Mental health AND psychological information

For ordinary people, high-quality psychological information is a low-cost and practical tool to maintain their own mental health, but the premise is that you must learn to filter information and avoid blindly taking the seats, so that you will not have the counter-effect of "the more you read popular science, the more anxious you become."

A while ago, I received a young girl who had just graduated. When she came in, her eyeballs were swollen like peaches. She said that she had been watching psychological short videos for three days, and the more she watched, the more she felt that her life was hopeless. The video says that "highly sensitive people are born with character flaws and are destined to be unable to handle interpersonal relationships well." She happens to have a personality that makes her think for a long time whether she has done something wrong when others speak loudly, so she directly welded this label on herself and did not even dare to sign up for department team building, for fear that her "sensitive problem" would make her colleagues unhappy.

I didn’t refute her directly at the time, but flipped through two books from different genres and showed them to her: Psychoanalytically oriented scholars would say that hypersensitivity is essentially a “hypervigilance” defense mechanism formed in the early upbringing environment, and is a skill developed as a child in order to adapt to the unstable caregiver’s emotions.； Research on positive psychology regards high sensitivity as a rare talent - the ability of such people to capture emotions and details is more than three times that of ordinary people, and they are more likely to produce results in creative work, social work, and service work than others. You see, the same concept and different research directions can give completely opposite conclusions. If you just read a certain article and sentenced yourself to "death", wouldn't you be in a big loss?

Speaking of which, I went through a similar pitfall when I first entered the industry. When I was in school, I just finished learning the theory about the family of origin. When I came home, I got angry with my mother, saying that I always felt insecure in relationships because she often traveled on business and rarely accompanied me. Looking back now, it is really naive. The influence of the original family on people does exist, but pushing all problems to the past with half-understood theories, but ignoring the adjustments that can be made in the present. This is actually a misunderstanding that many people have when reading psychological information: they always want to find a standard answer, find a "cause" that can explain all problems, and once they find it, they just lie flat.

There are also many people who like to "diagnose" themselves based on popular science. Last week, a boy came for consultation and said that he had "avoidant attachment" and no longer dared to fall in love. After further chatting, I found out that he had been in two relationships and didn’t like being with his partner every day. Occasionally, he didn’t feel guilty when he returned messages late. When he came across a few videos that said “avoidant attachment means not liking active contact and hating close contact”, he directly labeled himself. In fact, his condition did not meet the criteria for clinical diagnosis of "avoidant personality disorder" or "avoidant type of insecure attachment". He had just been accustomed to an independent pace of life since he was a child. He had been anxious for half a year in vain, and even went on several blind dates.

This is actually like when you buy clothes. One-size-fits-all styles will definitely only suit some people. If you wear one-size-fits-all clothes on yourself and it doesn’t fit, you will feel that there is something wrong with your figure. Wouldn’t that be a problem for you? Most of the psychological information is based on the research conclusions of general samples, and it is impossible to fully adapt to everyone's specific situation. If you really feel that something is wrong with your state, don't blindly measure it with online scales. It is a safer choice to seek evaluation from a regular hospital's psychiatry department or a qualified psychological counselor.

Of course, this does not mean that non-professional psychological information is useless. When I was doing publicity on postpartum depression in the community, a mother took her best friend to the hospital after listening to it. Her best friend cried every day after giving birth and felt that she was "not a good mother". The family thought it was "hypocritical". Fortunately, after listening to the popular science, she knew that this was a typical manifestation of postpartum depression. She was sent to the hospital in time and basically recovered after more than three months of intervention. Reliable psychological information can help you break down many misunderstandings and even help people around you at critical moments.

I also have a little habit of reading psychology-related content: when I see any method or conclusion, don’t rush to believe it or deny it, find something small and try it out. Someone once said, "Don't force yourself to be positive when you are in a bad mood. Allowing yourself to paralyze for half an hour will help you recover faster." I happened to work overtime for a week at that time, and when I got home, I collapsed on the sofa. I didn't force myself to read and study, so I just held half a box of iced watermelon and watched old animations. It was really more comfortable than before shouting "I want to work hard". But later I met someone who said that this method was useless for him. When he was in a bad mood, he became more and more paralyzed, and he was more likely to get into trouble. He had to go out and run five kilometers and sweat all over to recover. You see, there is no one-size-fits-all approach, the one that suits you is the best.

To put it bluntly, there is no universal formula for mental health. Psychological information is like the navigation on your mobile phone. It can give you a general direction and tell you which road may have fewer cars and which section of road is more likely to be blocked. However, you still have to step on it to know whether there are any potholes on the road or whether it is comfortable to walk on. If you really get lost while walking, don't force yourself to do it. It's much more useful to find a professional to help you than to figure out the navigation on your own.