Using Mental Health as an Excuse for Bad Behavior

We are surrounded by the discourse of “mental health” at this moment in time. Anecdotally, it appears that more people are aware of mental health concerns (often things like anxiety, depression, and panic disorders) than at any time in recent history. In many ways, this is a very good thing.

My children come home from school with some language about emotional regulation and are able to use colour descriptors to describe when they are in or out of what’s often called the "window of tolerance." Green means regulated and calm, whereas red is fully dysregulated and precarious. This is great stuff and will likely serve them well.

The pandemic also escalated the conversation and popular awareness surrounding mental health. When event venues, gyms, and golf courses were closed, people spoke of the damage this did to their mental health—to their ability to address and manage their emotions and self-regulate (albeit maybe not that specifically). Again, being able to identify internal processes and connect them with behaviour is an important psychological skill and should be encouraged.

However, one concerning trend that I have noticed with this increase in mental health discourse is the inappropriate misuse of “mental health” as a catch-all excuse for our behaviours or moods. In other words, sometimes the use of mental health can cover up or shield an individual from taking responsibility for actions, behaviours, or moods, or excuse them from the work that true mental health requires.

This may appear in sentences like: “I can’t go to work because it is bad for my mental health,” “I can’t talk about this issue because it negatively affects my mental health,'“ or most dangerous of all, “I was a jerk because I am suffering from mental health issues that are beyond my control.”

While each case needs to be addressed individually, of course, many times, “mental health” becomes a way of skirting real responsibility and avoiding the work that needs to be done psychologically. To use attachment language, citing “mental health” can be an avoidant strategy, a protective way of bypassing the issue at hand rather than exposing yourself to the real suffering that is often needed.

I often use examples of elementary exposure therapy when speaking about this to clients. If you have been injured in a car accident and are now afraid of roads, traffic, and cars, the treatment is not to retreat indefinitely and avoid all those things; instead, it's to gradually introduce and expose yourself to them in small doses until the trauma is resolved. This is difficult but necessary work for a living and ultimately takes initiative and responsibility on the part of the client.

Let’s take an example of the so-called “toxic workplace.” Many people now speak about a bad boss or workplace as having a direct effect on their mental health—that the workplace gives them anxiety or depression. This is only partly true in all but the most extreme cases of workplace abuse. In the majority of cases of workplace stress (or what some might call being “triggered” at work), there is usually a personal history or a series of pre-existing psychological “facts” that amplify the effects of a boss or workplace, however irritating they may be.

For instance, a boss may have undertones of a negative mother or father or a shame-inducing teacher that activates these memories subconsciously in the workplace. This may turn an act of workplace criticism into a feeling of a personal attack or “being targeted.”

Psychologically speaking, the boss may indeed be partly responsible for the negative feeling, but the emotional response—especially when it is very strong—usually reflects a lifetime of other negative or even traumatic experiences that are coming to the surface. To blame the work situation for an explosive reaction or being angry at your spouse or children doesn’t do justice to (and take responsibility for) the life experiences that you have acquired prior to your current situation.

In therapy, we often speak of two things being true at once. Yes, I may have a bad boss with a personal vendetta against me—but also, I may have a complex around authority that contributes to and exaggerates the interpersonal tension. In short, the boss may be a jerk, but I may also play a part in creating anxiety or tension in the situation. It is not exclusively external to me.

Carl Jung argued that “neurosis is the avoidance of legitimate suffering.” Following this, psychoanalyst Wolfgang Giegerich said we often keep our suffering at bay by blaming our mental health struggles on others and thus forever keeping them at bay: It is my father’s fault, my misfortunes of fate, my company, or my workplace problems.

Career Essential Reads

Generational Differences at Work Are Marketing Hype

Your Boss Was Fired. Now What?

In his book Neurosis: The Logic of a Metaphysical Illness, Giegerich argues that this externalization of the symptom makes it impossible to rid ourselves of it: “Self-pity, being ashamed, feeling inferior, feeling unfairly victimized, complaining about one’s symptoms: these are different modes of secretly staying in love with one’s neurosis.”

Managing our mental health is a lot of work that requires time, introspection, and ongoing psychotherapy—it is, in short, a lifetime of work! It involves the complex untangling of our personal and family history and seeing what and where these histories pop up—as anger, anxiety, and depression—in current interpersonal situations.

Taking responsibility for our mental health doesn’t mean assuming no one is at fault or bears responsibility for our current distress, but it often means looking beyond (and beneath) the immediate situations as sites of exclusive cause and blame.