Mental Health Hacks: Paying off your mental health debt (and find mental FREEDOM)

Whether you acknowledge it or not, you are carrying mental health inheritance and debt from previous generations—habits, preferences, coping skills (or lack thereof). I have wise and insightful patients who say "My parents did that because of their upbringing. But I want to deal with mine so I don't pass it to my kids." Wow. 

Dealing with your mental health debt takes sacrifice, effort, and uncomfortable periods... just like paying off financial debt does. But, boy, isn't freedom worth it? I hope this episode brings insights, perspective, and courage to deal with our mental health debt. 

#mentalhealth #wisdom #nextgeneration #legacy #protectourchildren

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Transcript

Hi, everybody, this is Dr. Kim from Miss like this podcast and I'm continuing the mental health hacks. And I want to kind of piggyback on my last mental health hack is viewing your mental health in the future like a retirement financial advisor where the psychiatrist or therapist is guiding your choices to make sure that they have best return on investment on all the choices that you make. Today, I want to kind of piggyback on that and say another way to to increase your legacy and increase your comfort in your later years, part of the work is paying off the debt and debt is, you know, money or resource that leaves you in the negatives, that traps you in debt limits your potential and choices. And a lot of times debts have interest, which is accruing more and more debt over time if you don't deal with it. And a lot of times the debt can be carried from a previous generation to the next. And also, if you don't deal with it within your generation, then it gets passed down to the next generation. Some of you guys have different, you know, experiences with debt. But for me, when I had the student loans debt after medical school, that required a lot of paying attention to my checking account to my, you know, credit card bills to my loan amount, and I had to make sacrifices to pay off the debt. And if I didn't, then the interest on the student loans will accrue on top of the principal, something horrible like capitalization will happen, where it builds the debt gets bigger and bigger. And you know, honestly, if I didn't deal with it, that debt might pass on to the next generation. So in mental health world, how does that look like? Well, you could have gotten the quote unquote, mental health debt. By not receiving adequate parenting to secure that attachment to making you feel secure, or protected. Maybe you had to grow up a lot faster than you should have trauma, substance use lack of coping skills, like practicing avoidance, minimization, or catastrophizing, or even very subtle things like hurtful or demeaning sarcasm, when you're growing up. These are all negative debts and mental health sense. Now, you might be thinking, well, that's how I grew up, you know, and that's fine, I'm fine. Well, you might be very surprised that if you don't deal with the debt that you have in your plate, you might be passing it down to next generation, without you even knowing about it. And I see this generational trauma and generational mental health that in my practice every day. So what do we do with a debt, just like my example on paying off my student loan debt, we have to be aware, and instead of minimizing it, or instead of putting my present happiness, or comfort before my future comfort, I have to deal with it today. And you know why? Because you're worth it. Your future freedom, not only for you, but next generations to come is worth it. So I hope that this was an encouraging tone to kind of doing assessment on our current mental health debt, if any, and encourage you to deal with it. And mental health providers such as myself or a therapist, or even a social circle can really guide you to be aware and deal with the debt that is in your plate today. I hope that you found this helpful and refreshing. Stay tuned for the next mental health hack.