These days everyone is talking about mental health.  With the recent pandemic, current wars, loss of loved ones, financial recession and so on, your mental health may be stressed. We have more mental health issues now than in the past.  Even if you have always considered yourself emotional resilient, you are being challenged like never before.  These issues are showing up in your mental health in various forms, such as aggression, depression and anxiety, to name a few. There are many things you need to know about mental health. 

Here are 5 of them.

NUMBER ONE – Mental Health is Important

If your mental health is suffering you may feel challenged with depression, anxiety, sadness, worry or fear. This means you are operating in an unresourceful state.  It also means that you have limited access to your internal resources. This means that even if you have solutions to your concerns, you may be unable to access them.

To make matters worse, when you are facing these mental health challenges, your unconscious brain interprets this as being unsafe.  Safety is one of your core human needs, as reflected by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs*¹.  Without safety, the corner stones to stability are incomplete. Functioning in this unresourceful state will gradually undermine your immune system making you susceptible to falling ill. It will also worsen any underlying degenerative dis-eases you may have.

You will find that when challenged with these mental issues, your relationships are put under pressure. These include your work relationships, romantic relationships, friendships and family relationships.

You can see from this that Your Mental Health IS Important!

NUMBER TWO – Talking really does help your Mental Health

You may say that you don’t bother talking about your problems as no one can fix them. “What’s the point?” This is not true.  When you verbalize your thoughts, your brain processes the information differently. It opens a door to your more resourceful state that could otherwise remain shut. Talking to someone also offers the opportunity for a different perspective. Even if you choose not to use it, it often stimulates your brain to think differently.

This will work towards breaking the mental loop that is created when a thought has a stressor on it that may not normally be there.  Talking will also help to validate your experience which is valuable, especially in a world where everyone is so caught up in their own worlds that your own experience often feels insignificant.

You may choose not to speak to a professional because perhaps in the past you have tried this and walked away disappointed. This is often because your expectations have included the need for the therapist to solve or at least offer solutions to your challenges.  This is a very misunderstood area.

The role of a psychotherapist

The role of a psychotherapist is largely to help validate your experience and reflect back to you how you view your situation, thereby alerting you to your blind spots and leading you into a more resourceful state so that you can find the best solution for yourself.  Remember, you are the only expert on YOU. The psychotherapist does this through finely tuned listening skills, and tools which they will share with you in the appropriate way.  Ultimately only you can be accountable for your progress.

The difference between a psychotherapist and a life coach is largely their techniques and tools. Psychotherapists are usually more trained in psychodynamic approaches. Many psychotherapists include life coaching elements in order to offer a more well-rounded approach these days.

NUMBER THREE – Your Environment is affecting your mental health

The environment you find yourself in on a regular basis will impact your mental health greatly.  Your unconscious brain is constantly observing your environment for threats and important information and processing this in the background. When your environment is dis organized in any way, your unconscious mind will perceive this as a threat and put you into an alert stress state.

Your environment includes your surroundings as well as the conditions you are living or working under and the type of people you are dealing with on a regular basis. You may not always be able to change your environment immediately but once you identify the stressors you can then work more on your mindset and put a strategy in place to improve your environment.  The fact that you are taking steps to empower yourself and improve your situation will help you to feel more confident and resourceful.

NUMBER FOUR – Sleep and Rest affect your mental health

Poor quality sleep or lack of sleep and rest put your body into a state of stress which naturally begins to take you out of a resourceful state and diminishes your access to all your internal resources. When you have enough sleep your brain processes information quicker and your ability to problem solve happens faster.  Whatever you are trying to achieve becomes more successful and you are able to achieve your results faster. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that if you rest or sleep you are wasting valuable time, (which already indicates you are in an unresourceful state just thinking that way), but this is seldom true. If you get enough sleep and rest, you will find yourself working through things a lot quicker.

NUMBER FIVE – Consuming alcohol puts you on the back foot*²

When you consume alcohol, your body naturally kicks into fix and repair mode as it tackles this toxin.  This moves you out of a resourceful state. Because alcohol is a “chemical”, it affects the chemical processes happening in your body as well as your brain.  Some alcohol has a depressive affect which you don’t realize is adding to the challenge of mood state. Even though when consuming alcohol, some relief may be felt, it can take days for your body to get back into a homeostatic balance. 

The stress of alcohol on the mental state lasts for a couple of days making you feel worse than you did before you started drinking. So, if the pain of being in poor mental health is becomes too much to bear, cut out alcohol and give your brain and body the space it needs to find its balance.

Mental health challenges are nothing to be minimized.  If you struggle with poor mental health or you know someone who is, reach out and enlist support.  Even if you just take one step forward to support yourself you stand a better chance of recovery and getting back into a resourceful state so that you can live a life aligned to your potential.

References:

1. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

2. Alcohol and Mental Health, https://www.mentalhealth.or