The “Perfect Mental Health” Lie

Don’t fix yourself. Accept yourself instead, and the hardships of life

We live under the assumption that we can somehow achieve a perfect state of mind in which we are constantly happy. With people’s obsession with efficiency, they often try to aim for perfect mental health.

This is why we can’t get enough of self-help videos, seminars, conferences, books, and talks.

We’re looking for the secret. The missing piece to the puzzle. After all, mental health should be a destination, right?

When you arrive there, you’re golden. You’ll never be lonely, frustrated, or unhappy again.

FALSE.

Carl Jung and the idea of never arriving

The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung did groundbreaking work on the inner workings of our mind. He discovered that mental health is an ideal that we never really reach.

And if we do temporarily reach a state of perfect mental health, it’s bound to get disturbed. This is the nature of life. Nothing is ever in a stable condition.

Look at the weather. The stock market. Relationships. Everything is constantly changing.