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Are You Guilty of Taking Mental Shortcuts?

This week let’s talk about some mental shortcuts many people take, and how harmful they can be to relationships of every kind.

  • Republicans think Democrats are soft in the head. Democrats think Republicans have no heart.
  • Minorities think authorities are out to get them. Authorities think minorities are the source of all the problems.
  • Baby Boomers think Millennials are lazy. Millennials think Baby Boomers are greedy and wasteful.

If you’ve watched the news, scrolled through social media, or listened to conversations around you, you’ve probably been exposed to those common mental shortcuts, as well as many others. Our human brains are wired to see the things around us that support what we already believe, strengthening those beliefs and making the shortcuts feel valid.

In addition to being common, the shortcuts cited above are incorrect, unkind, and unloving. When we allow ourselves to rely on the shortcuts our brains want to take, we cut ourselves off from learning, growing and most importantly, from being compassionate with our fellow human beings. Here are some more incorrect, unkind, and unloving shortcuts that people commonly take:

  • People in a healthy weight and shape are attractive. Out-of-shape people are lazy.
  • Wearing glasses is normal and can even be stylish. Wearing hearing aids is weird.
  • Cancer patients are warriors fighting a dreadful disease. Mental patients are weird.

May is Mental Health month. This month, it’s likely that you’ve heard or seen a few more stories about the importance of mental health, and hopefully you’ve learned that the “mental patients are weird” shortcut is as outdated as hieroglyphics.

Cancer, colds, corona virus – they’re all physical disorders, and we don’t typically judge a person and find them lacking because of them. Depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, dementia – they’re all physical disorders, too, though they aren’t viewed that way by most people. The brain isn’t some magical knowledge center, it’s an organic mass of tissue, fluids, hormones, and electrical impulses, working together to store and use information, gather input through the skin, eyes, ears, nose, and tastebuds and make sense of it all, interpret and flow language as a form of communication, interpret and flow body language as a form of communication, all while orchestrating the systems of the body to work smoothly together to sustain life.

It's a wonder we don’t all suffer from some form of mental illness – there are so many things that can go wrong, it’s nearly miraculous that our brains work as well as they do for as long as they do. Want to know even more? In just 90 seconds or less, the world’s second-shortest podcast can help you gain understanding and tools that’ll help.

Chances are you work with someone who has mental illness in one form or another. Chances are you will deal with a loved one with mental illness in one form or another, if you haven’t already. And chances are, you may deal with mental illness yourself, in one form or another, at some point in your life. Read that again – chances are, you may deal with mental illness in a co-worker, family member, or yourself at some point in your life. It’s not weird, it’s life.

Move through life with compassion for everyone, not with shortcuts to incorrect, unkind, and unloving assumptions.

Wags,
Sandy Weaver
Program Director, Center for Workplace Happiness

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