A Check-up from the Neck-up?
We are all more conscious about our physical health nowadays. We know about the importance of eating healthily, of staying hydrated and of taking regular physical exercise. We know that we should go to our GP for any unexplained aches and pains in our body and that regular check-ups help to spot physical problems early and deal with them. As one in four of us will suffer from a mental health issue in any given year, it’s more important than ever that we pay attention to how mentally healthy we are.
What is Mental Health?
Your mental health influences how you think, feel, and behave in daily life. Mental health affects your ability to cope with the stress, challenges, hardships and setbacks that we all encounter in our lives. Being mentally healthy helps you to build and sustain relationships, handle your emotions, and go out in the world and get the most out of your life. When we aren’t mentally healthy it can be hard to do those things. Here are some of the things you can do to start looking after your mental health – starting today.
What Does Being Mentally Healthy Mean?
Mental health refers to your overall psychological wellbeing. It includes the way you feel about yourself, the quality of your relationships, your ability to manage your feelings and how you deal with difficulties. Good mental health is more than being free of depression, anxiety, or other psychological issues. Rather than the absence of mental illness, being mentally healthy refers to the presence of positive characteristics.
Go through this list and ask how many of these characteristics refer to you. People who are mentally healthy have:
- A sense of contentment
- A zest for living
- The ability to laugh and have fun
- The ability to deal with stress and bounce back from adversity
- A sense of meaning and purpose, in both their activities and their relationships
- The flexibility to learn new things and adapt to change
- A balance between work and play, rest and activity, etc.
- The ability to build and maintain fulfilling relationships
- Self-confidence and high self-esteem
These characteristics are all signs of positive mental and emotional health. Being mentally healthy allows us to participate in life and to get the most out of it. Having these characteristics help us cope when we’re faced with the challenges and problems life inevitably throws up. It won’t stop them happening, but cultivating good mental health will help you get through the bad times. Good mental health gives us resilience.
How to Cultivate Good Mental Health?
The key thing is not to ignore the warning signs that your mental health is struggling. As physical aches and pains tell us that something is wrong with our body, emotional messages tell us when something is wrong mentally. Ignoring these warnings is like ignoring physical symptoms. Toughing it out, distracting yourself by doing something else, or self-medicating with alcohol, drugs, or self-destructive behaviours will not fix it. Telling yourself that it’ll get better on its own or ‘this is just the way I am’ doesn’t help either.
The first thing is to seek professional help. There’s no shame or stigma in asking for help. We know that getting over that psychological hurdle is hard for most people. We’re brought up not to ask for the help we need. But if you had a broken leg, you wouldn’t try and walk it off, would you? No. You’d go to an expert, who would help fix the problem. It’s the same when you feel like your brain or your emotions or your self is broken too.
Things You Can Do for Your Mental Health Now
- Connect: Reach out to friends and family. Organise a day out, catch up with others. Don’t be alone.
- Stay active. Depression can convince you that what you need to do is curl up in a ball until it passes. It might be hard to get going, but physical activity helps.
- Manage stress. Learn to start saying no to things that elevate your stress level, and cutting things out of your life that create more stress than you can handle.
- Healthy diet, healthy brain. Eat healthily. When we’re feeling low, we all reach for comfort foods. But after the initial response, they just fuel the cycle of poor mental health.
- A common sign of poor mental health is unsettled sleep. Make sure you go to bed and get up at the same time, establish a sleep routine, turn off your screens, and stick to it. It’s hard at first, but it pays dividends.
- Meaning and purpose. People who don’t have a purpose can struggle to finding meaning in their lives. Define who you are, what you want, and how you want to live. Do things for others. Do things for yourself.
Monica Varo is an Integrative Psychotherapist, Hypnotherapist, Master NLP Practitioner and Lucid Dreaming Facilitator based in West London, specialising in personal and working relationships, anxiety and stress, self-esteem, confidence, limiting beliefs and weight management. Call 07772 467444 for more information.
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