Does that look like you? You have mastered basic reliability and social skills. You are granular. You carry out difficult projects and meet important deadlines. Your friends come to you to get advice. You can sail gently on clumsy social situations. However, these skills and qualities do not protect you from mental health struggles.
Major events, such as an unexpected negative review of performance after years of coherent praise, can trigger weeks of rumination and anxiety. Even minor events, such as being left from a messaging thread on a project in which you are involved, or hear another parent mention an enrichment activity that you had not considered for your child, can make you guess yourself.
This is the paradox that many students are confronted: the mental force does not guarantee mental well-being.
To help you better understand the distinction and better access, let us decompose the often neglected differences between mental strength and mental health.
Having difficulty with mental health does not mean that you are not mentally strong
Here are five distinctions to keep in mind.
1. Mental force can hide bad mental health
Someone may appear (and be) resilient while struggling internallyWhich makes it more difficult to recognize when they need help. In fact, there is a surprisingly long gap between the moment when people first experience mental health symptoms, like a painful anxiety, and when they could seek therapy. The time gap is often years rather than weeks or months.
This hidden struggle is wreaking havoc. To claim that you are well when you are not exhausting and adds to the already exhausting experience to struggle. Imagine an elite athlete Push through intense training while hiding their emotional difficulties or by accumulating the fatigue of their coach. Finally, the weight of this performance is caught up.
Some people develop extreme resilience In response to mental health difficulties, using it as a form of control or survival strategy, masking deeper problems.
2. Mental force is socially rewarded, while mental health difficulties are often invisible
Society rents resilience and tenacity, but can ignore or stigmatize mental health struggles. Others often do not know when someone is stuck in cycles of anxious thinking or rumination –Too much analyze, second guess or replay conversations in their heads. Your colleagues will not often know that you woke up at 3 am thinking about the LinkedIn publication of your college friend on the promotion they have just worked.
3. Mental force can create a false feeling of invincibility
Mentally strong people can underestimate their vulnerability to mental health struggles. This calculation error can lead them to surpass themselves in front of healthy limits without allowing recovery.
The conviction that mental force can offer complete protection against poor mental health can lead people to neglect proven strategies that could offer them more robust resilience. For example, many high performance fear Auto-compassion, believing that this will weaken their advantage and make them less disciplined, less motivated and more lazy. But self-compassion is practically an essential ingredient for mental health.
4. Mental health responds more to external factors than mental force
Negative life events can quickly deteriorate mental health, while mental force is built more gradually. For example, if you feel a public failure that contradicts your identify As a very competent adult, it could destabilize your mental health in a way that your mental strength cannot counter. Or, imagine that a friend suddenly throws you. You thought you both enjoyed your friendship But after that, you realize that they were giving signs that they found you too intense in one way or another. Their rejection and you lose confidence in your social perceptions damage your mental health for months.
5. Different development models
Mental force is something earned over time through challenges and experience, and a state of growth. Mental health often follow an episodic scheme. As discussed, mental health can fluctuate depending on stressInternal circumstances and struggles. This difference explains why someone can be mentally difficult but still experiences periods of mental health difficulty.
Do not let the challenges of mental health make you doubt your mental strength
The main point to remember from this post is that mental health difficulties should not be questioned your mental strength.
In fact, we would not necessarily touch on groups of exceptionally strong, disciplined and determined individuals, such as the Olympians, firefighters and Navy seals, to have different mental illness from those of the rest of the population.
To help you stay confident in your mental strength, while protecting and nourishing your mental health, try these strategies:
- Release shame You feel episodes of rumination and anxiety.
- Try self-compassion when you are anxious, Even if you fear it, it will cause mental weakness.
- Practice mental flexibility – being strong does not mean being rigid. Adaptability is essential to maintain both strength and mental health.
- Manage your mental health and mental strength somewhat independently. For example, in the field of self-improvement, you could work to adopt a productive struggle so that you can Learn a very hard skill. In the field of mental health, you could work on rumination management skills. Discover these six strategies.
- Develop a consciousness of triggers that affect your mental health the mostAnd develop adaptation plans when they occur. For example, you may know that your mother’s organizational change at work is your key triggers. Keep this general scheme in mind: when an event triggers an intense rumination, the emotional intensity that you feel will generally decompose – ruminating yourself a little less every day when you move away from the event. Take particularly good care of yourself while this process occurs.
Mental force and mental health are essential for high performance and personal well-being. Understanding their differences allows you to develop the two aspects in a complementary way, by creating a more sustainable and fulfilling approach to the challenges of life.
๐ #MR_HEKA ๐
