What does
it mean to have a ‘good mental health’?
This week
is World Mental Health Awareness Week. I have decided to write this short blog
to make a small contribution.
It is
sometimes hard to understand mental health. What is it? What does it mean?
Sadly, most of us did not get taught how to look after our mental health when
we were children. We might have been taught to eat all our vegetables and to
brush our teeth every day. We might have had a gentle kiss from our parents if
we fell off a bike and bruised our knees. But we don’t often get taught how to
live with our emotions, how to understand them and how to regulate them.
Emotional wounds are the bruises that don’t get seen nor soothed. If we got an
emotional bruise we might carry it for a long time.
Often, I
see clients who come to me because their relationship with their spouse is not
going well. They think it is all because of their spouse. Blaming is one way to
protect ourselves. However, when they realise that some of the hurt is actually
not about the here and now but about an old wound (often a wound from childhood)
a lot of my clients are shocked – because they were not even conscious of the
wound existing – and then tears roll down their cheeks – because, finally, the
bruise is being seen.
Emotional
wounding does not only occur because of parents’ mistake. It also happens when
life circumstances affect the child’s sensitivity. Some of the more subtle
wounds I have heard are:
‘I was the
only non-white pupil in my primary school. I knew that I wasn’t like the others
then’
‘I wanted
to play with Barbies but all the other boys wanted to play with soldiers. I
knew something was wrong’
‘My maths
teacher told me that I would not amount to anything when I failed the test’
‘We moved
house when I was young and I lost all my friends. It was hard to make new
friends in the new school’
‘I saw my
grandfather die and my mother was depressed afterwards’
When
something happens when we are young, we don’t know much about the world so it
is hard for us to rationalise, however we are deeply sensitive to our internal world. So,
children tend to say to themselves:
‘My mother
is sad, it must be my fault. She doesn’t love me anymore’
‘My maths
teacher doesn’t like me because I’m bad’
‘I lost of
my home and my friends. I’m really sad but my parents tell me I should be
happy. There is something wrong with me’
‘I am wrong
for wanting to play Barbies’
‘I look
different from anyone else, I don’t fit in’
These
messages tend to enter our psyche rapidly because we have no other information
about the world to compare them to. The messages become core messages so much so that we then carry them all
our lives and we make decisions based on them, without being consciously aware of them. Sometimes
it is in therapy that these core messages get addressed for the first time.
When we
carry these core messages into adulthood they transform into shame ‘I am wrong’,
‘I am bad’. Or they transform into a low sense of self ‘I am not good enough’.
These messages can be unconscious but they pull the emotional strings
frequently and can present difficulties in the here and now adult life.
Here are my
10 tips to regulate emotions and to look after your mental health.
Looking
after your mental health is just as important as looking after your physical
health. Some people make the mistake in thinking that if they do a little bit
of therapy, they will ‘get it’ and then be fine forever. But this is not so.
Looking after your mental health is the same process as looking after your
physical health. For example, you wouldn’t think that eating one broccoli a
year would constitute a healthy diet. Or going to the gym once in six months would
mean a good fitness regime.
It is the
same with mental health. Looking after your mental health requires daily
conscious decisions. Every day you make the decision to brush your teeth, and
you make the decision to eat a fairly balanced diet. And, every day, you have
to make a decision about mental well-being.
My
suggestions are:
1- Practice mindfulness. The practice
of Mindfulness can be simple and individual. It is basically about stopping
thoughts rushing through your mind, and stay with the present moment, welcoming
feelings as they come in a non-judgmental way. You can join a Mindfulness
class. Or you can download an app such as Head Space to help you with it. It is
also a good method to cultivate gratitude for the things that you do have in
your life, rather than focusing on the things that don’t go so well.
2- Do Yoga. It is a wonderful practice
to move your body mindfully and make the often neglected connection between
mind and body. Much stress and other emotions are stored in the body. Yoga is a
good way to release those emotions stored in the body. It is often a great
compliment to talking therapy. I recommend Yoga to many of my clients.
