Headspace: Mind over matter doesn’t deliver permanent solutions

Each month Morning Wire’s mental health columnist Alejandra Sarmiento writes about the Square Mile’s often-taboo subjects – and how you can deal with them

When Catherine The Great visited Crimea in 1787, she was greeted by happy peasants and a backdrop of beautifully decorated villages and towns, triumphal gates and stunning gardens. Even the simple huts were embellished with flowers. It was all fake, creating an illusion of wealth and power that concealed the dire state of poverty and ruin that lay just behind the painted facades.

Feelings are not dissimilar. We can create an illusion of satisfaction and stability, even of happiness. We can try to fake it till we make it. In reality, though, this is not sustainable. If we don’t look beyond the facade of our feelings, and into the foundations of our emotions, we will be nothing but a shell. Without roots, we will easily collapse the moment we need to weather a storm.

In today’s world of quick fixes, social media gurus and filters bewitching us with faux beauty, we may be seduced into believing that a positive mindset is all the we need to prosper. Mind over matter. Determination. Grit. Resilience. Success. It’s that’s simple.

Censoring our feelings is not the solution. Vulnerability is not weakness. Stoicism is not confidence. Silence is not strength. What isn’t communicated is felt. What is felt, is interpreted. What is interpreted is often inaccurate, leading to distress, denial and disconnection. Simply put, isolating our feelings leads us to feeling isolated.

The solution is emotional agility. When we notice our emotions with genuine curiosity, we need to pause and ask ourselves ‘what value is this emotion actually signposting?’ For example, why am I upset? Is it because I am feeling disrespected or misunderstood? Why am I anxious? Perhaps this angst is self-created as I catastrophise worse-case scenarios?

Once we are able to recognise the real root of our emotion, then we can move to meet those values with understanding and compassion, building wisdom and progress in the process.