It’s a great time to be in healthcare.
With functional medicine becoming more widespread, people are getting information about how physical health IS mental health. (Because it turns out, our brains are in our bodies. Go figure.)
When people have symptoms that don’t change with their stress levels, I do my best to get them to have a functional medicine consult. I can’t cover all the things they learn, but I wanted to share with you the ones I see being prescribed for my clients. (Remember, I do not have a medical degree and can't advise you, I'm just relating what I've learned from my clients.)
MAGNESIUM
It’s the “calm down mineral.” Seriously. It’s in Epsom salts folks use in a warm bath, and also in milk of magnesia, used for constipation. There are different opinions if we can absorb enough from applying it to our skin, but lots of folks use a spray. I’ve taken it orally (Natural Calm or Ionic Fizz) for muscle relaxing when I had chronic neck issues, and it’s a great one for sleep. I have had more than one client where I noticed a difference in their mood they could not explain. When we dug deeper, they realized the change happened when they started taking magnesium. We need regular intake, most people don’t get enough, and when we are stressed, our bodies use it even faster.
INOSITOL
My first encounter with a client taking inositol was dramatic. I was working with someone with obsessive-compulsive symptoms, and within a week of taking this (combined with L-Theanine) the symptoms were about noticeably reduced! It’s used for a lot of medical conditions, but my experience is that people who obsess about things find that fades dramatically with supplementation.
L-THEANINE
This is a tea extract, but it is hard to drink enough to get the more therapeutic benefits, so it’s widely prescribed in supplement form. Have you seen this popping up in various “health” drinks lately? It’s best known to help with sleep, focus, and relaxation. Again, for my clients who struggle with OCD, it can provide noticeable relief.
On the homefront, we use Kidscents Unwind to promote calm and get ready for sleep. It has both magnesium and l-theanine, as well as some essential oils known for being relaxing. It’s not just for children, I know adults who make it into a tea or just take it straight.
Do you use any supplements that have helped your mental health? I want to know!
You probably know someone who seemed to make a change…just like that. They may experience it as “one day I just decided I was done” with a habit or “ready” for a new way to behave. They probably had small stumbles after that but, overall, they made the change and didn’t look back.
In the psychotherapy world, we talk a lot about Stages of Change. It’s a process we all go through when we realize something isn’t working anymore and decide to do something new.
The stages are:
- precontemplation (What problem? I don’t see a problem! Also known as denial.)
- contemplation (Perhaps there is a problem, but I’m not actually sure it’s that bad.)
- preparation (Something has to give, but I really don’t know what or how to change.)
- action (I’m ready, I’m trying things out, and it’s a priority.)
- maintenance (I’ve got some good new strategies in place, now I have to keep the momentum going.)
Super important: AMBIVALENCE about making a change is normal. It takes a lot of effort, and we are more likely to change when here is so uncomfortable, it’s worth the work to get there.
Super duper important: if you try to skip straight to action, you are missing some really crucial steps. When we contemplate and prepare, we discover the small and large pieces of the problem that have to be part of the solution. For example, if I’m making a change in my diet for medical reasons, but don’t understand how I use food for emotional nourishment and entertainment, I don’t find other ways to nourish or entertain myself when I need to. If those needs aren’t met I’m much more likely to relapse.
So, while that someone in the first paragraph may seem like they flipped a “change switch,” it’s more likely that they’d been working through these stages behind the scenes. Of course, with some issues, we move through the stages faster. Big and current consequences can trigger faster change; the possibility of some unclear future consequence isn’t as motivating.
Something that’s super hard about all of this is it means we see the possible solution long before we make it. If knowing was enough, there would not be so many programs aimed at helping us all exercise more, something it’s clear the majority of us don’t do enough.
So, if you are at the beginning of these stages of change, or have tried for change for a long time, what might help you get to preparation or action?
Counter-intuitively, it’s NOT listing all the reasons to change. Start with all the reasons to stay the same. Why do I stay on the couch instead of lacing up my sneakers for a neighborhood stroll? It feels good to sit and zone out on my phone! I like the quiet! I like being still rather than getting sweaty and winded! I forget! There are so many other things that feel more important!
