Sudden Chance of Rain

I sat in the car hoping the downpour would end soon. The rain was one of those sudden summer showers that weather channels caution about. One minute the sky was a crystal-clear blue, and the next the wind was buffeting the car, and the drains in the parking lot backed up with water coming too fast to accommodate the flow.

The local college was sponsoring a program on mental health. As I waited in my car for the rain to let up, I watched several people making their way to the entrance. Each carried an open umbrella of a different color. The solid colors were the most popular. Red and black ones were the standard choices. I saw a pink one, and another that was blue with big butterflies. A large green and white golf umbrella stood out boldly against the others.

I held my bright, garden-themed umbrella in my lap as I was poised to make a run for the entrance. As the wind pushed against my door, I pulled the handle, slid out of the car, and opened my umbrella.

The fabric canopy unfurled as I pressed the button on the shaft. Just as I felt that satisfying click that locks the umbrella in its open position, a gust of wind caught it. The frame and its canopy were pushed beyond their limits. Suddenly my umbrella was broken and useless against the rain.

I ran through the rain to the library door and pushed through to the lobby still holding my broken umbrella. The other umbrellas were neatly stored in a rack to dry. With only their handles showing, they looked far more alike than before. The individual colors were hidden in the rack so that only a uniform row of handles poked above the stand.

I laid my broken umbrella on the floor beside the rack. My handle and the exposed framework looked like theirs, but it was battered and most likely terminally ill. The once pretty fabric canopy was now inside out, showing only a pale version of its inner side.

The Body and Its Canopy

Mental health was the symposium topic that brought me to this place. Like so many others I thought I had a pretty good idea of what mental health entailed.

As I looked at my broken umbrella, though, I had a shift in perspective. My once vital umbrella was now sick. Was there a way to make it better? My experience told me most likely no, but now I realized that personal experience was also coloring my understanding of mental health. I realized my attitude toward mental health was limited to my experience of watching my brother battle mental illness his whole life.

Somehow, like many, I equivocated mental health only with mental illness. I needed to move past that limited understanding and look at mental health in a broader way.

As I remembered the different umbrellas open over their owners, I realized that much like those multi-colored canopies, mental health is an umbrella that is a part of our overall health.

The whole framework, from the handle to the ribs that anchor the fabric canopy, is like our physical health. Every human arrives on this earth with the same physical equipment, like bones, blood, and organs. When the physical framework isn’t working optimally, we seek some kind of care.

If the frame represents our physical self, we could say mental health is like the fabric canopy over our heads. It’s connected to the physical frame. Its pie shaped pieces are like the many facets of who we are.

Like the umbrellas that paraded by my car, each was different in appearance but the same in substance. Yes, we are physical beings, but the parts of who we are individually appear here through our social, emotional, and spiritual needs and expectations. Just like those colors I saw from the individual umbrellas, each of us is unique and shaped by outside forces such as our culture and background.

A Spring’s Tension

The critical part of the umbrellas is something that doesn’t even show. Inside the central stick is a long spring that moves as the umbrella opens and closes. The spring tightens to hold the canopy in place with tension until the runner clicks in place at the top. The tension is released as the runner brings the canopy back down to the handle. The wind gust took my umbrella past the tension point and broke the spring inside.

This also describes people when they have lost the healthy balance between physical health and mental health. Seeking help for physical problems is widely acceptable, but when we feel totally stripped out emotionally, then there is often cultural stigma against seeking help. Normally we connect the idea of preventative medicine to physical health, but it is also essential to mental health. Small problems addressed up front often prevent more serious ones later.

All Parts Together

It is well documented that physical health and mental health go hand in hand. Studies show that worry can create a stomachache. Low blood sugar can bring on anxiety. Addressing one problem can bring relief to another.

In his book, “When the Body Says No” Gabor Mate, MD, explores the stress/disease connection as each of us struggles to navigate daily life. Even our environment impacts our health.

The term mental well-being would be a better expression of what mental health fully entails. Well-being covers how you manage your life in the face of challenging situations. It includes how you feel about yourself, your connection with others, and the way you manage that tension or stress, all of which can affect your physical health.

Mental well-being is about balancing the social, emotional, and spiritual facets of our lives. Just like the physical health/mental health connection, we are a balance of the handle, the shaft, the framework, and the beautiful fabric canopy of those umbrellas. Each component needs the other to work its best.

All of us have our rainstorms. Similar to the drains in the parking lot, we can usually handle what comes, but sometimes life’s difficulties arrive fast and furious. It’s at those times that mental well-being can sustain us as we ride out the storm.

So, the next time the rains come, what does your umbrella look like?