To me, mental health does not mean the absence of anxiety or depression, inner conflict or unrest. These states of mind are signs of being alive with which every human being is familiar.
Mental illness comes into view when nothing seems to matter any longer, when the love of the people around you has lost all personal meaning. When someone is trapped in an isolated state of mind, every personal capacity for intimacy, direction and meaning is lost.
As a psychotherapist trained in psychoanalysis, I consider it a privilege to explore and understand together with my patients what prevents them from feeling valuable and capable of building a meaningful life. No one has ever lived this one life before; therefore, there is no authority on which we can simply fall back.
However much training, clinical experience or theoretical knowledge I have acquired, in the privacy of the consulting room I am confronted daily with these questions in my patients — and they also confront me with my own questions.
At times I can understand and put into words something essential, allowing someone to feel seen, to understand themselves more fully, and enabling a healing process to begin. But most of the time, I need to be patient with the uncomfortable state of not knowing.
I wait for a meaningful revelation from within the person: the moment at which the patient realises that he or she knows it themselves; feels that there is truly someone present inside who can create, recreate or restore the relationship with the surrounding world and experience the meaning of their own mental, physical and emotional actions.
This does not necessarily bring comfort. Often, it evokes considerable anxiety. The difference is that this anxiety is no longer undifferentiated and paralysing. That, in my view, is where mental health begins.
I have dedicated myself to this work.