Three Secrets of a Healthy Mind (Kimberly Key)

There was a legendary story in a corporation where I once worked about a person who suffered from a “nervous breakdown.” Apparently, they had a panic attack right before they were going to give a speech at a company event. I was told that the corporate “bigwig” quit right after that and was never heard of again. The story circulated among the employees as a kind of warning to not lose your sanity (or show any emotions) while on the job, lest you suffer the same fate.

Have you ever heard of someone having a nervous breakdown? Do you remember how it felt to hear about it? To date, I’ve heard a number of such stories. It seems each time I have, the person that shares the account of someone who “lost it” fell into a whisper and then shuddered in fear. As a counselor, I have a different outlook and knowledge that allows me to understand these experiences. I’ve also learned key factors that contribute to mental distress and some things that can be done to overcome them. As a follow-up to last week’s post, here are the top three factors for keeping your cool and self-regulating (the three secrets that healthy minds already exhibit).

1. 1. Listen to your feelings. The first and most important tip of all is NOT to keep your emotions at bay. Paradoxically, it is being able to be in tune with our innermost feelings that provide us with the ability to heal them. Our downfall is when we deny feelings for so long that a giant backlog of unexpressed emotion wallops us when least expected.

2. 2. Express emotion in balance. This ties back into the last post. Sometimes we have been trained/conditioned/raised to experience our feelings in a not so healthy way. If not raised to embrace and understand our emotions, we may avoid them, overdramatize them, express them without restraint, or swing from avoiding to over-expression. A balanced expression of emotion occurs when there is continual mindfulness about your inner state.

3. 3. Develop healthy relationships. Healthy relationships support and encourage you. Research shows that healthy relationships have a significant impact on your health, emotional wellbeing, and overall quality of life. Healthy relationships provide accommodation, respect, support, love, and commitment. The unhealthy range of relationships cultivates anxiety, negativity, conflict, verbal aggression, and withdrawal.

Please seek help immediately if you’re having troubles expressing balanced emotion and/or if your relationship(s) fall into the unhealthy range. There are a number of resources (along with free counseling clinics in your area) that can assist you. Please check out the links on the side bar of this page for resources.