‘Mental health’ just doesn’t cover it.
Nature vs. Nuture
Do you know just how unique and complex you are? You’ve probably heard discussions about how both nature and nurture have influenced your personality. Nature is commonly regarded as biology and temperament, while nurture is about our social environment and life experiences. In fact, science shows that a huge complexity of factors make us who we are—so that talking about ‘mental’ health is just not enough!
A mind with a body.
One way of thinking about ourselves is as a mind that can think, with a body that can do, and which thrives in connection with other people. Our minds and our bodies are interconnected with communication going both ways - to our brain from our body and to our body from our brain. Crucially, because we experience our emotions as physical sensations in our body, much of the information being passed from our body to our brain is to let us know how we feel . As such, our body acts as an emotional compass to tell us, for example, when we feel afraid or when we feel joy. By making sense of these sensations in our brains we can, for example, move away from danger or towards something pleasant.
From childhood, however, we are encouraged to rely mainly on our brains and thoughts, so are often not tuned into the messages our bodies are sending us. This can be a cause of much psychological distress. As we lose awareness of our emotional compass, we are unconsciously left vulnerable to pain and suffering. In addition, because we have believed since childhood that we can make things happen, we tend to blame ourselves in some way for whatever is happening to us. This self-blame has been identified as another source of psychological distress (for more, see this post).
Our sense of being able to make things happen also impacts our well being in another important way. For both mental and physical health, we need to feel that we have the power to make changes that serve us for the better. However, when we don’t know which way our emotional compass is facing, neither can we know how to make things better. This lack of awareness and understanding further erodes our sense of power, as well as reducing our hope that things can get better - and so we feel even worse.
In essence, our mental health is so entwined with our bodily awareness that psychotherapy must involve both if meaningful change is to occur. This is what integrative psychotherapy makes possible.
Your experience is unique - but…
Another important aspect of our personality is that we all have a different sense of the world, our relationships, our social structures, and the environment around us. Because our thoughts, experiences, emotions, interests, needs, and values are so unique, the totality of our experience of ‘reality’ can be very different to others around us. However, as human beings we also have common, but unconscious, survival mechanisms which we experience in the form of anxiety, depression, substance dependencies and so on. Over time, these survival mechanisms can be unconsciously activated without our choice and detrimentally affect our physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual well being. As such, our individual uniqueness needs to be placed alongside our common survival responses if we are to fully understand what is happening to us.
Your wellbeing is complex.
I hope that this discussion demonstrates why the term ‘mental health’ just cannot fully describe the complexity of our wellbeing. Getting, and staying, well has to include all of the elements identified if sustainable change is to occur. Combining all of these elements together with the most appropriate treatment is the essence of integrative psychotherapy (for more, see this post).
So, now it’s your turn.
Just how much do you want things to be different? Picking up the phone may feel uncomfortable, but it could be so worthwhile. As soon as you begin to talk about what is bothering you, the sooner things can change. Struggling is not failing—so don’t let your situation drag on any longer.
