Escaping the Prison of Your Mind

I have felt that several times before, as an entrepreneur and as an author. Those days where I don’t feel like answering my phone and I just want to be left alone. While taking time for some self-care and detox are important aspects of mental health, isolation is not healthy. There are enough of us who just went through government mandated isolation to know just how damaging it can be to our mental health. It can turn our minds into a prison of our own making.

Prisons have been using solitary confinement as punishment for centuries. But a study from 2000 to 2015, which used 229,274 people who were released from incarceration, found that inmates who had experienced solitary confinement were 78% more likely to commit suicide after being released compared to those who had not undergone solitary confinement.

To reframe this practice, prisons now using the term “restricted housing”, but in the end it remains a form of torture. In South Africa, the Mandela-era Correctional Services Act of 1998 (CSA) banned the practice. Many in the US are working to abolish solitary confinement. However, as humans, we often choose to isolate ourselves when what we truly need is support. If it does not work for prisons, why would we do it to ourselves?

Authors sometimes fall victim to their own self-confinement. We spend long hours in front of the computer, writing our stories, drinking coffee and eating chocolate. Okay, maybe it is just me that is the chocoholic, but you get the picture. In this isolation, we don’t interact; we don’t exercise and we make poor diet choices.

If you are in isolation for over 22 hours, then technically you are committing a human rights violation. You may even be thinking, “Well, I have people around me.” While that may be true, I find there is a growing trend of loneliness even when surrounded by others. The trick is to have regular healthy engagement with people who are like-minded.

While I fall in the camp of professional speakers who live a more public life, I know many authors shy away from communities. Many times, even if they do live public lives, they struggle to share their writing unless they think it is already perfect.

When I look at the authors in my programme, it is the ones we share their work, pitch up for appointments and talk about their self-limiting beliefs who progress. Community makes a difference. I know this from personal experience. When I am stuck trying to make a chapter work, I end up going in circles, but when I share with my team, they often think of things I did not think of.

In my early stages of writing, I feared feedback. I listened to dreadful advice from people who had never written a book in their lives. My early uninformed choices stunted my growth. It was only when I stepped out and shared my thoughts, challenges and drafts that I built momentum and made progress.

On Thursday at 10H00 I will be chatting with Alison Weihe about Mental Health. Join us and learn more about the lives and learnings of the author community.

Global Time Zones:

Johannesburg (South Africa) Thursday, 10 October 2024, 10:00:00 SAST UTC+2 hours

New York (USA – New York) Thursday, 10 October 2024, 04:00:00 EDT UTC-4 hours

London (United Kingdom – England) Thursday, 10 October 2024, 09:00:00 BST UTC+1 hour

Perth (Australia – Western Australia) Thursday, 10 October 2024,