Before I even get started, I want to say that suffering poor mental health is no shame nor slight on the afflicted. Indeed, it takes enormous strength to bear such a fierce battle, especially over the longer haul.
Anyone who’s suffered poor mental health (and I definitely have) has the ideal motivation to build upon their mental health resilience.
I’d define mental health resilience as the ability to ride the highs and lows of life in a way that prepares and plans proactively for good mental health as much as possible.
This article is not a definitive guide to mental health resilience, but it’s perhaps one place where a general synopsis starts. These factors, sleep, exercise, diet, relationships, grief, insight, and faith are a good overall structure that you might find helpful.
I believe these seven factors are the most foundational keys in attaining and maintaining mental health resilience:
1. Good Sleep
The broader corpus of health and medical science will say nothing is more foundational typically than good, sound sleep patterns. And our own experiences attest to the value of good sleep. Ideally adults have 7-8 hours sleep per night, which equals five portions of 90-minutes, cycles of gradually descending depth of sleep. It’s important that full nights’ sleep are attained consistently, one night after another as a pattern as much as possible, because anytime we’re in ‘sleep debt’ it can take a long while before we don’t feel tired anymore.
Of course, poor mental health is a vicious cycle. The presence of anxiety or depression usually comes with it disordered sleep/sleep disorders. I know many people who struggle very significantly with their sleep, and for these my advice would be to learn how to nap and make use of opportunities to nap on a daily basis whenever you feel tired.
Here’s something I wrote years ago on Napping Benefits and Suggestions. And if insomnia’s your problem, here’s something I wrote through personal experience in developing the technique of relaxing myself to sleep: Beating Insomnia – Getting to Sleep Using Your Mind.
2. Good Exercise
For so many people, I know this is a truism—good exercise routines alone provide great mental health resilience value. Exercise is not only enjoyable, releasing endorphins, but it leaves us with a sense of achievement, and the health benefits are vast. It’s often done with others, too, so it helps us remain connected relationally and emotionally. It’s never too late to start. I’ve been a serious exercise devotee all my life, and I know the times I begin to run rough—after I slipped out of the habit of exercise or post-injury. Vigorous exercise daily or every second day for at least 30 minutes gives best value for mental health resilience.
3. Good Diet
For Westerners, for those in ‘blessed’ societies, much of the time, we’re cursed by the abundance of food, and particularly when we have issues with self-control, the first thing we lose control of is our diet. Indeed, we might also give up every other ‘vice’, but we still need to eat, so diet can feel like the last frontier of health.
There is much internal serenity we gain from having a diet rich in fruit and vegetables, less carbohydrates, and pure proteins. There’s also the issue of portion control, and the practice of eating more calories earlier in the day than later in the day.
It’s a fact that one of the leading causes of good physical health as we age is effective diet, and yet there are many direct and indirect links between physical health and psychological health.
4. Good Relationships
Phew. You’ve probably reached this point and thought, “All the above is hard enough, and now you’re telling me I’ve got to do something about this-or-that impossible relationship!”
The truth of it is we can only do what we can do—take responsibility for what is ours to own. But peace in our relationships carries our mental health resilience to another level, simply because there’s an absence of stress because we’re resolved about how we’ll manage conflict with the persons concerned.
This is where peacemaking in relationships comes in. Here is a A Flying 7-Minute Guide to Biblical Peacemaking. The main principle of peacemaking is each person taking seriously their obligation to be accountable for their own contributions to conflict. It does NOT mean being held accountable for other people’s contributions to conflict.
Wisdom instructs us to avoid divisive individuals, and though we can’t always avoid these people in our families and workplaces, wisdom again helps us avoid pouring gasoline on the flames of conflict.
Who is a divisive individual? I define them as people who would rather point the finger at others and avoid being accountable for their behaviour than be honestly introspective and own and account for their contributions.
5. Good Grief
This strategy for mental health resilience is about handling grief. It’s that capacity to process loss, to face pain, to not ignore it or deny it, to not resent it, but to sit with it, because it can’t crush us.
Grief never feels good, but when you think about it, loss is everywhere, it comes into every person’s life, and therefore it’s unavoidable.
Can grief be good? I think that when we hold enough space in our philosophy for life that grief might actually be good, we begin to take life’s invitation to plunge deeper into the meaning of life seriously.
I can tell you from personal experience that grief was actually the making of me when I was plunged full force into loss in 2003. Same for 2014 and 2016. Indeed, I really think that when grief is good, it keeps us connected to the deeper facets of life, and we can bear a great deal of vulnerability which makes us very much more empathetic.
6. Good Insight
This is the ability to see the truth, especially our own truth as far as our impact on others is concerned. Good insight is a blessing to good relationships. It helps us see the truth others can see and it helps us live a bold life unafraid of the threats and able to embrace opportunities.
Fundamentally put, insight is what separates the mentally healthy of us from the version of us that cannot see all the goodness and blessedness of life. If we struggle with cynicism, we may struggle with insight, but it’s just the same for people who struggle with idealism.
7. Good Faith
There are all sorts of faith constructs in life. The Christian context is one that I would call a good-faith construct in that it delivers to the believer faith in the grace and forgiveness of God, of hope beyond all despair, and of the command to love—an all-conquering love of God that overwhelms our sensitivities for fear, indifference, and hatred.
Good faith helps us in our mental health resilience because it’s bigger than the realities of life that threaten to consume us. Look at the News, current affairs, social media, and we quickly be drawn into some negative emotional response (depression, rage, disgust, fear).
Simply put, good faith holds us in hope when all we can see is cause for despair. The truth of it is we need faith in this life to ward against the inevitable stresses all of us face.
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The fact is, you the reader may not resonate with all of this, but there might be something in this for you. That’s my hope. God bless.
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