Mental wellness is attained from fluid movement through life experiences with emotional regulation and resolution.

In this state, we are free to create a meaningful, happy, joy filled life.

Mental illness is the struggle of being stuck in emotional overwhelm without skills to move through them.

This creates emotional un-well-ness. Over time prolonged emotional un-well-ness becomes mental illness. 

The purpose of mental illness is transformation, not affliction.

• We need to understand the role of unconscious and unresolved trauma in mental illness.
   
• We need to understand what trauma actually is and how pervasive it is in our life experience.
   
• We need to understand that trauma is subjective; what causes trauma for one person may not affect another.
   
• We need to know that trauma is not something you “get over”. Trauma is something that must be processed and released.
   
• Treatment protocols for mental illness must include understanding the deep rooted causes of the chemical imbalance of mental illness because treatment that addresses only the chemical imbalance robs the patient of access to a life of meaning, joy and emotional connection.
   
• Denying and burying emotions over a sustained period of time leads to dysfunctional behaviour. Dysfunctional behaviour is a marker for unconscious and unresolved trauma. Bringing into our awareness and processing the unconscious patterns and beliefs that have us on a disappointing, painful and self-sabotaging auto pilot is the first step in transforming the dysfunctional behaviours. We must learn to see dysfunctional behaviour as an access to underlying trauma.
   
• Mental health is a spectrum that ranges from well to un-well, to severely un-well to mental illness. Every one of us at any given time can be anywhere on this spectrum.
   
• Honouring self by speaking our inner truth and communicating effectively are the pillars of an emotionally healthy, self-regulated and mentally well person.

What if?

• What if clinical depression could be seen as a symptom of an underlying and unconscious trauma that the person experiencing the depression was unaware of?
   
• What if treatments for mental illness included therapies and tools to understand the unseen root causes of mental illness and not just the visible aspects of chemical imbalance?
   
• What if we could see those suffering with mental illness as people who have been through and were unable to process unthinkable experiences?