We all know how to maintain our physical health, but what do we know about maintaining our psychological health?
- Why is that our physical health is so much more important to us than our psychological health?
- We suffer psychological injuries just as much or more than physical injuries (failure, rejection, loneliness, etc.)
If your feeling depressed, people say, “Just shake it off, it’s all in your head.”
- Can you imagine saying that to someone with a broken leg, “Just walk it off, it’s all in your leg.”
It is time that we close the gap between our physical and psychological health.
Loneliness
- Creates a deep psychological wound that distorts our perceptions and scrambles our thinking.
- It makes us believe that those around us care much less than they actually do.
- It makes us really afraid to reach out because why set yourself up for rejection and hearth ache when your heart is already aching.
- Loneliness is defined purely subjectively (you may not notice it because you are around people all day). It depends solely if you feel emotionally or socially disconnected to those around you.
- All the research on loneliness is horrific. It will kill you. Chronic loneliness increases your likelihood of an early death by 14%. It cause high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and suppresses the functioning of your immune system.
- Chronic loneliness poses as significant a risk for your long term health and longevity as cigarette smoking. Cigarette packs come with warnings that this can kill you, but loneliness doesn’t.
You can’t treat a psychological wound if you don’t even know you’re injured
- Pay attention to emotional pain
Failure – another psychological wound that distorts our perception and misleads us
- Many times the only thing preventing us from succeeding is our mind tricking us to think that we cannot.
- We all have a default set of feelings and beliefs that gets triggered whenever we encounter frustrations and setbacks
- Are you aware of how your mind reacts to failure?
If your mind tries to convince you that you are incapable of something, and you believe it; you’ll begin to feel helpless and you’ll stop trying too soon or won’t even try at all. And then you’ll be even more convinced that you can’t succeed. This is why so many people function below their actual potential, because they were convinced somewhere along the way that they couldn’t succeed, and they believed it. Once we become convinced of something, it’s very hard to change our mind.
- You have to fight feelings of helplessness, you have to gain control over the situation, and you have to break this kind of negative cycle before it begins.
- Stop Emotional Bleeding
Re-source: Resilience
Our minds are not the friends we thought they were. They are more like a really moody friend, who can be totally supportive one minute, and really unpleasant the next.
Rejection is extremely painful.
- We all start thinking of our faults and shortcomings, and start calling ourselves names.
- Even after our self-esteem is already hurting, why would we want to damage it further? We wouldn’t make a physical injury worse by making a cut in your arm deeper with a knife. But we do that with psychological injuries all the time, because we don’t prioritize our psychological health.
We know from dozens of studies, that when our self-esteem is lower, we are more vulnerable to stress and anxiety; that failures and rejections hurt more and harder to recover from them.
- So when you get rejected, the first thing that you should be doing is revive your self-esteem; not beat yourself up.
- When you’re in emotional pain, treat yourself with the same compassion you would expect from a truly good friend.
Protect Your Self-Esteem.
- We have to catch our unhealthy psychological habits, and change them.
One of our unhealthiest habits is rumination.
- It means to “chew over” – you just can’t stop replaying the negative scene for days, weeks, etc.
- It can easily become a costly habit, because by spending so much time focused on upsetting and negative thoughts, you are putting yourself at significant risk for developing clinical depression, alcoholism, eating disorders, and cardiovascular disease.
- The problem is the urge to ruminate can feel really strong and important, so it is a difficult habit to stop
Studies tell us that even a two minute distraction is sufficient to break the urge to ruminate in that moment.
- So each time you have a worrying and upsetting thought, force yourself to concentrate on something else until the urge passes. Within one week, your whole outlook can change and become more positive and hopeful.
By taking action when you are lonely, by changing your responses to failure, by protecting your self-esteem, and battling negative thinking; you won’t just heal you psychological wounds, you will build resilience and thrive.
- Just by becoming informed and changing a few simple habits
craving and resource from “How to practice emotional hygiene” by Guy Winch – (TEDx Talks)