Mental Wellness: Kvell’s 3 Pillars of Psychological Health

Hello Beautiful Soul,

How are your thoughts making you feel today? Whether you’re feeling typically depressed, unusually anxious, unsurprisingly frustrated, or surprisingly happy, we want you to know that you’re okay. It’s okay to feel anything you may be feeling, from anger to desire to deep grief or guilt. All emotions, mental states, and feelings are acceptable. 

While all feelings are valid, and most are temporary, many of the emotions we feel or mental states we experience can impact our overall wellness. The choices you make, the ways you react, and the relationships you hold are just a few of the beneficiaries of strong mental wellness, and they’re the first to be impacted when mental health struggles occur. 

Before we explore the emotions, thoughts, and self-beliefs that might be getting in your way, there’s a few things you should know: Everything is temporary. You’re in control. And you’re very brave just for being here, committed to learning more. 

In this article, we’ll explore the wild and wondrous ways that mental wellness can manifest and how you can feel better, and think better, soon: 

Mental Pillar One: Emotions

Emotions are subjective, variable, and difficult to study. While strong emotions like anger or joy might come with strong, physical responses like tears, yelling, or bodily actions, it’s harder to pinpoint or universalize most feelings. Feelings are fluid by nature and they vary person to person. 

One big myth about emotions is that there are good or bad emotions or feelings. The truth is, while some feelings might feel good or bad in the moment, emotions don’t have value. They simply exist, and they should be embraced and observed, rather than judged harshly. It is as acceptable to be angry or sad as it is to be happy. While we can strive to be happy, it isn’t realistic or healthy to expect to feel happy 100% of the time. If you’re feeling something uncomfortable or unhappy right now, it’s important to know that things will improve. 

Signs of Emotional Health

Emotional health is the concept of mental and emotional readiness 

  • Resilience 

A resilient person is one who can reasonably handle and emotionally endure the challenges of daily life. While no person is expected to get through life without emotional strain, a resilient person is someone who anticipates those challenges and meets them, feeling ready. How resilient do you feel today?

  • Harmony with Others
    Someone who is emotionally strong usually demonstrates greater harmony with their friends, family members, coworkers or classmates. While you may not always get along with everyone around you — and you’re not expected to! — constant strain with others could be a sign that your emotional health has been overlooked for too long.
    
  • Mood Stability
    Are you on an emotional rollercoaster? If it feels like you’re up one minute and down the next minute, it’s a sign that your emotional health deserves more focus. Emotional health is about regulating the way you feel so that you can make healthy choices and live a healthy life all-around. When your emotions feel “out of whack” or constantly cycling and unpredictable, it will make it more difficult for you to make sound decisions, think clearly, or enjoy your life. You deserve those things.

Mental Pillar Two: Psychology

Psychology is defined as the science of the mind and human behavior. Understanding your own psychology is a pivotal part of obtaining psychological health. One of the greatest challenges to managing your own psychology is that a portion of your psychology is subconscious. This is why maintaining a routine (for mental health and life in general) is such a valuable approach to better determine consistent trends. Consistency will also help you spot more anomalous occurrences. 

There are dozens of different studies and fields of psychology, but for personal mental wellness, the psychological processes you should focus on are:

  • Cognition
  • Perception
  • Attention
  • Subjective experiences
  • Emotion
  • Intelligence
  • Brain function
  • Personality
  • Motivation 

Psychology and mental health should never be viewed as something that should be graded or judged. Rather, self-awareness, control, and self-acceptance should be utilized to observe and regulate psychological well-being. 

Human nature is ever-changing, unpredictable and imperfect. There is nothing wrong with feeling as though you are not on-top of your mental health from time to time. Getting to know your own personal psychology will, however, help you determine an ideal level of cognitive and behavioral functioning that allows you to live your best life. This includes your intra-personal thoughts, ease of sociality, professional capacity, life skills, and consistency of control. Observing and healthily maintaining these 5 factors of your psychology will help you better understand, empathize with, appropriately augment, and accept your psychological health. 

With an improved mental confidence, you will be able to take control of your circumstances. We all fall on hard times, but we all deserve to have the resilience needed to pick ourselves back up. YOU deserve to accept life’s ups and downs and still pursue happiness, success, and fulfillment. Start to build a psychological health practice that supports your pursuit of joy and pride.

Mental Pillar Three: Self-Actualization

Self-actualization is the state of mind where a person feels as though they have achieved an adequate level of fulfillment in their overall talents and abilities. We have likely all felt actualized in ourselves at times. In moments of pride, confidence, and contentment, we feel the freedom from worry, stress, or disappointment. These sensations all feed into self-actualization. 

Achieving self-actualization varies from person to person. A life that one person may find to be fulfilling, would fall short of another person’s vision of actualized. That said, the sensation should feel the same. So knowing that, like many other goals in life, there are variables and a level of fluidity to actualization, how do you ever really achieve it?

Through the fluidity of life, it’s very likely that a person who is self-actualized, could lose that feeling from time to time. Knowing what actualization is for you, will make it much easier to return to that state of mind. 

A necessary practice for self-actualization would be to map out what true fulfillment would look like for you, based on your abilities, talents, interests, and life goals. Once you have defined your idea of actualization, the next step would be to make the changes necessary to realize those goals. There is a key here that often determines whether a person will achieve true actualization. 

Some people can create their list and check off all of their boxes and still arrive at their destination not actualized. Others will find actualization in the pursuit. The difference can be drawn from the individual’s self-confidence, self-acceptance, and self-trust. Knowing that you are on the journey towards actualization, means that you are already living your best life, in which actualization will occur. Knowing that you are doing the work and believing that that work will lead to life-fulfillment is a necessary step to take when becoming self-actualized. 

In this way, you will still have the confidence to pursue your best life, even when you are upset, let down, tired, angry, worried, or distracted. You will still know what work needs to be done, and you will have the love for yourself to keep climbing until you reach the plateau to enjoy the beautiful view that is your actualized life.

Mental Wellness and the Kvell Wheel

What makes our mental health so challenging at times is that it is our greatest tool. The human brain and psyche can open up a world of possibilities, yet just as easily become a void of frustrating complexities. 

Know that however lost you feel on your path towards mental wellness, you are never alone! Everybody feels lost, stressed, overwhelmed, and sad sometimes. But there are always resources and communities to fill your darkest mental voids with light, love, and hope. Between local communities and online resources like Kvell, there is always someone within reach, ready to hear your story and stride patiently and loving with you on your path towards complete wellness.

Stay kvelling,

The Kvell Team