My book What’s Going On Inside Your Head? (now out in paperback) is one of my favourites. It explores, in very simple ways, some key messages for developing positive mental health habits. I have written about the contents of this book before but here is further consideration of positive mental health and what helps with it.
The first thing about mental health that I think it’s helpful for children and young people to hear is that we can all expect to find life a bit or a struggle at times. Challenges will periodically arrive and we certainly should not expect to feel happy all of the time. We do not need to panic when we’re feeling anything less than brilliant. Everyone has ups and downs and we can ride these better when we expect and accept them.
Unfortunately when we feel low, it’s then that we are least likely to find the resource needed to do something about it. That’s why I talk about low-mood menus. These are easily accessed and/or enjoyable activities that you could push yourself to do when you’re feeling listless, bored and fed up! (I sometimes call them boredom menus for younger children). I see these menus as offering activities that give us an easy step out of a negative mindset. Sometimes just listening to music can instantly do this – which shows how easy it can be.
Aside from distracting us, the low-mood menus link to the idea that true self-esteem and positive outlook is often gained by achieving things. In times when we feel low, it can be highly beneficial to make plans and/or set ourselves goals. Plans remind us that the future can be positive, can lift us considerably and remove us from stagnation often found in the realms of low-mood. Goals and plans can be as ‘big’ or ‘small’ as you feel you can manage realistically. I remember many, many years ago suddenly deciding to learn to drive during a time of feeling a bit dissatisfied with life. The conviction instantly lifted me!
Linked to ‘goals’ and also beneficial to our mental health, is deliberately challenging our comfort zones We all have things we don’t like doing, but we also have things we fear doing but wish we could do. These belong in the potentially limiting domain of our comfort zones. Each time we take a step outside our comfort zone – however small – we feel good about ourselves. What’s more, we prove to ourselves that we can, and did, cope which provides proof that not everything is as scary as our ‘better-safe-than-sorry’, overly cautious, wired-for-survival brain is prone to telling us. This can also reduce our anxiety and improve our resilience in the long run.
Linked to ‘comfort zones’, or just what is easier, is the idea of how we can succumb to being what I might call ‘socially lazy’. Many people find they are readily drawn to engaging in online interactions. It takes greater effort and perhaps social bravery to turn up face-to-face than switch on a screen but it’s healthier and the more we do it, the less social anxiety we’ll end up with. If there’s a choice, always choose turning up!
Another well-researched tool for positive mental health is that of practising gratitude. Our brain can easily torture us with negative ideas about what others think about us, how incapable we believe we are and making negative assumptions about how things are going to turn out. Our thinking can get us into terrible mental states all on its own – anticipating future events with dread, mulling over a mistake again and again, assuming and believing we will fail, harbouring affronts, negatively second-guessing what someone might have meant etc. Gratitude can re-train our brains to develop a more positive spin and there are always things to be grateful for. With children, an enjoyable activity is to ask them to draw what they love within a heart shape. The things they draw will be things they are grateful for.
Finding ways to keep ‘giving’ is also beneficial to our mental health. By that I don’t mean showering people incessantly with material gifts. I’m talking about finding ways to positively and beneficially impact on others: family, friends, neighbours, strangers, society etc. When we do this we train our brains to become less self-focused and absorbed. It also just feels good to know we have ‘lifted’ another soul.
Talking of retraining our brains (!), I couldn’t write a post on positive mental health without briefly touching upon meditation. I have written extensively about its benefits before, but a significant upside is the development of greater detachment from your thinking. This detachment enables you to more objectively assess whether you need to pay attention to a negative thought or not, so you can see if there’s a real problem that needs solving. You can then work out what the best way forward would be. In this process, you also start to see what a pesky trickster your thinking can be with all its fearful anticipation, negative ruminations, obsessive fixations, damaging assumptions and ability to catastrophise – often triggered by tiny ‘knocks’ but potentially avalanching to an all-consuming trap! Meditation helps us learn to ‘let go’ of such thinking.
