Let's give a glittering new dress to the Cinderella of health care
- Karen Sole
- Oct 6
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 13
Everyone has moments or periods of less confidence, less happiness, more doubt, more confusion, more sadness, loneliness, anxiety - but who talks about it? Let's get it OUT of the closet!
I’ve lived through periods of chaotic depression. People close to me have attempted suicide. People close to me have succeeded, by fast methods or slow. One of my nearest and dearest lives with a ‘mental health diagnosis’. I know many many people who have the same lived experience. I’m not in any way unique in that sense.
Let’s talk about it, normalise it, de-mystify it, try to understand it, accept its pervasiveness, develop compassion toward our friends, family members and acquaintances who encounter it. Lets recognise it as a systemic issue and not an individual issue. Let’s fully accept that ‘mental illness’ is as blameless as cancer or a broken arm, or toothache. Let’s work towards breaking down the often astounding difficulties involved in getting help within the health and welfare system.
I would like to see mental health as the queen of our health system and not the Cinderella, whose funding can be reallocated on a whim, on a specious idea that mental health is less deserving than cancer, heart conditions, or asthma, just for example. I would love to see mindfulness incorporated into the earliest public education syllabus and routine. If our early life trauma is the root of our physical and mental illness, as I believe it is, then training teachers in that, and giving them skills to encourage and provide periods of calm, reflection, and stillness, in young children, we will surely reduce the number of people of any age struggling with life in a toxic culture. I refer to Dr Gabor Mate and his son Daniel whose subtitle of The Myth of Normal is trauma illness and healing in a toxic culture. [Vermillion, London, 2022]
We can also learn how to respond as friends or parents or relatives of distressed people. It should as easy to identify where and who to go to if someone’s in need of professional care and help as it is to find A and E when your kid stuffs a crayon up their nose. It is not. We find that out as soon as we have the person in our relational space. Effort required to find a loved one a spot in the health system’s limited accomodation is all consuming and excoriating. In my own case trying to find health care for my beloved, I eventually said to the bewildered young registrar she had been seeing ‘If something doesn’t happen soon, you will have me in here’. At that point my dear one was placed on the acute file. There is a lot more, none of it pretty, none of it happy, all of it just a few decades ago. And bereft families are still fighting to be heard, to be believed when they are heard, to not be made ‘the problem’ and sidelined, to find appropriate levels and types of care for their loved ones. We have a long way to go. [I live in Aotearoa-New Zealand.]
In systemic constellations, it is possible to work with a wide range of mental-emotional-relational issues. Many issues are intergenerational. Systemic/family constellations works with these but not with diagnoses such as schizophrenia, or borderline personality disorder. I trained to be a systemic/family constellations facilitator not because of my own experience, but in spite of it, and because the need for therapy is simply so pervasive. The need is huge, widespread, through all layers and streams of our society. It’s everywhere.
If you or someone you know and love may benefit from systemic constellations, there are many facilitators around the world. Because of the boom of Zoom, I can work with you where ever you are in the world and where ever you are in your life.
“Isn't it odd. We can only see our outsides, but nearly everything happens on the inside” ― Charlie Mackesy, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a former member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen’s profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates or has participated in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators. From 01 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 she is a member of CI Connect, ‘a safe space to connect to self and others through compassionate sexf-inquiryand the exploration of our shared humanity in today’s world’ with Dr Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur ND and CI Facilitators.
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