
Often when we talk about mental health we talk about the struggles, the diagnoses, and when we lack mental health. But what is it that we are actually striving for when we talk about being mentally healthy? What is it that we are hoping to achieve in therapy?
The goal of therapy is not to get rid of your problems or even your challenging emotional states. The goal of therapy is to equip you with more capacity to handle life’s problems as they come as well as to increase your capacity to hold challenging emotional states. This is also referred to as resiliency: “the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties”. Our capacity for resiliency can be increased through practicing healthier habits, and it can also be decreased by chronic stressors, challenges that we are unequipped to deal with, and lack of support (overcoming small stressors and challenges that we feel equipped to deal with actually increases our resiliency! Hence we aren't trying to get rid of all of our problems or challenging emotional states, but equipping ourselves with the ability to overcome them!).
No matter what your diagnosis is or where you are presently on your mental health journey, there are evidence-based therapies that can help you to move back towards feeling more mentally healthy. Just like physical health, our mental health lies on a continuum.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) proposes that for feeling more mentally healthy we work toward increased Psychological Flexibility—being present, open, and doing what matters to us. The good news is that this is an on-going process! There’s no person that gets a check mark when they cross the mental health finish line, just like physical health we continue to engage in habits that keep us feeling strong and healthy.
I have written about mindfulness and being present in a previous post, identifying it as one of the most important tools in our mental health toolbox. You can read about that here: https://www.samanthahunttherapyservices.ca/post/one-of-the-most-important-mental-health-tools-in-your-toolkit
Being open (in ACT) refers to being “open to our experience”. When we are open to our experience we are able to feel our feelings, notice our thoughts, and notice our physical sensations without a need to control, shut out, or disregard the parts that we don’t want. By being open to all parts of our experience we get to fully show up in our lives and live much more engaged. “There is as much living in a moment of pain as in a moment of joy” Strosahl, Hayes, Wilson, & Gifford, 2004, p.43. Us social workers have a saying “you can’t selectively numb your feelings”; when we push out what feels uncomfortable we also decrease our capacity to feel the good. This is the importance of learning to be open to all of our experience.
Third in ACT's Psychological Flexibility, “doing what matters to us” is behaving in life in ways that are lead by our values. This can help us to feel more meaning and purpose in our life, which is a protective factor in feeling mentally healthy! Our values can also help guide us, like a compass, in making choices and taking action in ways that feel authentic and good to us.
Just like physical health is made up of a series of choices and behaviours that we engage in day to day, mental health is a series of choices and mental behaviours that we engage in moment to moment. I encourage you to think about what choices and mental behaviours make you feel healthier? How can you increase that in your daily life? What areas might you want to explore or learn more about?
If you would like to learn more or if you think that therapy may be right for you, please connect with me on the main page of this website.
Samantha Hunt is a registered social worker who has trained in multiple trauma-informed therapeutic modalities and has 5 years of experience working with individuals with a wide variety of post-traumatic stress symptoms and experiences, including within inpatient treatment settings, healthcare settings, and now private practice.
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