Another key component of maintaining positive mental health is to explore, and make conscious, our coping strategies and addictions. I might only be talking about reaching frequently for our phones, scoffing chocolate biscuits or the half bottle of wine we consume after a stressful day – although I know there are worse. These strategies are not just bad for us because of their content, they also tamper with our pleasure and pain system more frequently than it was designed to be tampered with! I have also written about this before but if our ‘system’ (that evolved for times of scarcity) is overloaded with the buzz of instant, continuous and easily accessed rewards, the pay-back is agitation, low-mood and apathy. This affects some more than others but might be at epidemic levels in the western world.
Releasing ourselves from addiction requires us first to acknowledge there’s a problem, re-assess the ‘reward’ more realistically (I mean do we really feel great after we’ve polished off half – or all of – the biscuit tin? Did we mindfully enjoy every last mouthful or guzzle them down?) and then abstain for at least two weeks. This can be harder than we might think.
Linked also to our ‘addictions’ is how well we cope with unenjoyable emotions such as feeling stressed, low or bored – as it is these that can automatically and unconsciously trigger our unhelpful coping strategies. Our ability to endure uncomfortable emotions is key to how well we thrive. Finding ways to ‘ride out’ and cope with our negative emotions (rather than attempting to escape or ignore them), and even use them to instigate positive change, is a key component of emotional intelligence and likely to help maintain positive mental health. (How we deal with unenjoyable emotions is also linked to how prepared we are to face challenges that take us outside our comfort zone – as leaving it, by definition, causes discomfort.)
Another aspect that contributes to our mental health is how good we are at maintaining boundaries and expressing our needs assertively. Many situations we struggle with are often the result of failing to acknowledge, and struggling to express, our needs directly and clearly. (I explored this further in the post: What is my need?).
Taking time to relax, guilt-free is also extremely important. It’s clear when I talk to some adults, there’s an idea that relaxation is wasting time and a luxury. We are not evolved for our systems to be continuously in drive (craving, reaching for, achieving, getting etc.) or threat (anxiety, fear, self-protection etc.) mode. Relaxation or the ‘rest and digest’ mode, is essential in maintaining both physical and mental health.
Outlook, mindset and levels of optimism are also shown to be linked to how resilient we are. One key issue to explore is ‘the voice in our head’. Typically for many, this voice is critical. The easiest time to become aware of this voice is after we have made a mistake. Does the voice give you a hard time? Is it telling you how useless you were for making the mistake? Does it nag at you and repeatedly knock you for the mistake you made? With greater awareness of this voice we can learn to challenge it.
We can go even further and learn to more frequently put a positive spin on things that once triggered an automatic negative and deflated response. We can watch all the attempts of our thinking to thrust its negativity upon us, and resist it! We can see problems as opportunities and puzzles to be solved, we can learn to enjoy effort and not be so impatient for ‘results’, we can assume we will cope and be ever curious and intrigued by challenging situations rather than threatened by them – but it takes practice!
Linked to mindset and something that can also have a positive impact on our mental health is the drive to keep learning. A learning mind is an ever curious one and more likely to remain open and expansive. If we stop learning we are more increase the likelihood of succumbing to a rigid mindset, a closed mind and have less ability to be flexible. When we continue to learn (and there’s always more to learn) we can be perpetually excited and interested in life – which sounds like the opposite of being depressed to me!
Also well documented is how friendships (and healthy relationships) can boost our mental health. We are social animals and designed to interact with others. However, relationships can present some of life’s most testing challenges as ‘other people’ are unpredictable, mess-up and don’t always manage to empathise with, or understand us. Our management of friendships seems enhanced when we accept that nobody ‘gets it right’ all of the time, being human is understandingly complex and messy and that our unique reactions to others’ behaviour really tells us more about ourselves than our friends.
