How Do We Lift Our Mental Spirits?

While tending to my clients’ mental health is what I do for a living in my mountain town, it’s hard not to have an immediate reaction to the term "mental health," since inherent in its definition is the side considered taboo—mental illness.

In practical terms, one might suspect that the more appropriate months would be January or February when the post-holiday season doldrums of seasonal affective disorder [SAD] are in full effect and the dark long nights grip this frigid north country.

I actually find it enchanting that the merry month of May was chosen to reflect on what mental health means and looks like in each of our individual, family, and community stories. Now we’re moving into summer and it’s a great time to reflect.
 

As I’ve written before, there are no towns, no matter how much their natural scenery is easy on the eyes, and no matter how much we know that being outdoors in such places is good for our mental health, that does not have significant mental illness issues among the people living and visiting there. Literally, many issues emanate from our DNA and body chemistry and others from stress-filled circumstances.

To suggest that anyone skates through life and does not move into periods of mental distress or unregulated behavior is madness. If we’re not feeling somewhat mentally disjointed in times like these, then I would venture to say it’s not normal. Of course, I am jesting a bit here and spinning puns. What becomes labeled normal is, of course, open to its own interpretation.

The harsh reality of the time period of March 2020 until May 2021—the main Covid window of our isolation—has been one of compressed mental anguish. We were forced as a society to reckon with an invisible novel virus that challenged our health, beliefs, and behavior in unforeseen ways. Our sense of normal is an adjustment in itself to the contingencies of our unique socialization process. When that social structure is threatened we are forced to face or double down on our denial of a new emerging “normal.” 

And during this same stretch we've experienced something else—a deluge of people headed for the same trails, rivers and camping spots where we might otherwise have sought "refuge." From books like Florence Williams' excellent The Nature Fix to emerging studies, we know that being outdoors in nature brings benefits to body and mind. 

What I'm wondering, however—are you?—is how much of the calming effect can there be for travelers who are stuck in the gridlock of wildlife jams in Yellowstone or Grand Teton, or parents stressing out in discovering there's no room at the inn and/or campgrounds being sold out, or when you're seeking peace and quiet on a favored stroll only to encounter mobs of other people, melees between dogs and difficulty finding solitude?

Under such stressful conditions as Covid, I have witnessed in my practice a surge in mental distress yielding to anguish, anxiety and depressive tendencies sublimating into what is called mood disorders; and fatigue at managing parenting, career, and remote learning cascading into a languishing numbness, and an incremental anxious-state shift into hypervigilance and/or zealous beliefs. While some have retreated into themselves, many of us have also felt on greater edge.

Our mountain town culture where physical health is often treated as being more important than mental health— although they are obviously not exclusive to each other—was challenged by shifting venues of skiing opportunities, gym workout routines, river put ins being jammed and cancelled competitive sports events. If identity is attached to behavior and not to an inner mental state of being our fragile identity can be sabotaged.

The demographic group that probably needs our attention—and our listening as adults—is young people. 

Twentysomethings and younger are stressed out. Besides wanting to fit in, they feel anxiety about getting into good colleges and worried that they are being left behind by their contemporaries gifted with more economic means; they see kids of more affluent families coming here to recreate and yet they and their families struggle to pay the bills; they and maybe even adults in their families are dealing with social media addiction issues; and, of course, they are triggered by our anxiety over climate change and inequality that have been brought to the forefront of their world in the last year.  

I just listened to an excellent report about mental health issues facing young people from Jenny Brundin on National Public Radio. Brundin is based in Colorado and she provides a great perspective on what’s bringing stress to young people in the Rockies. Listen to it by clicking here.

No matter where we live, be it an affiliation with a Greater Yellowstone hamlet or another farther away, I seldom see or hear a clear articulation of what community visions are—as in what are the virtues of our towns, making honest articulated assessments of what's wrong and then fixing it. Correct me if I'm wrong but the affordable housing crisis seems worse than ever and how is that affecting the psyche of our community? 

In Bozeman, actress Glenn Close, who now lives here permanently, has been among citizen activists pressing Bozeman Health (formerly Bozeman Deaconess Hospital) to provide more beds for mental health patients. Is that radical? I think not. A regional health care facility exists foremost to deliver competent physical and mental health; the foremost mission is not to make a profit on human suffering. Struggle can be both a cause and effect of unaddressed mental health challenges.

In Bozeman, actress Glenn Close, who now lives here permanently, has been among citizen activists pressing Bozeman Health (formerly Bozeman Deaconess Hospital) to provide more beds for mental health patients. Is that radical? I think not. 

What we desperately need to do is move beyond the stigma that comes with attempting to talk about mental health issues—treating people who are trying to elevate them as if they are insane.  Instead of tucking them out of sight and mind we need to mainstream discussions about how we might find ourselves in mental distress and respond to others with empathy and compassion rather than seeing struggle as a defect in character or body chemistry.
 
The wiggly line of the spectrum of mental health-mental illness weaves through all of our lives whether we recognize it or not. There is no occupation, social status or lifestyle that makes you immune from getting the blues and finding yourself in crisis. We do not control all of the variables.
 
If we leave the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and The Physicians Desk Reference to pharmaceuticals next to it on the office shelf—volumes that side by side have a girth of over six inches—and rather consult our community psyche for insight into what is troubling us, what do we find?
 
When people look upon physical destinations like those in the mountains as places where they “can escape” from what’s bugging them, or from their own genetics that might leave them more prone to tendencies passed along generationally and within us when we are born, they need to realize they can run, putting as much mileage under their shoes as a trail harrier, but they cannot hide.

