Can you be a dysfunctional, denigrated, catatonic fruit loop shell of a human and still be somewhat slightly happy and have some slight positive self-concept?
Yesterday I took time to focus mindfully on my values and how I'm achieving them in my life:
I chose:
Growth
Compassion
Kindness
Health
Love and connection
I was able to shut down the inner nagging voice and see and affirm - yes, I am making progress towards my values in life
I like this one for the morning:
Some simple things like this one from Dad help keep me on track for values. I've been scratching off things each day
I joined in a fairly recent study that explored the identity and social determinants of voice hearing, relating to how you see yourself and others in your social sphere and how it correlates with hearing voices. I found it highly relevant. It focused on how the content of AVHs is shaped by factors like how you see yourself as a person, your relationships with others and how you feel in yourself etc. Self-esteem and negative social schemas radically influence how individuals respond to AVH which can be highly distressing and demoralising, and negatively impact mental health and social functioning.
How often does pathology and suffering define us, leave us feeling powerless against positive change and linger and perpetuate in our narrative? How often do we socially re-enforce it's perpetuation by tearing people down, rather than building health?
"Something is wrong with you - you're ill"
"You're not the same as us - you're ill" etc.
Without internally and socially constructing positive self-concepts, these get worse and worse.
How often do we let these linger in, or define, our self-concept and narratives? How much damage is that doing?
Eventually you get to the "you're worthless, can't do anything useful, a burden" or worse. There's not easy ways to rebuild from that being persistently ingrained and socially maintained. Poor mental health easily becomes the whole self-narrative and self-construct and that plays out in the social sphere. Unfortunately society likes tearing people down, rather than building healthier people far too often.
We live in a society that is so pathologically over-pathologised (probably because it is a pretty pathological society) that everything is 'pathology' and having to be 'fixing things' to the point where a positive self-concept never has the chance to form. By labeling and socially (or self) stigmatising, important areas fail to develop and often self-concept has to be healthily redefined, away from those self and socially ingrained constructs. How often do we make the mistake of incorporating the illness constructs back into the self-concept, only to keep manifesting that pathology?
"Self-concept is the individual’s cognition and evaluation of the self and social environment which are formed during the process of socialisation, which is the sum of the individual’s self-cognition. The formation and development of self-concept is a dynamic and changing process.
It is found that there is a significant positive correlation between self-concept and social adaptation, that is, the lower the self-concept is, the lower the level of their social adaptation. In addition, social adaptation is one of the crucial factors affecting mental health
In short, self-concept as an internal factor, social adaptation as an external factor, the two play crucial role in mental health. Among them, self-concept not only has a directly impact on mental health, but also indirectly impacts on mental health through the social adaptation, namely, the mediating effect, such as inferiority, aggression and paranoia, etc. In addition, social adaptation, in turn, suppresses self-concept, namely, the cover effect, such as anxiety, dependence, and impulse." [1]
It is important to note perceived improvement can enhance some aspects of positive mental health even while it aggravates aspects of negative mental health
"There are six basic dimensions that determine positive mental health. These dimensions are social coherence, social integration, environmental mastery, self-acceptance, autonomy and social growth. Over the years, other indicators such as positive effect, life satisfaction, social acceptance and personal growth have also been added to the list of indicators of positive mental health or flourishing"
"Studies predictably show that stigmatisation and self-stigmatisation may lower self-esteem. Low self-esteem also appears to increase the risk of psychiatric disorders such as depression, eating disorders and substance abuse. In psychotic disorders, low self-esteem has been implicated in both the development of delusions and the maintenance of psychotic symptoms" [2]
There's been some studies looking at such:
The Relationship between Self-Concept and Mental Health among Chinese College Students: The Mediating Effect of Social Adjusting
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