I recently had a friend say to me, “I told my doctor that I was exercising, eating better, and trying to keep a regular sleep schedule. Then I asked if he had any other suggestions for how I can try to feel better, and he stared at me confused. Do you have a better answer?” My response? “I hope you brought a change of clothes because I’m about to dump some genius on you.” Arguably a very ungenius thing to say (like using “ungenius). I started by pointing out that our culture sucks at being emotionally healthy, and the people we most expect to be the best at it tend to be the worst whether doctors, teachers, pastors, and even social workers and therapists (i.e. professions where people can focus on helping others as a way to ignore their own problems). Please know I’m not judging, but pointing out the reality. For instance, I have three Masters degrees (theology, teaching and psychotherapy), and I never had anyone teach me what it means to be emotionally healthy. If I wasn’t taught it with my background, how can I expect different for anyone else? If you asked most so-called experts how to be emotionally healthy they’ll say the typical things like try to exercise, eat well, and get regular sleep (like my friend had been doing), or they might go with meditate, breathe, and do yoga. Other experts might ramble for awhile and never really say anything – that’s a trend I find the most common: “Wow, you just talked for half an hour and I got nothing out of what you just said.” I’m not saying that’s what most Sunday sermons were like for me in my teen years, but I’m also not denying it. How can people (especially pastors) talk so much and say nothing? It’s like a gift… worth returning. That being said, I know I can be guilty of rambling as I try to figure out my final answer (i.e. processing), but that’s different than giving a sermon. My friend got a lot more rambling than this post, but at least there were some good points in what I shared that I can now use as the catalyst for this lesson. (Thank you to him for his patience.)
Discovering what it means to be emotionally healthy has been my journey since my second year as a youth pastor, which is when I was halfway done my Masters of Theology that included counselling courses. We were on a weekend camping trip, and I had three young people give their testimony to say why they’re Christian. When I gave a couple thoughts after to conclude the night, I said, “You probably see me as this happy, friendly person, but when I’m alone to my thoughts, the truth is I hate myself.” As soon as I admitted that out loud something in my brain clicked: “That’s not right.” Since then I’ve been on a journey to try to figure out what it means to be emotionally healthy and like myself. As I learned in teachers’ college (one of the only things I learned), we learn better by teaching. That means every week for eight years while I was a youth pastor giving lessons, I was getting more out of it than anyone else (I definitely learned more than the people napping with their eyes open while I talked). Even now, as I write my posts, I’m getting more out of this than anyone reading it (sorry about that) because it forces me to reflect, summarize, and make conclusions on issues I come across as a psychotherapist and in my own life. Ultimately, if teaching is better than listening or reading, that means, the best thing you can do after reading a post is to summarize and teach what you learned to someone else.
The following is a summary of the points I shared with my friend with a few extra thrown in I thought about after. This is not an exhaustive list (e.g. I didn’t mention venting, which is really important), but it can’t be because every weekly lesson I write is part of my journey to understand and be better at being emotionally healthy. This is, however, a list based on my fifteen year journey to know what being emotionally healthy means.
- Recognize Facts: Facts are facts; you can’t change them, so let them be. Good people have a tendency to over think things and beat themselves up, which only makes things worse. Sometimes people do things that suck and sometimes people just suck. It’s good to double check with the right “to clarify” question (the question I regularly teach) and not just assume the worst, but if we’re hurt, recognize it, learn from it, adjust, and move on. Sometimes we’re the person who sucks, so we need to learn, adjust, apologize, and move on. Over thinking just makes us feel worse and adds to our anxieties when we can’t change anything – if someone sucks, they suck; that’s it, so don’t stop thinking about it. I had to put this into practice this week. It really helped when I acknowledged the person sucked and distracted myself.
- Find the Balance of Caring for Your Needs and Others: When I meet people with depression, they either spend too much energy helping others or they’re the opposite as they only care about themselves while demanding others cater to them. I would argue the balance should be slanted to focusing on others more because I’m a big believer if you want to feel like your life has value, “Ask not what your country can do, but what you can do for your country.” Focusing too much on yourself makes you self absorbed, whiny, and terrible to be around, which adds to your problems. This is particularly stupid because there is always someone who has it worse.
