Mental Health Awareness | Annie Ljungqvist | TEDxYouth@Upanga

Mental Health Awareness | Annie Ljungqvist | TEDxYouth@Upanga

The talk's goal is to raise the bar for psychology and generate meaningful conversations around mental health challenges as a taboo subject within our African context. My name is Annie Ljungqvist and I’m a trained therapist. I also co-founded Bloom Consultancy where we support both individuals and organisations with their wellness needs. In my 8 years of practice in the country, I spend my time tending to clients, raising awareness and conducting research within the African context. My core areas of skill are Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) and I administer Ink Blot (Rorschach) tests as well as other assessments. My goal is to raise the bar for Psychology and generate meaningful conversations around this taboo subject within our context. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

as maya angelou once wrote people forget what you said people forget what you did but people will never forget how you make how you made them feel by a show of hands how many of us like to talk about feelings there's a few brave people i think one or two hands up but let's be honest most of us don't i'm a development psychologist and human service practitioner by profession and what's evident to me is the different perspectives beliefs and experiences that we all have most of the times my job requires me to help my clients help make sense of situations and the meanings or interpretations that they attribute to them these situations usually are conflicts or confusion states this requires a level of vulnerability and a willingness for them to explore how they feel think and what they do but there's levels to this or different aspects right the word meaning itself means to understand but there's different levels of understanding it's not just a cognitive task but translates to what we feel and what we do and the events that perceive them for example you may think why am i thinking these thoughts why am i feeling pain and why am i shouting so it's not just a moment of understanding i work with various ages and the one thing that amazes me is the different interpretations we all have towards like depression anxiety or mental health we also have the pop psychology side that uses words like self-care toxic or toxicity right side note toxic generally means something bad or unhealthy and pop psychology refers to psychological terminology that we use within a specific generation how we feel or how we use terminology sorry affects what we feel what we do and what we think as well as the truth about ourselves ultimately it dictates the quality of our life i have a question for you has anyone ever used a word incorrectly and when you find out the true meaning or the usage of it you have like a mini identity crisis moment right see a few hands up one of those my life is alive moments i love them those those situations are a true reflection of how meaning can affect us when we use words incorrectly with or without fully understanding them we internalize it incorrectly as well remember this all trickles down to what we feel think sorry and what we do so let's use the word toxic for an example when someone says so-and-so is toxic i need to stay away from them versus when they say so and so so toxic i'm addicted to being around them both people have identified it or both yeah people have identified that so-and-so is not good or healthy for them however in the latter the person has made it fun and made it seem good to be around this person it's almost glamorized and in the former the person has identified that it's not healthy to be around them all this to say how we attribute meaning prolongs the inevitability of truth and its consequences popularizing or glorifying negative effective states adds to this and so does using words without understanding its true meaning another example if someone calls you toxic and you don't fully understand the word you will understand it based on its context or the context that it was used in or what you think it means our brains are created in such a way that we are constantly re-establishing and rewiring our schemas or mindsets another side note here schemas are cognitive frameworks that help us make sense of the world around us so when we internalize unclear meaning essentially we're internalizing misunderstanding another question did you know you can unknowingly misunderstand your way into a more serious mental health condition shows oh everyone's quiet let's break this down i'll use the word of the analogy of planting a tree and the word toxic since we've been using it from the beginning of this speech um so when somebody calls you toxic right you and you accept that label and you start to think okay i'm toxic right we've planted that seed then we begin to water it as we're watering it we're nurturing it and we start to feel toxic right so we've gone from our head down to the emotions then over time this solidifies the tree grows and we start behaving toxically right as time goes by reinforcements happen then the tree grows stronger and stronger eventually that belief becomes modified so we've gone from okay i'm toxic to i must be toxic because nobody wants to be around me right now let's say you start self-isolating you notice a change in your eating and sleeping happen habits and an increase in negative thoughts just as a shot in the dark does anybody know what these symptoms could be someone shout it out if you do have an idea depression exactly there you have it your clinical depression and this is how you may unknowingly misunderstand your way into a more serious mental health condition my experience with misunderstood terminologies was self-care how many of us are familiar with this word maybe use it on a day-to-day or practice it pretty much everyone's hands are going up right and self-care is things like exercising maybe getting your hair done reading a book right but what happens if this doesn't feel good to do it what if it feels like a responsibility rather than a way to relax or to care for yourself i remember thinking that there was something wrong with me because whatever anyone suggested was self-care or something that people suggested was self-care didn't work for me my epiphany was when when i remember that i'm an individual amongst a majority that i may be different even though i'm similar in other ways and if something didn't feel good it just meant that it wasn't my way to care for myself most of us do not take the time to think about what we say and the meaning or interpretation it has in turn we don't realize how it affects what we do what we think and how we feel in a generation that is proactive and part of a stable culture how woke are you about meaning and interpretation again i ask did you know you can unknowingly misunderstand your way into a more serious mental health condition it's easy to go online and look up the best depression inventory do the list or maybe look up characteristics of bipolar disorder and identify that you have some of those characteristics but this doesn't mean that you have the clinical condition if you feel that there is something deeper going on i urge you seek professional advice do not self-diagnose and when we discuss anything mental health related sorry mental health or anything related to it i hope you do so with truth appropriate meaning truth and transparency referring back to miss maya angelou you may not remember what we said here today or what we did but i hope myself and the other speakers will leave you feeling in incited or sorry aware and enlightened thank you

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