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Do You Focus on Mind and Body?

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Do You Focus on #4Mind4Body?

Mental health is essential to everyone’s overall health and well-being, and mental illnesses are common and treatable. So much of what we do physically impacts us mentally – it’s important to pay attention to both your physical health and your mental health, which can help you achieve overall wellness and set you on a path to recovery.

Did you know that Mental Health America (MHA) founded May is Mental Health Month back in 1949? That means this year marks MHA’s 70th year celebrating Mental Health Month!

This May is Mental Health Month ChristianWorks for Children is expanding its focus from 2018 and raising awareness about the connection between physical health and mental health, through the theme #4Mind4Body. We are exploring the topics of animal companionship, spirituality and religion, humor, work-life balance, and recreation and social connections as ways to boost mental health and general wellness.

A healthy lifestyle can help to prevent the onset or worsening of mental health conditions, as well as chronic conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. It can also help people recover from these conditions. For those dealing with a chronic health condition and the people who care for them, it can be especially important to focus on mental health. When dealing with dueling diagnoses, focusing on both physical and mental health concerns can be daunting – but critically important in achieving overall wellness.

There are things you can do that may help. Finding a reason to laugh, going for a walk with a friend, meditating, playing with a pet, or working from home once a week can go a long way in making you both physically and mentally healthy. The company of animals – whether as pets or service animals— can have a profound impact on a person’s quality of life and ability to recover from illnesses. A pet can be a source of comfort and can help us to live mentally healthier lives. And whether you go to church, meditate daily, or simply find time to enjoy that cup of tea each morning while checking in with yourself – it can be important to connect with your spiritual side in order to find that mind-body connection.

ChristianWorks for Children wants everyone to know that mental illnesses are real, and recovery is always the goal. Living a healthy lifestyle may not be easy but can be achieved by gradually making small changes and building on those successes. Finding the balance between work and play, the ups and downs of life, physical health and mental health, can help you on the path towards focusing both #4Mind4Body.

For more information, visit www.mentalhealthamerica.net/may.

Relaxing – A Skill We All Need To Learn

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We live in a world that produces lots of stress. While stress can sometimes help motivate us to focus and act, a lot of stressful things are nonproductive and harmful. Stress might help motivate you to meet that new project’s deadline at work, but the anger a traffic jam causes you really has no benefit. None of us can avoid all of life’s stress-causing events and people , but learning how to relax can keep that stress from causing you harm. Uncontrolled stress can make you react poorly or angrily, and prolonged stress can negatively affect your health in a number of ways.

Your starting point is simply to learn to recognize when something is stressful and is affecting you. Experts advise that one quick way to reduce that stress is deep breathing. It’s simply breathing in for 5 seconds, holding your breath for 5 seconds, then slowly breathing out for 5 seconds, and holding for another 5 before doing another breathing round. When you do breathing like this your brain is focusing on your breaths, not the source of your stress, and that gives your mind and body a chance to relax just a bit.

Another way to relax is as basic as exercise. If, when faced with a stressful situation, you can get up, go outside for a quick walk, and use the time to focus on the world around you rather than what is stressing you, you are going to find yourself more relaxed. And a relaxed you will think more clearly.

Learning to relax simply means looking for ways to refocus your attention and thinking. The simple act of counting to 10 when you feel yourself getting angry (a sign of stress you want to avoid) really does work. If the anger is pretty strong, keep on counting to 100. Getting upset by that traffic jam that’s going to make you late? Turn on the car radio and sing along with whatever’s playing. Again, it’s relaxing by simply refocusing your attention.

You can and should also prepare your body to handle stress, since there always will be some. Good nutrition, regular exercise, staying hydrated and being well rested are all good protections against the negative effects that stress can produce. Learn to recognize when stress is beginning to affect you, then look for ways to add some relaxation. The result will be a happier and healthier you.

 

CounselingWorks provides family Christian counseling on an affordable sliding fee scale. Contact us to schedule an appointment.

This article is provided by the American Counseling Association. Visit the ACA website at www.counseling.org.

Learning To Let Your Children Make Mistakes

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What parent doesn’t want to protect their children, to see them safe, healthy and happy?  Such concerns are part of our DNA, inherited from our cave-dwelling ancestors and their dangerous world.

While today’s kids don’t need protection from saber-toothed tigers, there are still numerous ways for children to make mistakes.  As parents, we need to realize that some mistakes are “good mistakes,” errors in decision making that may result in the wrong outcomes, but that can be valuable learning experiences for our children.

Parents always have a responsibility to try and keep truly dire, life-threatening consequences from occurring.  But trying to ensure that children never make a bad decision, whether as toddlers, teens or even young adults, is really not doing them any favors.

The modern term for overly-protective moms and dads is “helicoptering.” It describes parents who constantly are hovering over their child, trying to ensure that all goes well.  It’s parents keeping in constant contact and trying to help their child make all the right decisions.

Unfortunately, being over-protective can inhibit a child’s natural growth and independence. When Dad is up all night finishing that school science project, it isn’t helping prepare the child for the future. Kids with overly-protective parents often have trouble making their own decisions because they know mom or dad is always there to jump in. Such children can also end up rebelling strongly as their desire and need for independence grows.

And no, it isn’t always easy to give your kids room to make their own decisions, good or bad.  However, it’s important that they do so for healthy development. And parents can still be involved. You can be there while they work through their dilemmas and to help point them toward good solutions, but your job isn’t to find the solutions for them.

Yes, you should be ready to step in when a child’s decision could be dangerous or life-threatening, but giving your kids more space helps build confidence and independence. It encourages them to try new things, even things that might seem scary. You want to offer sympathy and understanding when things go wrong, but don’t always try to make things right.

When a child is allowed to face possible failure, and even sometimes to experience it, he or she will learn valuable lessons about growing up.

CounselingWorks provides family Christian counseling on an affordable sliding fee scale. Contact us to schedule an appointment.

This article is provided by the American Counseling Association. Visit the ACA website at www.counseling.org.