Mental Health Adventures

If we make friends with what scares us, in other words, change our relationship with fear, we grow. We control our fear rather than our fear controlling us. Maybe it’s our ‘risk-averse’ culture that prevents us from going anywhere near our fears. It may even be a survival instinct. Some fears are rational, I wouldn’t recommend walking in front of a bus. Please continue to fear being run over and don’t step out on the road unless you’re sure there’s nothing is coming! Some fears are rational, but with proper risk assessment and control, they can become useful to overcome. An example of a risk assessment is to look both ways before crossing the road. If we were too scared to cross the road, we wouldn’t get anywhere! To face our fear in order for us to develop our courage muscle. The more you don’t let fear stop you… the more you don’t let you fears stop you!.  Take heights, for instance. I’m happy to confess, I’ve always had… what I call, ‘a healthy fear of heights’. I remember being...

Discrimination. Is a rude word. It means all sorts of things to all kinds of people. Everyone is discriminated against in one form or another, multiple times in the their life (and that’s an understatement!). Some may feel that they are discriminated against more than others, which is fair enough. If you’re a balding, fat, short, old man, there’s 5 reasons to be picked on. I was waiting to get on the bus the other day. It was dark, wet and miserable. There was a crowd of people waiting to board the bus. Out of nowhere a man in his early thirties barged through the crowd, saying ‘Excuse me’. It was obvious he was mentally ill. When he got to the bus driver, he shouted at him, pleading with him to let all the people on the bus ‘cos they’re getting soaked and freezing out there!’ The crowd looked around at each other, making judgemental comments like ‘is he mad?’ ‘Whats he doing! Lol’ ‘oh, come on! you’re holding everyone up, luv’.  The guy decided he would place himself at the back o...