Fascinating, inspiring, funny, sad are just some of the words I would use to describe the talk I went to yesterday on how the brain works, mental health & mindfulness by Ruby Wax. She may have inadvertently become the poster girl for mental health but what a fantastic job she’s done.
For those pessimistic few that might say its easy for her to talk about depression but what does she know? what’s she got to be depressed about? She’s successful, she has money, blah blah… I would argue that they’re wrong, that they don’t understand what it’s like to have a mental health condition. I hold my hands up and say I don’t understand either because I’m not one of the 1 in 4 – but I know I could be one day. I am also close enough to people with Mental Health conditions to know that they are debilitating for the sufferers irrespective of gender, age, wealth… No one wants to have a Mental Health condition, no one wants to feel that way and no one can understand unless they’ve been through those darkest of days.
So maybe Ruby is able to access support that others aren’t able too but I wouldn’t begrudge her that. She’s paying it forward big time by raising awareness and trying to remove the stigma. Ruby’s dream is to set up drop-in centres for people so they don’t have to hide away online but can meet others with their condition and form communities that can support one another in the real world.
Ruby’s also gone to University to study the brain driven by her need to understand how it works and has obtained a Masters degree in Mindfulness-based Cognitie Therapy from Oxford. As a result she has written a book called ‘Sane New World’. She said that its a book for everyone not just ‘her people’ because we all have a brain but none of us have the instruction manual or the bandwidth to cope with the modern world we find ourselves in. I for one can’t wait to read it to find out how my brain works and what I can do to calm those annoying internal voices down that are sometimes chattering away.
TrevisMS 