Mental health and how to maintain it

According to the definition of the World Health Organization, mental health is a state of well-being in which a person can realize their own potential, cope with ordinary life stresses, work productively and fruitfully, and contribute to the life of their community.

Mental health largely depends on the person themself: their proper relationship with themself, their ability to interact with reality, how they copes with their emotions and can help themself in stressful situations.

Psychologist Natalia Vovk, director of the Center for Tomalogy – self-knowledge and development, specifically for VITAGURU told how to maintain mental health.

“Let’s look at the realities of our time: the world has changed and will change, the rapid obsolescence of knowledge, the increase in information volume, the compaction of time when you need to do more, but resources are limited, interacting with people from different “generations” (generation theory). And we need deal with this.

Therefore, the urgent issue of our time, in addition to effectiveness and success, is the concept of mental health” says Natalia Vovk.

According to the psychologist, in order to cope with the increasing pace of life, we need to learn how to relate to ourselves.

A positive attitude towards oneself and a correct perception of reality are some of the main signs of mental health.

“The right interaction with ourselves begins with an adequate perception of ourselves, when we clearly understand what is happening in reality, beyond the bounds of our subjective assessment, without being horrified by our imperfection or sitting at the top of conceit.

Throughout life, we learn the model of evaluating ourselves in the categories “I am bad / I am good”, and involuntarily, no matter what we do or say, no matter how we act, even without our awareness, work within us takes place instantly, as a result of which we  satisfied or dissatisfied with ourself. If we are satisfied, we are in a good mood, we easily interact with others, we have better work results. But if we are dissatisfied, then our energy will be directed towards clarifying our relations with ourselves and correcting ourselves, in hope that we will soon fix everything and no longer experience negative emotions from our imperfection and failure. But as practice shows, such interaction with ourselves is not very productive: we just spent energy, but this dies not give us guarantees that this would not happen again in the future” Natalia explains.

Adaptation to the environment and relationships with others, self-analysis and self-actualization is also very important.

The psychologist emphasizes that when we understand ourselves, we begin to understand other people, and it becomes easier to interact with them.

“In relations with other people, it’s natural for us to “decide for another”, that is, we are kind of sure why he acted one way or another, evaluating the other in reliance on his system of values ​​and limitations. Minimally this will lead to misunderstanding and as maximum to conflicts, even to severance of relations.

If we do not understand, we can ask, if it is unpleasant for us, we can say this, indicating our understanding and our boundaries. When we explain to another people why we did exactly what did, how we felt doing it, something becomes more clear to the other person about us, and they, in turn, can open up and tell how they saw or perceived the situation under discussion. And after some time, we may find that those people with whom we experienced discomfort in communication suddenly become interesting to us in a magical way, the range of our self-expression is expanding, and we are more free to speak on any topic” says Natalia.

An important criterion for mental health is also stress resistance.

One of the sources of stress is work, as an integral part of our lives. At work, we spend more time than at home, with family. The work team is the second family.

“Of course, work is a source of stress: tasks, timelines, responsibility, communications. When talking about professionalism, this concept includes a whole complex: to achieve your goals with an optimal amount of resources, both material and physical, emotional and mental.

You need to learn how to plan your time, distribute the load, deal with the squanders of time and energy resources, and not burden the actions of personal relationships to them.

For example, when we receive a task, we all know that it needs to be evaluated according to the degree of importance and urgency. But we have many additional criteria for evaluation: I want – I do not want to do it; interesting – not interesting; hard, not clear, the task was given incorrectly, etc. This affects our desire to complete the task: we can start to avoid doing it, postponing, forgetting, accumulating unresolved matters, which in turn will affect our self-esteem, self-confidence and can cause accumulation of stress and fatigue” says the psychologist .

Another indicator of mental health is the ability to adapt to new circumstances, making timely changes within and outside oneself.

Change is a challenge to develop and grow for a person.

The psychologist also emphasizes the particular importance of personal psychohygiene. It is necessary to learn to be aware of your emotional states, to be able to go through them, developing your potential.

“We live in an era of constant changes, and we need to keep pace with them. The faster we recognize the changes that have taken place, the faster we will learn to interact with them, mastering new knowledge, developing the necessary skills, developing the necessary qualities.

Change is a challenge to develop and grow for a person. Any changes begin with oneself. The time has come when we can no longer ignore the laws of the work of internal subjectivity, as this affects all areas of our lives.

What surrounds us externally is a reflection of our internal subjective perception of ourselves and the world around us. If we live in harmony with ourselves, then we have no problems with our surroundings or at work. If we have a constant civil war inside, the world will look menacing. Therefore, it is necessary to begin to pay attention to yourself, be aware of your emotional states, being able to survive them, giving the opportunity to develop your potential. This applies to personal psychohygiene” adds Natalia Vovk.