Listen: Noel McDermott gives tips on World Mental Health Day

This World Mental Health Day (10th October) mental health expert Noel McDermott looks at how our current world can be quite frightening for many and how we can commit to finding ways of developing emotional safety for ourselves and our loved ones. Let’s make this World Let’s Be Safe Day by creating psychological and mental safety.

Throughout modern human history (modern meaning psychological) the dual nature of experience has been formulated and reformulated, the white wolf and the dark wolf, the angel and the demon, for Freud eros versus Thanatos and in neurological framings amygdala versus frontal lobe. There is in our nature a dual fascination that is born on survival, with what is dangerous and what is safe. Maintaining a general sense of safety and being safe in our herd versus getting away from a dangerous event.

Luckily we know lots about this so there is plenty we can do. It all fits into a broad theme of creating a sense of psychological safety in the face of a world that does seem quite hostile at the moment. Fear and running away is one half of staying safe, the other half is in our higher functioning (thinking) and our social nature.

Aston spoke to psychotherapist Noel McDermott.