I’ve worked in mental health, as a psychotherapist, for coming up on 25 years. (Not sure how that can be true since I’m pretty sure I’m in my extremely late 30’s). When people come in because they are struggling with anxious, depressed, or traumatic thought processes, they understandably want to learn how to make the pain go away.
One of the things I have to say right up front is, that isn’t quite how it works.
Our brains are amazing and have learned some pretty great things over the years about how to keep us alive. In fact, this is the brain’s top priority, much more important than keeping us happy.
You get to over-react endless times and stay alive. Under-react once and…that’s it.
After delivering this unwanted news, I get to share the exciting part: we can learn to work WITH that tendency, and actually harness that super-power.
I attended a virtual conference in December, focusing on how psychotherapy has evolved and where we are now. Since it’s virtual, I get to attend ALL the sessions, over the course of a year, rather than just a few if I’d attended in person (introvert swoon!). The most recent video I watched was a summary of the most amazing meta-analysis of all the studies about therapy treatments. They looked at almost 55,000 studies to learn, in short, what works.
It was a full presentation, and I’m not going to try to summarize except in the most basic terms. I’m going to have to listen a few more times and I can’t wait until they publish soon.
So, what does work? Or to phrase it another way, what is mental health, if it isn’t the absence of uncomfortable symptoms?
Here’s a few of the biggest factors: cognitive flexibility; acceptance and emotional openness; perspective; voluntary attention to the now.
On that last one, fun fact from the presentation: 15 minutes of meditation “turns on 2% of the genome.” I can’t wait to learn more about that!
What does mental health mean to you?
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