Social Barriers and your Mental Wellbeing

What are social barriers and how often do we actually pause and process how our social status and environmental factors are hindering our general happiness and impairing our mental health.

Many of us are born into social categories that determine our strengths, failures, limitations and frustrations before we enter this magical yet marginalised thing we call 'life'.

Having worked in a way which explores the social and emotional issues amongst families on a sliding scale from some of the most deprived, drug and poverty-riddled areas in the United Kingdom, including Christian and all girls' Muslim schools, to some of the most elite families in China and Thailand who consider 140,000 pounds worth of school fees a year for their brood to be a drop in the ocean, it has revealed that once we scratch the surface of internal family systems, many simply have a veneer of respectability to shield their personalised styles of dysfunction and challenges. Elite clientele generally poses strong educational advantages and financial stability to navigate them through the unexplored terrain of life challenges, whereas for those who were not born into middle-upper class categories have to simultaneously juggle financial stress and limited resources with both similar and diverse family and wider social issues.

This is, of course not to suggest that education and financial freedom equates to stronger coping skills to apply to mental wellness. Providing therapy to some of the wealthiest families in Asia has revealed the sheer demand for mental health support within elite families. Private education and luxury assets are certainly useful, however the ramifications of academic pressure, social expectations and often a lack of real, raw experience of hardships, often equates to very little available tools in the mental health toolbox. Whilst students in deprived locations commonly turn to substance misuse, fractured schooling and worse, wealthy students more rapidly reach the stage of severe mental health issues, including suicidal ideation. I was once told: "the students in our school are filled with self-esteem, there will be no issues there". This principal meant well as he proudly pondered his students global musical, sport, math and science awards to name a few, however what he did overlook was the sheer systematic, cultural domineering and forced (often physically) studying that most endured from private lessons before their school day began to several after-school classes which were to be endured until late evening. Such rigid and last-century led study methods led to extreme emotional and psychological exhaustion and severe self-deprecation. The cost of being eligible to apply for the best universities in the world often calculates to far more than the hefty fees!

Evidently, we are metaphorically placed in boxes whilst sitting cosy in the womb and beyond. More commonly known as 'statuses', however I prefer to prompt the image of a big brown box in your mind. Do you identify with being placed in any of the following boxes?:

* Disabled box

* Female box

* Lower - working class box

* LGBTQ+ box

* Masculine box

* Middle - upper class box

* Mentally-ill box

* Overweight or underweight box

* Single mother box

* Uneducated box

* Ethnic minority box

* Domestic abused box

* Shy/introverted box

* People pleaser box

* Promiscuous box

There are of course many more boxes, but what we overlook is that these confined spaces we are often told to reside in are directly linked to the social class we were born and raised in and the 'should's and should not's' that accompanied it.

It firstly requires awareness and inner-work to identify how your biological and social norms are influencing your present, and it takes courage, mental strength and determination to break through those social barriers which can act as shackled restraints. Recognition is required that we did not choose to be compartmentalised and categorised, we did not choose hardships and limited resources, just as we did not choose financial hardship, divorced or domestically abusive parents, addiction or mental illness, and we must believe that we have the inbuilt tools to smash our way through the boxes we are in and reach as far, wide and high as we damn well want to.

Life is not merely straight-forward and always without financial or other stressors and crisis’s for middle to upper class individuals, and many from those social categories do not understand the social factors and limited resources which led to poor choices for many people placed in the category of lower or working class. It is all about understanding others and broadening our perspectives: often, the greater a families status = the greater the expectations. Being born into wealth and status can be equally as crippling, I have provided therapy sessions for countless clients from elite families who feel defined and conditioned by a family name, status or the unrealistic expectations and judgments placed on them. I have worked with countless young muslim girls who feel suffocated by traditions they desperately wish to rid themselves of and catastrophic safeguard risks, such as female genital mutilation and forced marriage. I have counselled hundreds of children and young people from incredibly deprived and hardened areas in the Northwest of England who have been thrown into the lions pit of having drug-addicted parents and no understanding or hope for their futures - and one thing they all have in common: they are restricted by the box they were born into.

I fiercely advocate social equality and empowered individuality. I would like to spur on those of you who feel limited by the structures of society or the immense pressures placed on you by your family who has mapped out your entire existence without your input. To those of you who were raised without nurturing and cheerleading parents, I wish to politely smother you in an abundance of self-belief which is required to be and do better than you believe you are entitled to. You can become degree educated, travel the world and rise higher than the working or lower class limitations that has plugged your creative juices. I would like to urge those of you born into wealth in the financial sense to explore who you are beyond that and beyond the should’s and should not’s you have been brainwashed to adhere to.

Listen to your heart and soul when it is screaming and yearning to be the human being from your very core: the bi-sexual, gay, lesbian, trans, queer, creative artist, writer, poet, sports person, religious or none-believer, untamed nomad, hippy or any damn thing you wish to be! Refrain from harbouring self-loathing and self-limitations. Remember that people who judge your choices can only understand you from their own perspectives. The right people will understand and support your choices! Choose wisely, choose happily, choose with self-belief and outside of the box!

LJ Jones