- Find the Balance of Being Alone and Socializing: Being alone is important whether it’s the drive home from work where we decompress or at the end of the day before bed when we take five minutes to a half hour to reflect on the day and preferably do a short reading (aka devotional) to put positive thoughts in our head. Too much alone time makes us get stuck in our head and be self absorbed, which is why socializing is so important. Being around people changes our energy and reminds us life isn’t all about us. Socializing is a little more complicated than alone time because we need different kinds of socializing. We need time where we meet strangers, connect with acquaintance/coworkers/friends, and time with our closer connections.
- A Balance of Comfort and Struggle: Our culture makes comfort look like the dream. On one hand, we need to rest and recover, but too much comfort we get soft and weak. We need something from which to recover. Our body needs struggle, which is why working out is so good for us. Similarly, our brain needs to be challenged. We need to learn things or we get bored and boring. Learning something is important because it helps us feel more confident talking to others as we have something valuable to share.
- A Balance of Doing Things that are Pleasant and Unpleasant: We need engaging activities, which are things that help us get lost in the moment like writing, playing music, reading, learning, fixing something, and being with loved ones. We also need to do unpleasant things partly because those are the times that give us our best stories and help us better appreciate the good times. I personally hate conflict, but without it, life is bland. Having something we hate or struggle with gives us something to bond over with others and gives us opportunities to grow. Regardless of how much pleasant versus unpleasant things we do, we want to make sure we’re busy enough – not too busy or too bored. Exhaustion and idle hands are very dangerous for our health.
- Responsibility and Accomplishments: We need purpose. We need purpose in the bigger picture (e.g. I work to support my family) and in the smaller sense (e.g. to-do lists are great for giving us options when we feel lost and not sure what to do with our time). This even includes having a reason to get up in the morning (and go to bed). I hate waking up, but as hard as it is, having a reason to get moving makes a big difference. Lazing around keeps us in a funk while getting up to go somewhere helps us wake up. Plus, when we are responsible, we end up with accomplishments that we can be proud of and give others a reason to see us as contributing members of society, which further makes us feel better.
- Something that gets our Blood Flowing: There’s something about competition or being on stage that helps us come alive – there’s a rush. We might get nervous, but pushing past our anxiety makes the activity all the more exciting and rewarding. There’s a reason why action movies are so appealing; we get a small rush as we live through others’ experiences.
- Challenges: Similar to struggle and conflict, being challenged helps us see what we’re capable of doing and can make us feel stronger. Having a healthy challenge can inspire us and give us purpose. Being the best at something isn’t very inspiring, but learning something new and trying to get good at it can renew our sense of drive.
- Experience All the Emotions: Our emotions are a gift. We need to experience, and let others experience, all of the primary emotions, anger, sadness, fear, and happiness. Being numb makes life terrible, which is why a movie without conflict and void of emotion is terrible to watch. Of course, too much of any one emotion is also bad (e.g. depression), but we need to learn how to experience healthy anger, sadness, fear, and happiness. If you’re wondering how you can experience too much happiness, watch The Wiggles – it’s a form of torture.
- A Balance of Someone Who Inspires Us and Someone to Inspire: We can only be at our best when we have someone who inspires us to be better and have someone we can inspire. For instance, I have met some wonderful older people through church and my parents, as a Christian Jesus is a natural choice. At the same time, there are great benefits to having someone(s) we inspire. When I became a volunteer working with young people who looked up to me, it was incredibly empowering. It made me feel accountable to be a better person while giving me a sense of value and confidence that made me easier to like.
- Routine: Routine reduces decision making (i.e. it’s kind to our brain) and gives us a foundation for how to live. The best part of a routine is breaking it once in awhile. It’s like rules; we need them to know how to live, and breaking them once in awhile is a lot of fun.
- Hope: We need things to look forward to (which is why COVID lockdown has been so rough for a lot of people). Sometimes just knowing there’s something ahead gives us the strength to keep going. I’ve had clients have to wait two weeks in order to see me (I’m pretty busy these days), and knowing they have a session booked helps. When they finally see me they’re often in a better spot because they kept moving forward with something that gave them hope. Hope can also be having positive people in our lives and those cheering for us.
Please Note: I didn’t include faith in this list, but as a Christian and therapist, having faith in God can make a huge difference. On one hand, if we have an improper view of God, it can be very damaging like if we see Him ready to condemn us and demand we earn His love. If we have a proper view, however, it’s incredibly beneficial, especially if we see Him as one who can give us guidance and know He’s cheering for us.
This week may you consider how you can be healthier
Rev Chad David, www.ChadDavid.ca, Learning to love dumb people (like me)