What is Mental Health? What is mental health? Well, we need to know what mental health is to know what mental ill health is. Mental health is our ability to have motivation to engage in life. If you don’t have the motivation to get up off the sofa, then it’s going to be difficult to have a rich and meaningful life.

If you don’t have the motivation to do things that are in your best interest like get adequate sleep and exercise, and get good nutrition, and you know, a bunch of stuff that we’re going to talk about throughout the month, then that may indicate that you have a mental health issue. When you’ve got motivation to engage in behaviors that help move you toward your rich and meaningful life, as you define it, that is an indication of mental health.

Behavioral Control and Emotional Reactions

When you have the ability to control your behaviors, you’re not reacting too impulsively; likewise, you’re not just sitting there and not reacting. That is a good indication of mental health. People who are cross or worried, they may act or react from a place of warning, so a lot of times they may be reacting more automatically more irritably to things that happen, and that stops them from having the good time to think and decide how do I want to react or how do I want to act.

So by choosing to act intentionally, they behave automatically. Likewise, when people are unhappy, they don’t have enough motivation to get up, they don’t have the energy to engage in certain behaviors, then they may not even react to a situation that’s presented before them. People with good mental health are able to act in response to whatever happens in their environment in a way that will help them move closer to what’s important in their rich and valid life.

Experiencing a extend of Emotions

People with good subjective health can develop a workable compass of feeling. Now, what do I mean by that? All feelings, whether you like it or not, all feelings have a function. Anger and anxiety—emotions—those are labels that we assign to the chemical cocktail that occurs when we experience a threat.

Anger and anxiety are there to protect you. Now, in a lot of people who have mental ill health, their anger and anxiety warning system has gotten too sensitive, too hyperactive, so they have a lot of false alarms and they experience more anger and anxiety to a much greater degree.

Emotional power and Life’s volume

So by choosing to react to something with a level 3 or a level 4, they behave with a level eight or a level nine, and that can show a problem. So a controllable range of emotions is being able to affect a situation and react with an emotion, but with an emotion to the proper intensity and one that feels reasonable. It doesn’t feel completely overwhelming, but you want to be able to experience—I know maybe you don’t think you do—but since anger and anxiety are designed to help protect you, you want to be able to experience those at the right time, to the right degree.

You want to be able to experience curiosity and happiness and love and joy, and, you know, the list goes on. All of our emotions are important to giving us a rich life. When you look at somebody who doesn’t experience a wide range of emotions, their perspective on life is often relatively flat. We want to have dimension in our life.

Tolerating Distress and Emotional Awareness

People with good mental health are able to tolerate distress. Yeah, I know, goes back to that whole anger and anxiety thing. None of us likes to feel anxious or angry or in pain or depressed or grieving, but it happens, and people with good mental health are able to acknowledge mindfully, acknowledge what they’re feeling, and sit with it without being afraid that it’s going to completely overwhelm or consume them. They can tolerate that distress.

Now, there are going to be times where you may encounter a crisis where it does feel overwhelming. It’s grief or some sort of trauma. That doesn’t mean that you’re not tolerating your distress. People who are allowed distress in unusual conditions may have to reach out for help.

Pain Tolerance vs. manage with Stress

Tolerating distress doesn’t necessarily mean doing it by yourself, but tolerating distress means acknowledging that, hey, I can feel this feeling as unpleasant as it is, I can feel this feeling and I can get through it.

Now, different from distress is coping with stress. Tolerating distress is sitting with that feeling and being able to feel like you can exist and get through it. It’s not necessarily changing the situation.

How pain Affects the Brain

In controversial behavior treatment, Straight talks about how when we event distress, we trigger that Stress Response reaction, that emotional imbalance, and our brain is just flooded with stress chemicals. When we are trying to walk through those stress chemicals, we are not reasoning clearly.

It is not doable to think as plainly and impartially as we can when our brain is washed in hydrocortisone and Adrenalin. It just ain’t possible. So distress tolerance helps us sit with the emotion, not make it worse by thinking, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to be consumed,” helps us tolerate it until we can get into what Linehan calls our wise mind.

Wise Mind and Coping Strategies

Once we’re in our wise mind, once we are not coping, trying to tread water in that swimming pool of stress emotions, then we can start exploring, “How can I cope with this situation?”

People with good mental health have a variety of coping strategies they can use because not every situation is going to respond to the same technique. Just like not each problem, not every nail needs a hammer. Okay, I am gonna mess up that trope, but you see what I’m saying. We need to have a change of tools to help us manage the caries.

Changing Situations or Reactions

And coping can mean a variety of things. It may change, meaning changing the situation. If you do not, what can you do to reachA? What can you do to advance instantly? It may convert your reaction to the affairs. Maybe it’s things you can’t change.

My girl was born a few years ago with a long illness, and I don’t like that as a mom. It makes me upset to see her efforts from time to time when she has broken open, but I can’t put it back that way. There are things I can do to be supportive of her, but I have to change my reaction to that situation, and instead of being angry that she’s got a chronic condition, being curious about, “Okay, use that energy to being curious, to finding out what can I do to best support her and help her when she is having a flare-up, and how can I help her between flare-ups, prevent flare-ups? What can I do to be supportive?”

Energy Management and Priorities

So instead of changing the situation, because I can’t fix that, I can change my reaction and how I use my energy towards that situation.

And there are other times we cope with situations by simply deciding, you know what, that ain’t worth my energy. Feeding the trolls online, that ain’t worth my energy. When I manage with those affairs, I can get involved in a back and forth with a sprite, but that doesn’t do any fine for me, and in fact, it is likely winning  that manner.

By choice, I can manage by saying, “You notice what, I only have so much power, and business with this situation is not worth it. I’m not gonna spend my energy on this when I could spend it over here on things that will help me move toward my rich and worthwhile life.”

Clear Thinking and Sleep

People with good mental health are able to think clearly. Many issues that involve thinking clearly, mental ill health involve disruption of your circadian rhythms or your sleep, which cause your brain to be unable to get rid of all of the adenosine.

I’ve talked before about our body factory, and at night when we sleep is akin to, in a factory, when the cleaning crew goes through and empties all the trash and gets rid of all the debris and stuff from the day, so the next morning when the workers come in, they have a clear workspace, and they’re more efficient at doing their jobs.

The Role of Adenosine in Mental Clarity

Adenosine is akin to all of that garbage and buildup, and at night your brain clears out the adenosine when you go into deep sleep, but you have to go into that phase of adequate deep sleep in order to clear out all of the adenosine.

When the adenosine doesn’t get cleared, you feel foggy the next morning. You feel kind of groggy-headed. Now, not that I’m advocating for it, caffeine can help displace some of that adenosine, but it doesn’t do everything, and it’s certainly not a long-term solution to thinking clearly.

Memory and Mental Health

When we have trouble thinking  openly, we have difficulty researching  and recalling things. Think with respect to the difference in the middle of  when you are well relaxed and relatively happy compared to when you are worn out  and upset.

How successful  are you at recalling  things in each of those affairs? I notice for me, when I am well relaxed and I’m relatively happy, I’m not pointing out something and thinking it out, then I’m able to recall things an entire lot easier. I can walk into the kitchen and actually remember what I went there for. Imagine that.

So human beings  with good mental health are able to center their attention long enough to learn, to perform things from for a little while to lasting memory, and to recall things. Their brain is not focused on fight or flee; their brain is actually able to devote attention and resources to learning and memory.

The Brain’s Role in Mental Health

How awesome is that? And I know I keep talking about the brain because mental health is not just thoughts or feelings; it’s about how that organ, our brain, is actually functioning and how.