The Wholy Trinity

Usually when people talk about health, physical health is meant. When your physical health is not good, you are in pain and/or incapacitated to do certain things (above the natural limits of humankind, such as not being able to lift 1000 kg in one hand). However, mental and emotional problems can have exactly the same effects, and should therefore be considered too, next to diet and exercise, to find the right way of living.

All of us know that all people need some food and some sleep. Most of us know that regular exercise will make life longer and healthier. However, the cross-correlations between body and mind are less clear.

First, (aerobic) exercise and even talking walks makes the mind sharper and protects against dementia, as research has shown. So bodily exercise can improve the mind.

However, not all health can be attained via the well-known physical channels of diet and exercise. In one experiment of a mad German king, where babies where fed and given drink, but their nurses were not allowed to hold them or talk to them, the babies all died. Therefore it seems necessary for emotional as well as physical wellbeing to have contact with other people, “strokes” as psychologist Eric Berne would call them. Pursuing (and giving) strokes, that means, social interaction, should therefore also be part of a “healthy diet”. As in food and exercise, there would be an optimum which might be different for each person. Schizoid persons apparently do not need strokes, the rest of us should find a good level.

Some mental diseases can fortunately be treated by drugs, since mental diseases are brain diseases and so actually physical diseases. However, it appears that some of them also respond to cognitive therapy. This suggests that optimal mental health might benefit from “mental exercises”.

For a part, this is already known. The health of rats in cages where they could have both social contacts and play/explore was optimal, probably people need novelty and exploration/ learning as well as the strokes. So this would be an extra ingredient for mental health. However, cognitive psychology shows that we can go even further than searching for a more stimulating environment: we should also go and study and possibly change our own thoughts.

One’s thoughts and feelings have a tremendous impact on one’s life. One of my father’s siblings was a very morose and complaining man; he always complained (and probably believed as well) that “the world was against him”. Outside the fact that he did not gain much happiness with this lifestyle, he also did not gain a good job (he remained a clerk while his brothers were promoted to be bosses of something), nor much money. However, a cognitive psychologist worth his fee would have asked him what were the proofs before and against his thoughts.

After all, many of our thoughts are biased. For the curious, I’d recommend the book “Feeling Good” by David Burns, which lists common fallacies people use in their own thinking and thus in their own life. Overgeneralisation (everyone hates me), focusing on the negative (I hurt my toe – my whole week is ruined), fortune-telling (she will say no), black-white thinking (if this presentation is not perfect, I’m a total failure). There are more fallacies, and while most of the examples here sound obviously wrong, you’d be surprised when investigating your own thoughts how many would not stand up to careful analysis.

Investigating and checking (and adapting) one’s own thoughts is therefore a key to not only more happiness but also to more realistic thoughts, which enable you to deal better with the real world than if your thoughts were distorted.

Next time I hope to go further into the relationships between body, mind and emotions, hoping that a synergy is achievable.