While emotional self-care, as discussed in my last post, looks similar to mental self-care, it is unique and distinct. This is especially the case regarding how you approach your own mental health, since we are all so different in our experiences, brain chemistry and genes.
In this week’s edition, I cover the basics of mental self-care and resources available to further your mental self-care resolution for 2020.
Mental Self-Care, an Overview
It’s important to remember that the mind, body, emotions, and spirit work in concert to promote your overall health. Any one aspect lacking may produce dis-ease, disorder and/or illness. And, the strongest connection to body-based disease is that of the mind.
Poor skills related to mental processing can increase stress and therefore suppress our immune system functions. This combination raises the likelihood of getting mentally and physically sick. Therefore, identifying good thinking and mental models to support our mental health is extremely important. Good mental self-care supports all other aspects of your whole-being health.
Mental self-care is the combination of practices we institute in our daily lives and help us institute good, critical thinking skills. These include overcoming cognitive biases, logical fallacies, catastrophic thinking, inattention, and negative self-speak, among others. By identifying where you can grow in these areas you can then start training. It’s similar to learning self-defense; you need to learn a bit of theory, then start conditioning your muscle to remember punching, kicking and blocking attacks. It’s tough and you may land on your rear (metaphorically speaking) on occasion when you aim wrong or don’t pay attention at the right moment, but it’s worth dusting off and getting back up. From there, you can advance into higher levels of your self-defense training. With mental self-care, your work will start in small bits and work your way up to more advanced skills.
Mental Self-Care Resources
With gratitude, we can find plenty of mental self-self-care information online. This is a listing of resources below that will get you thinking in the right ways:
- The first step is determining opportunities for growth when it comes to your mental health. A critical thinking test is a good place to start. Also, you may look into taking the Big Five Personality test to see where you fit into that mental framework to see where you might want to focus your mental self-care training energies.
- Inattention is an affliction for all living generations with the proliferation of more technology and marketing than our minds have had a chance to learn to cope. Learning to focus through meditation is powerful. And, if you’re able to, join one of our upcoming Mindfulness Mondays Meetup in Alexandria, Virginia!
- Next, you may want to learn about common logical fallacies and conduct daily check-ins with yourself to see if you are using any of these logical fallacies in your everyday conversations. While you may start to notice other people using logical fallacies, use this time introspectively to improve yourself and not point them out to others.
- Following logical fallacies, a good step forward is handling negative self-speak. Also, consider reading Taming Your Outer Child: A Revolutionary Program to Overcome Self-Defeating Patterns by therapist and author Susan Anderson, to learn how to balance out the inner critic, protection of the inner child and the impulsive, self-sabotaging outer child.
- Finally, you can then move on to managing catastrophic and other negative thinking patterns, as well as better reflection skills, with some of the latest technology. Woebot, Wysa, and Youper are all mental health assistance mobile apps that provide help in managing these destructive thinking patterns and skills and helps you to replace them with positive, reflective thinking skills.
These resources should get you started on your new year’s resolution toward productive, positive mental self-care practices.
Where to Start With Mental Self-Care
As always, if you need more mental health self-care than you believe you can provide yourself, seek help. You can reach out to Four Directions Wellness for services and always talk through any serious issues with a mental health professional.
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Is mental self-care the area of your life that you are focusing on this year, this month, or even this week? Let me know in the comments and how you plan to better your mental health self-care.