Mental health text content

Mental health has never been about "always happy and free of negative emotions", but about the flexibility you have to live with negative states. No matter how miserable you fall, you still have the ability to get up and return to the normal track of life. You can emote from time to time, collapse from time to time, and ignore people from time to time. These states do not mean that you have a "psychological problem". Instead, they mean that your emotional perception function is normal.

Speaking of which, when I was sorting out the community psychological service files last week, I came across a case from last year: Xiao Zhou, a 32-year-old Internet operator, lay at home for three days on the day she was optimized. She cried until her eyes were swollen. Friends around her tried to persuade her to cheer up and stop being emo about this. Instead, she became more and more anxious. When she came to me, her first words were, "Am I so useless? How come other people can immediately submit their resumes and find a job after being laid off? I just want to lie down." I didn't give her any chicken soup to cheer her up. I just said, "If you really don't want to move, just lie down until you want to get up."

When I attended an industry salon before, consultants from different schools even argued about this issue. Psychoanalytically oriented counselors believe that this state of "allowing yourself to stay where you are" is actually your ego function protecting you, forcing yourself to suppress your emotions and "get better" quickly. Instead, you will suppress negative feelings into your subconscious. Over time, you may not be able to Every day, headaches and stomachaches become somatic symptoms that cannot be diagnosed as organic problems; consultants from the cognitive behavioral school are not opposed to "lying down", but they recommend that even when lying down, you can do small things that can be completed in 5 minutes - such as folding a quilt. , take out the trash, drink a cup of warm water, don’t force yourself to complete the big goal of submitting 100 resumes at once, just pick up the broken sense of life first; the positive psychology that everyone often hears now has long corrected the early misunderstanding of "always stay positive" District, instead regards "psychological flexibility" as the core indicator of mental health - to put it bluntly, it is like a rubber band. A good rubber band does not always stretch straight, nor does it break when you pull it. It is that you pull it, pull it, and it can slowly bounce back to its original shape when you loosen it. It's that simple.

I recently spent a week working on an industry report. On the day of submission, I just collapsed at home. I didn’t even want to open my favorite butter hot pot takeout in front of me. My colleagues half-jokingly asked me if I was depressed. I stayed at home for two whole days without doing anything serious. I watched Digimon from my childhood three times and ate three boxes of strawberries. When I got up on the third day, I naturally wanted to clean the house. I didn't need anyone to force me to "buck up".

Don’t always think that “I’ve been in a bad mood recently because I’m not mentally healthy.” According to data released by the World Health Organization in the past two years, about one in eight people in the world suffers from mental and psychological distress to varying degrees, but more than 90% of these cases do not require clinical intervention and can be restored to normal through self-regulation. To put it bluntly, as long as you can eat and sleep normally, be interested in some small things in life, and can continue to deal with the things at hand even after a breakdown, it belongs to the category of health. There is no need to blindly check the numbers on the online self-evaluation form and label yourself as "depression" or "anxiety disorder."

Oh, by the way, there is another saying that is very loud on the Internet right now. It is said that in order to be mentally healthy, one must completely cut off from the family of origin. There is really no standard answer to this matter. Among the cases I have come into contact with, there is a girl who was emotionally blackmailed by her parents since she was a child. She moved to another city for half a year without much contact with her family, and her overall condition has indeed improved visibly. But there are also young people who have not had a bad relationship with their parents, but just have some minor conflicts. They have cut off contact with their families after listening to what they said online. Instead, they are tortured by guilt every day, and their emotions are not as good as before. Most counselors from the family systems school do not support "one-size-fits-all cutting" and believe that the core is to draw clear boundaries and not be over-consumed, rather than to make the relationship permanent. After all, everyone's growth environment is different, and being comfortable by yourself is more effective than any "politically correct" method.

The tips I usually give to visitors are very down-to-earth. You don’t need to spend thousands to buy psychological courses, and you don’t need to embarrass yourself by writing an emotional diary every day. Just give yourself a "little happy warehouse": save a few silly videos that make you laugh when you watch them, put a piece of your favorite chocolate in the drawer of your desk, and leave a friend in your address book who you can complain about without worrying about your image.

Last week, Xiao Zhou sent me a screenshot of Moments. She took half a month off to travel to Yunnan, and then came back to find a 9-to-5 job. The salary was 2,000 yuan higher than before. The caption was, "It turns out it's too late to leave after crying enough." You see, there is no standard "health template". You don't have to force yourself to be an adult who never sheds tears, and you don't have to envy others for their emotional stability. It's enough to be able to accept your own good and bad, and live a good life.