There is a mental and psychological epidemic in the U.S. that goes largely ignored by almost everyone. We all live like it isn’t happening. How many people live each day merely trying to survive? Always looking over their own shoulders? Living inside their own heads, some days for better and others for worse? Maybe you go a certain period of time distracted, and everything seems fine. But you’re always waiting for that next problem to pop up. Just like that, you’re stuck. You’re caught in a stream of overthinking and unwanted negative feelings. Maybe these thoughts, insecurities, and feelings don’t hurt that much one day. But another day, you can be so fully absorbed in them that they are all you care about. This can be for a number of reasons: deep insecurities, past traumas, self-doubt, internalized fears. The list is practically endless. But what they all have in common are: they are deep, inner problems that we have yet to fully confront, deal with, and move past from.

The issue is not that we have these problems; it’s no one’s fault that they feel the feelings they do, have the thoughts that they have. The problem is is that we all think we are alone in this mental suffering. We all live life acting like it’s us against the world, us against society. Everyone else has it better off than we do. What is so commonly ignored, forgotten, and not understood is that we all have felt this way! We all feel this way! Everyone struggles with feelings of depression, anxiety, overthinking, stress, and pain. The extents to which are dependent on the person, but we all have felt these things one way or another. We all are capable of feeling of them, and we all will feel them in the future because it is inevitable!

What is not inevitable, however, is the unnecessary suffering that tends to come along with these things. Thoughts and feelings, regardless of their contents, are not inherently bad. They seem bad when we are fully absorbed in them. Truthfully, however, there is absolutely nothing intrinsically wrong with negative emotions, feelings, and thoughts. They are meant to be felt! But when we get lost in them, lose our inner peace, forget who we are, close ourselves off, and become prisoners to them, the unnecessary suffering arises. And I have found that so much of our mental suffering is preventable.

If 95% of the U.S. population was stricken with the flu, there would be a national epidemic. Everyone would seek medical help as soon as they could! So why then do we ignore the more personal, often seemingly more difficult suffering, in mental suffering? Is it because we think it’s normal? Do we believe life is supposed to be difficult?

The first step to inner freedom is admitting that we want to be free. We recognize that there’s a problem here and finally say that enough’s enough. The next step is to then begin our journey; our journey towards inner peace and finding our center. If you meditate long enough, you slowly and surely begin to learn that we are not the contents of the mind; we are not the voice in our head or the feelings we feel. We are not our thoughts, our pasts, or anything else that appears in conscious awareness. We are instead the listener of thoughts, the consciousness that is aware of itself.

This is something I am personally working towards everyday. It has required an incredible amount of self-awareness and honesty. It has involved unlearning and relearning so many things I once believed to be true. So many people have been on this journey before me, so many are on this journey now, and so many will embark on it one day in their lives. Why do we, then, ignore the mind all together in our schools? In so many of our home lives? In our lives in general? Imagine taking a class everyday since preschool that focused on the relationship we have with our minds, thoughts, feelings, and ourselves. We could begin with simply learning emotional intelligence and awareness, and as we grow older, the classes can expand and discuss more advanced aspects of mindfulness, meditation, and consciousness. Or even imagine this topic being common in the mainstream, in the news. At the very least, simply acknowledged by the masses instead of ignored altogether.

These are just some brief ideas, but they would usher in a welcomed era of revolutionizing the ways in which we understand our minds and ourselves.

The first step that we as an American society and as a species must take is admitting that this isn’t normal. Carrying all of this mental baggage around, all of this mental suffering, should not be the norm. It doesn’t need to be. I believe in our species, and I believe that one day, we will all awaken and admit to ourselves that we want to be free. Then, the journey can finally begin for all of us.

Look past the narrow lens of the psyche and discover all that awaits you.

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