The Hidden Truth About Mental Health
The Path to Mental Fitness – Part 3
What is mental health? In other words, what is our mental fitness approach for improving our mental health? Let me be clear. Mental health is a product of being mentally fit. In the same way physical health is a product of one’s physical fitness.
Here’s what the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) has to say about our mental health and what that means. “Mental health includes one’s emotional well-being, psychological well being, and social well-being.” [1] I want to highlight the words “social well being” because a large portion of our mental health issues stem from our progressing ability to have social media invade our life.
Over the last several decades, social media networks have been on the rise from Facebook to Twitter to YouTube to Tik-Tok. Before that for my older followers, you had things like MySpace, AOL, LinkedIn, and so on. All of the social networks have increased our ability to interact with people socially. Even email for that matter gave us increased ways to communicate socially. However, there is one that doesn’t make the list that has added to our ability to be more social very very quickly. This underrated tool has major impacts on our social well-being. That tool is text messaging. Text messaging which gives us the ability for instant messaging occurred when our mobile devices went from analog to digital. These advances have elevated how we interact with society and if that interaction is negative, as opposed to positive, then we become inundated with increased opportunities for mental challenges. Our mental health becomes impacted and we then need this thing called “mental fitness.”
Society would have you believe that there is nothing that you can do about mental issues and your mental health. Here’s what I mean by that. As I further researched what the Mayo Clinic had to say, if you have mental illnesses the question is where does that come from? That should be a question that rises up in us. Where does this mental illness come from? Back to the Mayo Clinic, who has been treated as experts in this field, offer three places for the origins of mental illnesses.
- You can inherit it.
So, we can blame our parents for any mental issues; just kidding. However, this notion that we can inherit it would indicate there’s nothing you can do about having it. Just keep that in the back of your mind. - You can get it from environmental exposure.
This includes, but is not limited to, things that happen to you at birth, things that happened to you during your childhood, and things that you have no control over. - You can get it from the chemicals in one’s brain.
It is said that your brain’s chemistry has a lot to do with your mental health.
The reason I bring these causes up is because they are given to us as the reasons for what causes or creates mental health challenges. Based on the experts we have been researching, mental challenges like depression, confused thinking, mood changes, tiredness, anxiety, etc. are a result of one or more of these causes. It would appear that there’s nothing you can do about 1) things you inherit, 2) the environment that you are exposed to at an early age and 3) your brain chemistry. That’s where this subject of mental fitness becomes a little touchy. We are led to believe culturally, normally, naturally, with average thinking, that there is absolutely nothing we can do about mental illnesses. That is where we are going to draw the line. This is where we are determined to help you understand that this myth is not true. There is something we can do to improve our mental health.
God’s word, which is the thing that we believe to be true, helps us deal with it and there’s always something that we can do. Even if it is a situation where a miracle is necessary to overcome the illness, Jesus performed miracles and miracles are still being performed today. In fact, I’m a part of a group that tracks miracles or in other terms, answered prayers. People pray because they are looking for something supernatural to impact the natural, and in this case, their mental issues. Keep that in mind and sorry I didn’t mean to go there at this time. By the way, miracles as it relates to mental health are the rare exceptions. Therefore, there are some practical actions we can take to improve upon our mental health in the same way exercise improves one’s physical health.
Our conclusion is this. The reasons for mental health issues do not match the symptoms we are experiencing, but rather give us reason for living with them. For example if our social well-being has been altered by social media, then decreasing our exposure to it increases our mental health. If we can target what’s impacting our emotions negatively, then we can improve our emotional well-being and thusly our mental health. If psychologically we are not doing well, then if we look into how and what’s driving our thoughts, the end result is improved mental health. The myth that nothing can be done and that we have to live with mental problems is simply not true. We can improve our mental health in the same way we can improve our physical health.
Question: what thoughts regarding struggles with mental health issues have you been holding on to?
[1] Unknown. “About Mental Health.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Accessed August 16, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/learn/index.htm
All Scripture references used by permission, see our Scripture copyrights.
[su_note note_color="#FFFFFF" text_color="#000000"]The Family Plan Binder
is available now!
Our team has worked very hard putting it together. We designed it to help you and your family move the needle forward in making your life your business.
Find out more about the Family plan here.[/su_note]