Relationships provide us with some of the best opportunities to reflect upon ourselves. Our reactions to others – especially strong ones – can give us fantastic chances to develop greater self-awareness that in turn help us get ‘better at relationships’ but this requires the bravery to accept that we might sometimes get things ‘wrong’. It also requires us to take responsibility for our part in any situation which means we no longer search for who to blame and focus positively on finding the best way forward for all involved. Maintaining healthy friendships does usually require mutual and balanced effort – even if that’s just about turning up!
I also find friendships are enhanced when we see others as versions of ourselves but just with different personalities, experiences, outlooks, perspectives, interpretations etc. If we focus on the underlying commonality of humanity over any idea of separateness or difference, it helps us accept, connect and forgive others. I do like the expression, ‘there but for the grace of god go I’. We could all have ended up in significantly different situations for one reason or another.
And finally, most of us leave childhood, trying to present to the world (without awareness) the version of ourselves that got approval as a child and not our full selves. This means that in interactions we unconsciously try to hide those parts of ourselves that got disapproval, the parts we’ve been left feeling ashamed of and the parts we assume will get us rejected. The result of the fear of disclosing our full selves (warts’ ‘n’ all), is inauthenticity. (Much therapy spends years dismantling this false façade). Turning up as our full, authentic selves (where we don’t only ever put our ‘shiny foot’ forward and pretend we are only our idea of what’s ‘good’) creates deeper connections with others.
One example of authenticity is showing vulnerability. Many of us are left with a sense that showing any kind of ‘weakness’ will put others off. The reality is it does the opposite. If we ditch trying to impress others and replace it with trying to achieve genuine connection, interactions tend to improve. I love the piece of research (sorry – no idea where I read it – but sounds a lot like Brené Brown) that described the delivery of the same lecture to two different audiences of a large number of people (a significant sample size!). The only difference was, that in one of the sessions, the lecturer spilled a glass of water all over her notes. When the two audiences graded the lectures, the delivery with the mishap scored significantly higher. Mistakes, fallibility and vulnerability create human connection more authentically than pretending we are in any way perfect!
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This doesn’t include all of the above and is more suited to a teenager but here’s my Charter for Positive Mental health…
P.S. I also have to add here a comment.
I stopped watching the news completely about five years ago. It’s surprising how I do actually still remain reasonably well-informed as things do still filter through via a variety of sources. Now I am not receiving information directly from the news, I am much less startled, sad, fearful, angry, anxious, exasperated and indignant about the many things I can do very little about. Staying completely up-to-date and informed, and caring, are not the same thing.
I deeply questioned the purpose of being bombarded with the worst the world had to offer every day through a screen. I also considered what emotional drive keeps many of us doing this when in most cases we can actually do little more than sign petitions, speak our truth in our tiny (often unheard) voices and send money when appropriate. The powerful seem to frequently abuse their power and justify it through irrational means – mostly ‘othering’ people (extremely unconscious behaviour)! I also marvel at what is considered newsworthy and what’s not. For example: estimates vary but about 20, 000 people die daily from starvation and starvation related causes and that’s very, very rarely mentioned – anywhere!
I will also add that contrary to what the media would leave us to believe, in our day to day lives we mostly experience co-operation, friendship, gentleness and kindness. Furthermore, when Harvard professor, Steven Pinker gathered up evidence from a variety of sources, he found that violence has continued to lessen in the last few centuries. This doesn’t surprise me considering that in medieval times, religious leaders imposed limitations on violence (e.g. not on Fridays) as if it was a naughty hobby that it might be a good idea to abstain from now and then!
I could discuss watching the news, or not, considerably more, but my conclusion was for me to to abstain and it’s definitely been beneficial to my outlook and certainly helped me maintain a more positive attitude towards humanity. I also think it’s a far better use of our limited ‘resource’ to work on those things we can have far greater impact on – which is mostly working to be the best version of ourselves we can muster. I think Gandhi was right with, ‘be the change you want to see in the world’. You have more chance of achieving that than sorting all of the horrendous situations created by the worst actions humans are capable of.
