Mental health equally important!

We take care of our body in many ways. Things like moisturizers protect our skin externally. We try to eat food packed with nutrition, avoid artificial flavors and also take time to go for a walk or exercise.

But not many know that mental health is the most neglected or not given enough attention. And surprisingly more than half of our problems will be solved if we take good care of our mental health. Eating healthy, exercising, doing good to the society and so on definitely help us feel good about ourselves. But that alone is not enough for a person to be happy. People change and circumstances change and often people fall into the trap of negative emotions due to lack of enough positive reinforcements.

How does negative emotions like anger, guilt and shame affect pretty much everyone at some point or the other? Life changing events like marriage, job and having a baby has a lot of impact than expected.

We have two sides in our brain, the emotional one and the other rational. Problem arises when something triggers the emotional side of our brain. It is often thought that we got offended because so and so person has said something wrong or made a rude remark. But in reality, words are passed through a block called perception made up with our past experience, culture, moral grounds and lot more. So what do you think triggers negative emotions? Let's say someone tells a stay at home mom that she is inferior because she isn’t getting a paycheck or may be a working mom is told that she is not doing enough for her family and that triggers let's say anger or sadness. So how can she avoid those negativity? Instant answer could be just avoid such people in your life. But that is not feasible always. Best solution is to feed positive thoughts on active basis. It may sound weird the very first time, but one should write down all the moral boosting sentences in a piece of paper and read it 4-5 times a day. Bathroom could be one of the best places I believe, you could also read it aloud in there and that creates a larger impact.

More than hearing good things from others it is we ourselves have to say it aloud that we are good and we are doing our best. Customize wordings according to your requirement. Some people might be feeling low of not being successful enough or not being good enough. In that case he can write “ I am successful. 2. I am doing my best under current circumstances” and read it 5 times a day. And these positive reinforcements will slowly take out all the doubts about oneself and trigger to negative emotions will subside.

Also time outs are great way of handling emotions. Yes, time outs! Often time outs are considered to be a consequence. A kid does something wrong, ok go sit in the time out. But in reality time out is just a break taken to calm down. If we as adults choose to sit in the time out whenever there is chaos or something that’s making us mad, kids will follow the same eventually. Let’s say a child broke something very expensive and mommy is going to get mad. In that situation if mommy says, “ ok I am going for time out to calm down and then we will talk about it”. Children would watch and do the same whenever they get upset. Instead of getting mad at his sibling for messing up his painting he might just say,” ok I am going for time out to calm down”

So positive reinforcements for better mental health and time outs for better management of emotions are two key factors for happiness and peace I believe!