by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
If You’re Struggling With Your Mental Health Then The Best Medicine is Always Reality
If there’s one thing I’ve learned after spending years in the mental health space – including thousands of hours talking to people on suicide hotlines, working in drop-in centres, helping trauma survivors make sense of their voices through the Maastricht Interview, and facilitating hearing voices groups – it’s this:
The best thing you can do for your mental health in the long run is to keep facing reality.
It might not be the most comforting answer in the short-term and it might not fit neatly on a prescription pad or mental health awareness campaign poster but it’s the truth.
It’s also the foundation of what I call Realness – a philosophy built on the simple but radical idea that wholeness, healing, and human thriving happen when we stop running from reality and start integrating with it.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
Realness & Mental Health: What We'll Cover in this Article
- If You're Struggling With Your Mental Health Then The Best Medicine is Always Reality
- Why Most People are Suffering: They're Not Broken, They're Disconnected
- The Limits of the Mental Health System
- The Problem with Medication (and Why It's Not a Long-Term Solution for Most)
- Anxiety: The Clash Between Ego and Reality
- Depression: Disconnection from Purpose and Mourning
- The Realness Way to Mental Health: Face Reality, Reclaim Your Connection to Wholeness
- Practical Steps to Real Mental Health
- Realness & Mental Health: Choose Realness, Choose Healing
Why Most People are Suffering: They’re Not Broken, They’re Disconnected
Let me be clear: most people experiencing mental distress aren’t ‘broken’ (even though it might feel like that temporarily if you’re going through a mental health crisis) – they’re disconnected:
Disconnected from their bodies, their emotions, the truth, and the deeper purpose that gives their life meaning.
Often, what’s called a “mental illness” is a just a totally natural response to an unnatural or messed up situation like trauma, social isolation, suppression of emotions, or the unreal expectations of our egos and our culture.
That’s not to dismiss the pain or to deny the existence of severe mental illness (some of which may have biological or extreme trauma-based causes) but – in my experience – even the most intense suffering can begin to shift when a person reconnects to what’s real.
The Limits of the Mental Health System
One of the most heart-breaking things I saw over-and-over in mental health services was how people got trapped by their own diagnosis and whatever ‘label’ they’d been ascribed became part of their identity that stopped them from growing (which is what all of us need to be doing over the duration of our lifetimes if we want to feel ‘good’ and even ‘happy’).
The simple truth is that the standard system isn’t designed to see the whole person:
Instead, it slices people up through the biopsychosocial lens (which sounds pretty impressive and comprehensive but usually becomes fragmented in practice):
- The bio (biological) gets all the focus from GPs and psychiatrists who dish out medication like it’s a cure-all.
- The psycho (psychological) gets a look-in through talk therapies but often without addressing the body or the social context.
- The social gets lip service from activists about how the cultural system is affecting mental health but rarely leads to inner change (often because activists are using their cause for their own ego ‘stuff’).
Rarely do we see a truly holistic approach which is why I like to add the ‘spiritual‘ to the mix – Biopsychosocialspiritual, if you will.
That’s Realness. Seeing the whole person, in all their dimensions, as someone who can grow through what they go through and who is dealing with reality as it actually is (not as how we just feel or think about it).
The Problem with Medication (and Why It’s Not a Long-Term Solution for Most)
I know this is controversial but it needs to be said:
For many common mental health issues, medication is a short-term fix, not a long-term strategy.
The bitter pill to swallow is that more often than not (in my opinion), professionals hand it out not because they know what to do, but because they don’t know what to do with a patient.
It’s easier to numb the symptoms than deal with the fundamental problem (which is always a disconnect from the truth and a severe experience of the Void).
That doesn’t mean medication has no place because it can definitely be life-saving in a crisis or for those with severe biochemical imbalances.
But when it becomes a way of life instead of a bridge to something deeper, it can delay true healing and deeper healing comes from reuniting with your real self and your real life.
My book ‘Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace‘ will show you the way to trusting yourself and life for the ultimate mental health boost.
Anxiety: The Clash Between Ego and Reality
Let’s talk about anxiety and depression (two of the most common mental health issues in modern society).
We’ll start with anxiety:
Anxiety often arises when we’re clinging to an identity (ego) that doesn’t fit the life we’re actually in.
Maybe we’ve been living a lie, pretending to be something we’re not (often unconsciously), or stuck in the Shadow Dance – a conflict between the ego we present to the world and the part of us we’re hiding (the shadow self).
When we live in an unreal way like this, reality always pushes back and we get feedback from life that says, “Erm, this isn’t it“. This kind of dissonance always creates anxiety.
Then there’s the cultural angle:
We live in an increasingly unreal world where digital environments hijack our dopamine systems, confuse our values, and disconnect us from the present moment.
It’s no wonder our nervous systems are on edge and anxiety is on the rise.
The solution?
- Spend more time in nature.
- Regulate your nervous system.
- Reconnect to who you really are.
You don’t need more screen time or another mindfulness app – you need to feel alive in your own skin by adapting your lifestyle so you start shifting from unreal to real.
Depression: Disconnection from Purpose and Mourning
Depression often isn’t a chemical imbalance – it’s a totally normal response to life seeming to be meaningless because we have a purpose imbalance.
This essentially means that many people become depressed purely because they’re drifting and they’ve lost their sense of meaning. But meaning isn’t something you just stumble across – it’s the by-product of living a purpose-driven life.
(Which is why I almost always help my coaching clients to figure out their purpose and start taking real action to take steps towards making it a reality).
Of course, there is also a social element with depression because any people fall into it because something bad has happened, and they weren’t given the time they needed to grieve whatever was lost (including old identities).