The truth is that none of us can escape ourselves, though I would argue that the caliber of nature we have here avails opportunities to imbibe of nature's healing effects—if not also to become more aware of what healthy nature is.
 
The community psyche of this Valley of Flowers (the Gallatin Valley’s moniker) is under siege. Our high mountain setting has endured invasions by ruthless waves of Manifest Destiny thrust first upon indigenous folk whose very survival depended upon being in tune with nature. They knew that if you abuse nature you jeopardize your existence.

 
The most basic and profound lesson nature teaches us is to remember that we are an expression of it and as such our natural skill set is to abide storms until they pass and respond to changing conditions rather than solely react. Our mountain valley environs remind us that although we might pretend we are dominant and in control, grizzlies can modify that belief in a swat as fast as a terminal illness diagnosis can.

The social changes and changes in landscape happening in places like Bozeman and Jackson Hole are jarring. I’ve never encountered more newcomers who arrive here believing that place is all about appeasing their personal desires when the real lessons are found when identify isn’t driven by constantly trying to indulge our egos with a self-centeredness that comes at the expense of community. “Community” is not only human; it includes non-human species.

The social changes and changes in landscape happening in places like Bozeman and Jackson Hole are jarring. I’ve never encountered more newcomers who arrive here believing that place is all about appeasing their personal desires when the real lessons are found when identify isn’t driven by constantly trying to indulge our egos with a self-centeredness that comes at the expense of community. “Community” is not only human; it includes non-human species.

I enjoy the exchanges I have with those who have bought their way into gated communities, walling themselves off from having to engage in the larger community that exists beyond the bunker. Yet financial success, which enables them to do it, can lead to beliefs of entitlement and condescension.

My personal concern is that we are letting others erase from our community memories the reasons why many of us chose to live here, before the persona of Bozeman’s perceived hipness, for example, became more important than liking being here when there was no pretension—when connection with others, being sorted into no classic distinctions, or expressing conspicuous materialism, was definitely not something a person flaunted.  People were lower key; few screamed to be seen.
 
The idea that anyone would escape to a gated community to dwell in luxury without having an interest in the intersection with real Montana or Wyoming or Idaho, as opposed to superficial caricatures, would have been held up as evidence enough that said person probably should have never left the Hamptons or Beverly Hills. It is a special thing to be here and it ought to be treated that way.
 
We’re all under mental health pressure trying to fit in and make meaning. Parents I know have explained that a cost of Bozeman’s so-called economic success is that their grown kids will never be able to live in their hometown. Prosperity reaped by some can also stifle human diversity.
 
Friends in the BIPOC—Black-Indigenous-People-Of-Color—movement lament how despite well attended marches are and pressing for justice, equity and inclusion, Bozeman’s real estate boom has rewarded the haves and made goals of achieving equitable living twice as hard to achieve.
 
The feeling that your own community is leaving you behind and indifferent to the grief you feel about its loss adds up to a collective mental health issue. It’s distressing that some newcomers are fleeing to Bozeman and Jackson Hole precisely because they know that their economic superiority will insulate them from having to deal with the kind of suffering known to poor people. I’ve heard it myself that some have arrived in Greater Yellowstone because the places they left had “a rising homeless problem.” Think about that.
 
My therapy practice is filled with clients who are feeling uprooted, in some cases fleeing from towns where they felt a grounding for decades.  How odd is it that people who have given so much to our communities, by being volunteers for local charity groups, by coaching athletic teams, and giving of themselves, want to flee from the only place they ever wanted to be?

My therapy practice is filled with clients who are feeling uprooted, in some cases fleeing from towns where they felt a grounding for decades.  How odd is it that people who have given so much to our communities, by being volunteers for local charity groups, by coaching athletic teams, and giving of themselves, want to flee from the only place they ever wanted to be?

While it is a topic that consumes significant voice time in therapy sessions, why is it that so many of our elected leaders seem to keep touting the shift of our community in a direction without rudders— as if it is a good thing?
 
The added undertow of the pandemic’s dynamics has crumbled the foundation of our community capacity not in a fundraising sense but in the evisceration of human capital composed of people who make a habit of showing up to support community needs rather than newcomers who have arrived with escapist fantasies.

While we’ve survived the pandemic, all of us locals are struggling with the question of what kind of community are in the process of becoming? In every town there is setting and physical infrastructure but mental health provides the critical undergirding. 
 
As a mountain biker said to me while riding by on a community trail: “Finally, a familiar face.” Mind you, I would rather be a member of a “thriving” community than suffering the loss of a withering town. 

The current popularity of Bozeman and like communities throughout the Mountain West is not to be blamed for my mental condition. But there is such a fine line between a romantic notion of tranquility and reality. The anguish of our grief or torment is not to be minimized any more than it is to be indulged. 

There is a huge upside to all of us. Healthy nature never lets us down. The more time we spend in nature the better we feel, physically and mentally. And we truly are blessed. While therapy is one option that’s available, getting outdoors away from confined spaces—touching the free-flowing water, caressing a leaf, stopping to take a whiff of a blooming wildflower, sitting and focusing on your breathing as you quietly glass a mountain side for wildlife in a clearing—these are things that are free, available to all who live here.

It is appreciation for such opportunities—and the abundance of them— that living in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem fortifies. We are reminded daily through our tempestuous weather, our stalwart vertical landscape, and the abundance of freshwater that serves as a metaphor for the Taoist tradition of ”the water course way,”—the natural flow of life, and the access we have to other living beings that are teachers giving us important ways of thinking about home—theirs and ours.
 
I leave you with poem six from Lao Tsu’s “Tao Te Ching”: