Now, I have something to tell you. Anxiety sucks.
But do you know what the worst part about it is? It’s not the dizziness or the palpitations or the excessive overthinking. No. It’s the stereotype that goes with it.
Mental illness has a stigma associated with it. Think about it. We’re fixated on this idea that mental illness is associated with incompetence, fragility, failure. When a friend or a loved one is having a moment of vulnerability, we say that it’s a “mental breakdown.” When they’re having issues or when they’re having struggles, we call that “crazy.”
And it’s true. Why? Because mental health has a stigma.
We consider mental illnesses to be burdens, traits of people that make them undesirable, less important, less valuable. And this is a huge problem.
If we continue to treat mental health like this, we’ll never be able to understand our loved ones. We’ll never be able to understand those who need our help.
And so when you leave this talk today, I want you to realize one thing. You have the ability to save and impact a life by the way you treat others.
Now, I believe that it’s time to change the way we think about mental health. We have ways to identify glucose levels and pregnancy hormones. But what about anxiety? Why don’t we have a way to detect elevated stress levels? Everybody gets anxious, right?
We get anxious because we don’t know what will happen. We’re afraid. We’re scared. Fear is normal. In fact, it’s evolutionary. But when we worry excessively, when we get so scared, we develop anxiety.
But, okay, everybody gets anxious. Instead of creating a stereotype about it, instead of making a stigma, what if we tried to make a change?
