What Does a Healthy Mind Look Like?

One of the main challenges of working in the mental health profession is that there is no universal and agreed upon meaning or definition of mental health. The DSM, the main handbook for mental health practitioners, has many descriptions of mental health disorders but does not in fact have a definition of what mental health is.

This can be a challenge for clients and practitioners, because we may be able to identify what is wrong or disordered about someone’s thinking but not have a target for what a healthy or happy mind should look like.

While there are many different and competing versions of what a mental health “cure” or ultimate goal should look like, a recent video from The School of Life, a British organization devoted to well-being, identifies several mental health principles and practices that are worth sharing.

1. A healthy mind is an editing mind.

This is one of the first ideas practitioners often try to relay to clients. We want to strive for mental practices that can look at and view our internal thought processes from the outside as much as possible. We want to identify thoughts that appear or re-appear in our minds, especially those that cause great distress or emotional pain, like “I’m not good enough” or “I’ll always be a failure.”

Developing an editing function in our minds means that we work towards cropping or screening such negative thoughts and doing our best to dilute their power and decrease their impact, especially around important interpersonal situations, such as with family, coworkers, or friends.

An effective editing mind might be able to ward off shame or guilt for not meeting an important work expectation by rewording a negative thought like “my boss hates me and I will never succeed” to something more reasonable, like “I dropped the ball this time but in general I perform well enough in my role.”

Having an inner editor can reduce the amount of energy or time we spend dwelling on negative thoughts and provide important objective feedback to our subjective interpretations.

2. A healthy mind resists the pull of unfair comparisons.

This is another important editorial function of the mind, especially in the digital age. This involves the process of inserting an editorial voice into unchecked monologues we may have with ourselves after seeing apparently more successful people online or in our social spheres.

Part of this process involves understanding how most media content is made and recognizing the constructed and thus artificial nature of most content that we consume online. Whether the content is created by influencers or by friends and peers, having an awareness that the images are created to have certain desired impacts can help mediate some of the unconscious envy or shame we may experience.

The pull is particularly strong in representations of love and sex. Many clients complain that their romance and sex lives do not match the ones that they consume in media.

Viewers need to remember the constructed fictional and artificial nature of such representations, even if they are coming from supposedly real people on Instagram. We also need to remember that we see only the edited final product, not behind the curtain or into real life.

3. A healthy mind accepts that we will fall mentally ill at times in life

Despite recent efforts to normalize mental illness and the importance of mental health work, many people still believe that falling mentally “ill” is a stigma or sign of mental weakness or personal failure. Usually, one way or another, we are destined for difficult times. What may have worked previously to manage stress, anxiety, or depression no longer holds and we need greater support or intervention.

Seeing mental illness through the lens of physical illness can help us normalize such processes and see them as inevitable and, more important, not always permanent states of being.

We may, for example, have mental struggles as a result of normal developmental periods in our life—finishing college, having a baby, or retiring from an engaging career. We may also experience depressive seasons routinely, such as in mid-winter, or following intense periods of work or stress.

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By framing mental health as something we inevitably “fall into”, we resist adding judgment or shame to our experiences. For instance, it is not necessarily a mark of failure that one is experiencing depression in the same way that it is not a failure if you develop cancer after a lifetime of healthy eating.

Illness can be unpredictable and impossible to ward off and hedge against in the long run. Again, we all inevitably have some kind of run in with depression, anxiety, grief, fear, or envy.,

Viewing such bouts as “seasonal” offers a powerful cognitive tool to see that there is a transient nature to what we may be experiencing. Even if it is more chronic, it will likely change and vary if we observe it closely.