Who’s In Charge of Mental Health, Our Mind or Our Body?
We’ve talked about how our minds can affect our physical body, but we haven’t spent a lot of time exploring the effects that the physical aspects of health can have on our minds. There are many, many factors to consider, but let’s just start by checking out a few: How much we move, our posture, and our level of physical discomfort can all have huge impacts on our mental health.
Many already know that exercise can have positive impacts on our minds. By getting our body moving we change our focus from mental stress to physical, which can help us shift out of unhelpful thought patterns and ruminating cycles - even more of a bonus if we can do our moving outside in nature. By exercising at higher intensities, we trigger the release of endorphins (the feel good chemicals) and getting our blood flowing can help us feel more clear and focused afterwards. We also usually feel “good” about ourselves after completing an activity which can benefit our self confidence and satisfaction with our day.
Spending our time in “positive” postures can help our mindset also spend more time in a positive state. Think of how you stand when you’re confident. You’re tall and stable, well balanced and secure. Now contrast that to what we do when we’re scared or hurt. We often end up in postures that are at least a little bit flexed (bent forward, slouched, or curled into fetal position), head down and our gaze towards the ground or darting around. These postures do not exude confidence and balance, but rather fear, uncertainty, or even shame. Recall as well, that these are also the “fight or flight” postures and mean our sympathetic nervous system is in charge. We usually think of our mind or nervous system dictating these postures, but I’d suggest a little challenge to show that the reverse path is also possible. When you feel attacked or hurt, try standing tall and taking some deep breaths, you’ll likely feel just a little bit stronger (and it’ll help your nervous system switch gears as well). On the flip side, try conjuring up feelings of confidence and strength while you’re curled up breathing shallow breaths - it’s a hard thing to do! So maybe paying attention to our posture deserves a little more credit than just the physical considerations of our muscle and joint health.
What about the impacts of injury and pain on our mental state? I think we can all relate and agree that when we are in pain it’s hard to be in top mental form. It takes a lot of extra work and capacity to appear fine and put on a happy face when we’re in pain, and while this tactic may be helpful for us to push through some adversity for a period of time, it also takes a toll when it continues for longer periods as is the case with chronic pain or injury.
Recently we’ve made some links between back pain, anxiety and depression, but it’s tough to tell which one is triggering the others. Does back pain cause anxiety and depression or do anxiety and depression cause back pain? So far, research has shown associations between the three, but has been unable to answer the question of which comes first. To me, this means that there’s a 2-way (or perhaps 3-way) street that can exist here, and it is likely different for different people - the ol chicken and the egg strikes again! When you aren’t able to do the things you love and engage fully with others, I think it’s fair to acknowledge that after a period of time, there’s going to be a bit of deterioration of your mental wellbeing. On the flip side, feelings of depression and anxiety can result in poorer sleep, lack of movement/exercise, and higher levels of stress which can all lead to increased muscle tension, physical deconditioning, and injury/pain. So if you’ve got the combo going on, for starters I’m sorry to hear that, but in good news I hope this might encourage you to explore other avenues. If your mental health is suffering and you’re already working on it but are struggling to get results, see if there’s anything that you might be able to address with your physical health. Perhaps having that old injury properly assessed and treated can end up being a missing piece in the solution to your mental health challenges. And if your physical health is suffering but not responding to your efforts with it, get honest and curious with yourself and see if perhaps there’s something you can do to help address your mental health - it might just be the missing piece to your physical ailments. So who’s in charge of running the show - our mind or our body? The answer is…both :)
Remember, we’ve all got different paths to health to navigate and the solution can sometimes be found by considering another route.