Nirupama Sapkota.
As a student of Psychology, I want to share that we should never underestimate anxiety, fear, depression, or other kinds of mental illnesses. All these kinds of mental illnesses start from cognitive distortions, also known as, "unhelpful pattern of thinking". Hereby "unhelpful", I mean the thoughts that cannot be helped/controlled by ourselves, or not being able to structure our thinking/belief.
Mental illness just like cancer has stages. If unhealthy feelings are recognized in their early stages and sought help immediately, then they can be overcome with ease while in their later stages, it is hard to get out of that darkness. However, it's not impossible as long as we have faith in ourselves.
It amazes me that even though tons of yoga and exercises that make our body flexible and we pay a lot of attention on those things but we do not focus as much to make our mind flexible by asking ourselves questions like, "how am I thinking?", "how am I feeling?", or "Am I okay?" Mental health is as important as physical health which is connected. Mental health plays a vital role in the ability to maintain good physical health. Our mental health will be also ups and down as physical health. Quality of mental health will determine the quality of life you have.
Here are a few tips that might be helpful for those who are struggling:
1. Always differentiate whether your thoughts and beliefs are based on your feelings or fact.
2. Never hesitate to seek help in time.
3. Focus on Activating life events (A), Belief (B), and Consequences(C).
Activating life events (A) refers to relationships, conversations, life experiences, personal history, and expectations.
Belief (B) refers to interpretation, assumption, judgment, thoughts, and attitude; and
Consequences (C) refers to sensation, desired emotions, undesired emotions, responses, and reaction.
If you just produce Consequences based on activating life events, then it is Reactive Behavior. (A=C=Reactive Behavior) whereas if you also consider the role of your belief in those activating life events before producing the consequence, then it is Proactive Behavior. (A+B=C=Reactive Behavior)Albert Ellis (1957)
4. Be solution-focused, not problem-focused. Shift your perspective from what’s my problem to what I want?
5. Remember that moods and feelings are temporary, and they come and go.
6. Remember we are not broken entities who need to be fixed; we just need to understand ourselves.
7. Remember if we can learn an unhealthy pattern of thinking then we can also unlearn them equally as fast.
8. We cannot control thoughts entering our minds, but we can choose whether to act upon them or not.
9. Sometimes it is not people who cause a disturbance in our life, but it is our interpretation of their actions that cause disturbances in our life.
10. Past is not the root of your problem but the past is the root of your belief and might be case belief is your problem if belief can change the problem will go away.
11. Understand your circle of concern which cannot be controlled such as news, what people think of you, trends, weather, others beliefs, and your area of control such as what you believe, your attitude, what you buy, places you visit, what you pioneer. Julian Rotter (1954)
12. Remember emotions are not the illness, they're the result of particular thoughts, thoughts don't need curing they need to be managed and changed.
13. Whatever situation happens which triggers your mind say it to yourself, take a break and deep breath, feel your body what is happening, pull back to yourself reflect your unhealthy thoughts, and try to find evidence or fact of that at last proceeds and practice what works instead. View that situation from different perspectives.
14. Develop your self-reliance that is the ability to adopt stressful situations and crises through self-care, personal growth, build connection, healthy thinking, practice mindfulness such as yoga meditation, avoid negative outlet, find propose of life, be proactive and move towards your goal.
15. Maintain an optimistic outlook that empowers you to expect those good things will happen to you.
16. Remember maturity is represented by an individual's ability to take responsibility for their thoughts, feeling, behavior, emotions, habit rather than a person's age.
17. Acknowledge and accept your emotions during a hard time.
18. Challenge your unhelpful thoughts by asking yourself what are the evidence of my thoughts?
What is the cost of thinking this way? What is the benefit of thinking this way? How will I
think of this after six months? Is there another way of looking at this situation??
At last, I request everyone, if someone is sharing their suicidal or similar thoughts, then explore those feelings instead of saying things like: “Don’t think like this”, “Be brave”, “Just chill” or “Don’t be sad, be happy”. Ask them what's on your mind? What's your real challenge? What do you want? What's your goal? How specifically can I help you? If you cannot do anything, just listen to them, and refer them to a psychologist or psychiatrist before it's too late.
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