Our society still tends to push emotional suppression and so pain gets buried and festers. That’s basically what depression is in cases like these.
When you’re not growing, you’re dying inside. Realness is about staying close to your truth and taking real action. It means:
- Creating a vision for your life.
- Setting real goals.
- Building habits that keep you in motion.
When life has direction, the fog starts to lift, because you’re living according to your nature and not just your ideas about life.
Finally, depression also has physical roots like poor sleep, a lack of movement, processed food, and social isolation which all tank your hormones and sabotage your brain chemistry.
We shouldn’t underestimate the spiritual side, either because when we lose touch with a sense of something greater than ourselves, life feels hollow.
Spirituality (not dogma, but deeper connection) brings humility and meaning and reminds us we’re not alone and that life isn’t empty but full.
The Realness Way to Mental Health: Face Reality, Reclaim Your Connection to Wholeness
Mental health isn’t just about surviving – it’s about integration and becoming whole.
Wholeness doesn’t mean perfection, by the way – it just means that nothing is left out:
Your past, your pain, your purpose – it all gets a seat at the table because that’s how you stop splitting off from yourself and living in a fragmented way.
The truth is that healing isn’t something you wait for someone else to give you – it starts when you stop running and start listening to what’s REAL about yourself, the world, and reality.
Practical Steps to Real Mental Health
Here are some grounded ways to live the Realness philosophy in your daily life and to start improving your mental health:
1. Regulate your nervous system:
Your body needs to feel safe before your mind can heal.
Breathwork, cold exposure, grounding, sleep hygiene, and exercise all help here.
Check out this article to go deeper: Nervous System Regulation for Realness: Finding Your Natural Rhythm
2. Get honest about the mask you’re wearing:
What identity are you clinging to that no longer serves you?
Where are you getting feedback from life that something is off?
That’s your Shadow Dance (the conflict between your ego and shadow self) – once you start dancing to your own rhythm and integrating you will solve a lot of your mental health problems because you’ll be flowing with reality instead of against it.
My book ‘Shadow Life’ will take you deeper: Shadow Life: Freedom From BS in an Unreal World
3. Reconnect to your purpose:
What makes you feel most alive?
What direction could you move in that would challenge and fulfil you?
Purpose doesn’t arrive in the mail one day – it’s about reconnecting to yourself and expressing more of what you find.
This article goes into purpose a bit more: The Tree of Devotion: How to Find Purpose and Direction by Growing What’s Real
4. Honour your emotions:
Sad? Cry. Angry? Move. Grieving? Mourn.
Don’t let emotional pressure turn into psychological pain. Let it move and then whatever you’re feeling will pass (emotions are e-motion, energy in motion – once you feel it, you heal it).
This article might help if you’re dealing with emotional suppression: Emotional Suppression in Men: Why Hiding From Your Own Feelings is Destroying You
5. Spend time in the real world:
Nature. Real conversations. Physical presence.
Unplug.
Your nervous system wasn’t designed for endless scrolling – it was designed for real life and its natural rhythms.
This article will help if you’re struggling with your brain being ‘hijacked’ by the unreal world: Rewiring the Reward System: From Ego Hits to Realness
6. Take real action:
Nothing will change for you without real action. Create a vision, create goals, and cultivate daily habits to help you become who you need to be.
My free 7-day course (with a 158-page workbook) will help you figure out your vision: The 7-Day Personality Transplant System Shock for Realness & Life Purpose
7. Cultivate spiritual connection:
You don’t need religion to feel the sacred:
Reflect. Meditate. Serve others.
Remember in that you’re part of something bigger will keep you humble, keep you flowing, and keep your attention on serving the world instead of just your self (which often creates anxiety and depression).
Realness & Mental Health: Choose Realness, Choose Healing
Mental health isn’t about chasing happiness or fixing what’s wrong with you – it’s about choosing what’s real. Over and over again.
When you choose realness, you choose to stop hiding and stop fighting yourself; instead, you become who you are and in that becoming, there’s healing.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If this article has resonated with you and you’re interested in coaching, then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll guide you into your own realness and the path of real action that’s waiting for you.
Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace is a book about learning to return to your realness by cultivating trust in yourself and trust in life.
It contains practical exercises and dedicated meditations (Transformational Bridges) to take you DEEP in knowing yourself and life.
This book will answer many of the questions you have growing REAL and flowing towards wholeness. It covers everything from shame to addiction to the unconscious mind and synchronicity (and way more).
Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness is a book designed to help you look at your life from the inside-out so that you can stop holding yourself back and go get what you really want.
It contains 166 practical ‘Revolutions’ for awareness and over 8,000 Self-Guidance Questions for you to uncover new insight about yourself, the world, and reality that you can translate into action and start building your real life on the realest possible foundation.
Shadow Life is an exploration of the human shadow and the hidden side of our personalities. It looks at the masks we wear, where these masks come from, and how we can take them off.
The book explores how we can better manage our relationships with shame, guilt, and trauma in order to remove the Mask that the world has asked us to wear (and that we forgot we were wearing) so we can live an authentic life with less drama, chaos, or BS whilst we’re still around.
The Flow Builder Journal has everything you need to make the next 21-weeks of your life a turning point.
It has monthly, weekly, and daily (morning and evening) check-ins, tools and reflections to keep you in the zone and keep you flowing with zest and momentum.
If you want to get unstuck and grow REAL then check it out.
Download EGO/SHADOW/TRUST - a free guide to transformation that will walk you through the vital stages of Awareness, Acceptance, and Action with practical strategies to implement right away.
