more connected with people around us.

Basically any coping mechanism that takes the focus away from within us to our environment is going to be amazing here, from light exercise to video games, to being with other people even if it is for a short amount of time because we cannot tolerate too much of it.

There is a way out of dissociation and while going through it is terrifying and feels permanent, it will get better. Taking care of ourselves and treating it will help us so much while also engaging in the coping mechanisms mentioned above when it is at its worst.

I hope that this 'chapter two' helped in better understanding dissociation and the functioning behind it, hope you are all having a good week x

A SPECIAL THANKS TO

• Oliver Schofield (Consulting)
• Seth Gryffen (Consulting)
• Henrie Louis Friedrich (Analyst)
• Clayton Euridicé Schofield (Editor/Journalist)
• Timothée Freimann schofield (Photographed)
• José Schenkkan and Benjamin Schenkkan Joseph (GQ’s Studios)
• In appearance “Sean-luccá Schofield”
• In collaboration with Andi Bazaar from the creator of “Mental Health Youth Crisis #MoreThanIDid (MHMTID)”