Then, you can list the things that don’t work about staying the same. I dread going to the doctor because of what my annual blood tests are going to show. I don’t like getting winded walking up stairs. I worry all the time about how long my health will last.
Not done yet – third, list all the good things about changing. Yes, there will be overlaps with that second list, but do it anyway. I will feel more confident going to the doctor. I can imagine myself 20 years from now having energy to have a full retirement life.
The last list – all the reasons that change will be hard. (Again, yes, overlap, but asking questions in a different way matters.) Let’s face it, it’s work to get off the couch and out the door. I have to make time for it and motivate myself. I get shin splints sometimes. I don’t like cold, and warm seasons are short here. I'm not really sure it will be enough.
Will this magically create motivation? No, but it does work better than pretending that it’s an easy decision and then feeling bad when it’s not an easy change. You'll have some things to keep in mind when you are making your change plan, and some reasons to give yourself grace if it takes more than one attempt to get to maintenance.
No matter what, change can be really hard, so knowing a few tricks like this can move you further along that path.
I’ve said for years that if people attended more live performances, or even better participated in them, I would have less work.
Have you heard about all the benefits that you can get from singing? From lowering stress hormones, stimulating the immune system, improving mental health, helping with speaking ability, there are just so many things that research has found, it’s a shame we don’t do more.
There is no coincidence that religious and spiritual practices have always included singing, chanting, dancing. Music has also been a very important part of healing ailments through the years. Greek philosophers and shamanic healers chanted with or for their patients. And in the 1960’s, when a group of monks became ill because the church switched away from Latin chanting, an ear specialist suggested they start chanting again. Within a few months, they were able to do their rigorous routines again. Their cells didn’t know what to do without the daily vibrations!
My favorite benefit of singing, by far, is sense of community. I’ve been with a chorus for over 20 years and there is no doubt we are family. We don’t just rehearse and perform a couple of concerts each year. We sing at each other’s weddings and funerals. We celebrate births and empty nests, promotions and retirements, and all the milestones. When someone is grieving or hurt, we send each other cards and comfort shawls that our members knit.
It didn’t surprise me to read about this study that singing together creates an “unusually strong bond.” If you’ve never stood with a group, taken a deep breath and filled a room with sound, you are missing out.
Right now, we can’t sing together safely because of the pandemic. Singing is one of the best ways to spread the virus because it’s airborne. We are meeting virtually and created a piece for the world from our homes. We are taking this time to get to know people that sing in other sections. We mute ourselves and sing along to recordings. But it’s just not the same and I can’t wait to be standing in a room full of women rocking so loud I get a little seasick from the floor bouncing under us. (Yes, that really happens!)
I know we are all working to get through the (hopefully!) last months of our strict physical distancing. And everyone has something they can’t wait to do “when it’s over.” I hope for you all, it included listening to and even making music with other humans.
Here’s our video collaboration, I hope you like it:
I figure if I have to say it a bunch of times at work, probably lots of other people need to hear it too.
Rest is not “doing nothing.”
It’s not just binging videos or losing an afternoon to games on your phone either, although those things can be part of rest.
We all need to participate in active relaxation, and get deep rest, and drop any guilt about it. Despite the pedestal we put overwork on, we actually get much less done when we work too many hours.
So, active relaxation, just what is that? Meditation. Reading, listening to, watching something uplifting. Gratitude journaling.
Napping. Progressive muscle relaxation.
Putting away the piles, lists, and chores and engaging in a hobby can also be restful. Creating something – knit or sew, hammer or saw, sing or strum. Disengage from the drudgery and play.
I hear a lot, “I was just so tired, I had to do nothing all day yesterday.” Well, if you are that tired, then you weren’t doing nothing. You were resting, it’s just that your body had to take you down to get what it needs.
Make time to rest, whether it’s sleep or shifting your energy to something that refuels you, before you are running on empty. (I hope you don’t wait until your car is sputtering or the engine seizes up before you add gas and oil?)
Go do something really important...rest.
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?