3- Connect with friends, lovers and
peers. The brain is the only organ in the body that self-regulates externally
with other human brains. Sharing a story, a laugh, some tears is a great way of
looking after your mental health. Choose people that you feel completely
comfortable with.
4- If you have a spouse or romantic
partner, do not miss an opportunity to tell them that you love them or tell
them something you appreciate about them whilst you look into their eyes. Being
kind to others is good for you!
5- Be selfish. Selfish is a word loaded
with a lot of negative thinking. But let’s think about it for a moment. The
opposite of selfish is selfless. Selfless means ‘losing your self’. It is often
when we lose our self that we become deeply unhappy. Being selfish is a good
thing, when done in balance. For example, saying ‘no’ to someone means saying
‘yes’ to yourself. This is self-care.
6- Most importantly, be mindful how you
talk to yourself. It can be easy to tell others how good they are, or comfort
them or congratulate them. But most of us find it difficult to do the same to
ourselves. Pay attention to your own critical voice. If you hear your critical voice,
argue with it with kindness. ‘I am good enough because I am a good person, a
good friend. And I am intelligent, and I am good at my job even if I sometimes
make mistakes. I am a human being’.
7- As well as arguing with your
critical voice, make your nurturing voice grow: ‘Good for me for doing this’.
‘Congratulations me!’. ‘I am beautiful’. ‘I am a good person’. Nurturing
self-talk is NOT being big-headed. It is being kind to ourselves, and it is our
responsibility to our own mental health to be kind to ourselves. Being
big-headed is constantly saying to others: ‘I am much better than you’. It is a
completely different thing from nurturing self-talk.
8- When intense and uncomfortable
emotions come, do not stop them or swallow them. Remind yourselves that emotions
come and go all the time, and feeling emotions won’t kill you. Much like an
ocean wave, emotions come, peak and get overwhelming for a bit, and then reduce
and go. We typically tend to attach stories to emotions to make sense of them:
‘I feel angry because my partner pissed me off, he’s such an asshole!’. If you
say this to yourself, the anger feeling will increase and become worse.
Emotions do not live in stories. Emotions just are. Try to detach the emotions
that you are feeling from any stories. And instead sit with your emotions as
they come and use images to understand your emotions: ‘I am feeling angry right
now, and this is because I am a human being. My anger today feels like a red
sharp triangle in my heart, it’s burning and it is very heavy. Then breathe
into that feeling. Soon, it will reduce. It takes practice to understand and
self-regulate emotions in that way, but it is possible and it becomes easier
the more you do it.
9- Rest. It is so important for your
mental health to rest. If you had a busy stressful week, rest at the weekend.
Resting can mean different things to different people. Some people enjoy a lie
in. Some people read a good book. Some people do baking. Others engage in a
hobby that has nothing to do with work. If a lie in is not your way of resting.
Still make sure that you get plenty of sleep. Sleeping is when your brain
re-calibrates and restores itself.
10- Remind yourself of your bill of
rights: ‘I have the right to my own needs and set my own priorities as a person
independent of any roles that I may assume in my life. To be treated with
respect as an intelligent, capable and equal human being. To express my
feelings. To express my opinions and values. To say yes and no for myself
without feeling guilty. To make mistakes. To change my mind. To say I do not
understand. To ask for what I want. To get what I pay for. To decline
responsibility for other people’s problems. To be listened to. To be taken
seriously. To deal with others without being dependent on them for their approval.’
World
Mental Health Awareness Week can be an opportunity for you to do something
different and look after your mental health just the way you look after your
physical health. It all starts with the ‘doing’ something different.
Psychological research show that self-efficacy (the I-can-do attitude) is a
more important ingredient than self-esteem for happiness.
I wish you
all a good week loving yourself, and loving the people close to you.
