The Marketing of “Mental Health”
The "something is wrong" theory is heavily sold, but you decide if you buy it
Happiness is seen as an entitlement in today’s world. If you’re not happy, society is supposed to fix it. The healthcare system and the political system promise happiness, and these offers are hard to refuse.
But they fail to deliver because our brain evolved to promote survival, not to make us happy. It releases happy chemicals in short spurts when you meet a survival need. These good feelings motivate us to do things that spark them, but if you expect to have a spurt all the time, you will be disappointed.
Yet we are taught that happiness is “normal,” and unhappiness means something has gone wrong. This mindset leaves most people feeling that something is wrong with them or with “our society.”
We’re taught to “seek help,” but that rarely brings the effortless happiness we’re led to expect. You’re then told that you didn’t get “the right help,” so you shop for that without questioning the presumption that effortless happiness is your birthright.
We have inherited a brain that goes negative a lot. We create our own unhappiness unless we build the skill of managing our alarm signals. You will not build the skill if you see happiness as something you can passively receive from “treatment.” You will not do the work if you are taught that genes and “our society” are the cause of your unhappiness. When you’re trained to see happiness as something you “deserve,” you have no reason to build brain-management skills.
“Help” only helps if you end up building the skill. No greater good is served by the belief that programs and services are the source of happiness. That only benefits people selling programs and services.
But this paradigm is hard to question. We’re told it’s “THE Science,” so you’re seen as an anti-science nut if you question it. We’re told that it’s “ethical” to feel the pain of others, so you seem unethical if you focus on your own happiness. It’s tempting to wait for society to make everyone happy while counting yourself morally and intellectually superior.
But you may wait too long. Life passes by while you’re merging with the common misery.
Fortunately, you have a choice. You can wait for others to manage your brain or you can learn to manage it yourself. Too few people find their power over their brain. Too many people listen to their verbal brain without realizing that it does not control our chemicals. Your verbal brain thinks: if I had the power to create happiness, I would have done it already. It hears other people say that something has gone wrong, so it accepts that.
Our brain is formed in youth, so if young people are trained in the “something wrong” paradigm, it’s hard to change later on. Yet our education system keeps teaching young people to see themselves as powerless victims of society and genes. Adults keep creating “education” that passes on the powerless mindset.
It’s hard to notice this mindset because it’s so deeply rooted in our education system. Centuries ago, Jean-Jacques Rousseau said that nature is happy and unhappiness is caused by civilization. He said that animals are happy, children are happy, hunter-gatherers are happy, and you’d be happy too if “our society” hadn’t messed things up.
Rousseau’s theory caught on with intellectuals, so the more “educated” you are, the more your mind sees “proof” that nature is happy and something has gone wrong. But if you look around for yourself, you can easily see that animals have a lot of conflict, children have a lot of conflict, and hunter-gatherers throughout history had a lot of conflict.
Acknowledging these truths can make you seem uneducated. Your career and social life may be harmed if you fail to conform to the warm-fuzzy view of nature. But you pay a high price because the theory leaves you miserable.
The warm-fuzzy view seems designed to create misery. It trains you to rage at society for stealing your happiness instead of teaching you to create it. This benefits people who are selling rage, but it does not benefit you. Rage is not a mark of sophistication. It’s our natural default state. We come into the world crying because we feel urgent needs and have no other way to meet them. We must learn to soothe our rage by building trust in our ability to meet our own needs.
If you expect society to meet your needs for you, you will waste your life raging like a newborn.
We can teach young brains to redirect the natural fear of unmet needs. We can train young minds to relieve cortisol by trusting in their own ability to meet their needs. No one can control the world and eliminate all risk, but everyone can learn to trust their ability to deal with whatever comes along.
It’s hard to trust yourself, so it’s tempting to put your trust in “experts.” I saw the depth of this temptation at a Peruvian anthropology museum, where I saw a skull with a hole drilled into it. Long before anesthetic, someone trusted an expert to drill their skull. Fortunately, we have a choice.
Find out more on the marketing of “mental health” in my new book,
Why You’re Unhappy: Biology vs Politics.
The Inner Mammal Institute has plenty of free resources to help you build power over your happy chemicals, as well as books, coaching, and an online course. Get your free 5-Day Happy Chemical Jumpstart by opting in with your email at the bottom of the page. You’ll get one email introducing you to dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphin, and cortisol.