I see a lot of high achievers in my Atlanta counseling office, and one thing is often true. They don’t talk about their own mental health. They’re used to achieving, going at things alone, being highly competent, and having all the answers.
And yet as an Atlanta counselor I know, mental health issues are not something that the successful, wealthy, smart, or achieving person is immune to.
Glenn Close recently said this ““What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, and more unashamed conversation about illnesses that affect not only individuals, but their families as well”.
Glenn was right! Research into shame says that secrecy isolation and judgment fuel shame. And for many high achievers who come to my Atlanta counseling office, they have avoided talking about their mental health. They haven’t told anyone they’re having anxiety attacks. They shove their fear of not being enough down, and use it to fuel their achieving yet still ache with the sense that one day they’ll be found out. All of this only fuels mental health issues.
And so, as Glenn Close encouraged us to do, in my Atlanta counseling office, we work to slowly bring it to light. With no judgment. With curiosity and kindness. With validation and empathy. This doesn’t mean we don’t work on it and build skills and tools to help with it, but we do work to nonjudgmentally experience our humanity. Rather than expecting ourselves to be superpowered superheroes, we recognize we are humans with very real experiences.
There is power in normalizing the very human experience of having mental health issues. And that is part of what we can do. And of course, once we do that, our Atlanta counselors can then help you learn things that help, and work!
Once we learn we’re not alone, that other people deal with the same things, and having mental health symptoms doesn’t mean anything about us other thank we’re human, we can then work to destigmatize the experience. Did you know that Michael Phelps, Lady Gaga, Prince Harry, Satya Nadella (a CEO at Microsoft), and Indra Nooyi (A CEO at Pepsi) have all reportedly struggled with mental health issues?
Struggling with mental health symptoms doesn’t mean anything other than you’re human. You can still be a high achiever. You can still win gold medals. You can still succeed. The goal would be to do so, without costing yourself your mental peace. If you’d like help in starting your journey of destigmatizing, reach out to one of our Atlanta counselors.
