Brenda Skidmore's Health Tips

How should mentally healthy people act? Could you put this into words if you were asked?

In referencing a quote from former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who once said of obscenity-"I know it when I see it."

Most people, now days, could not accurately describe, or even recognize the many vast emotional complexities of a normal, healthy human mind. Over the last 30 years, emotional illnesses have been, conveniently, invented to market specific designer drugs, and this dumbing down of our cultural intellect has a lot of people totally confused about how a normal and healthy mind reacts to problematic events in our lives. But of course, you would recognize how a normal and healthy state of mind would react to challenging problems if you saw it, couldn't you?

A healthy emotional state is not always absent of negative emotions such as fear, anger, or sadness. There are people in federal prisons for committing heinous crimes against their fellow man. They show no emotional remorse or anxiety for the things that they have done. They are, therefore, labeled as having antisocial or abnormal personalities.

A mentally healthy person can feel, and successfully manage, a wide range of emotions. I believe this to be one of the main reasons why we are here in the first place. A higher source designed each of us to be able to, naturally, gravitate towards the higher emotional states of happiness, love, and joy.

A lot of us have had to live through some really tough times. These rough times can definitely take their toll on the physically and mentally healthiest of people. How an individual manages all of the negative emotions that arise from these challenging situations says a lot about someones coping skills.

Another good indicator of sound mental health is if he or she is capable of having an open relationship that is mostly honest, supporting, and trusting. Can this person manage their responsibility and productivity between work and family? How about balancing their freedom with limitations?

People who are mentally healthy will be more likely to recognize rational limits. A quote from the famous psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud, who said-"love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness. When we feel these two things are being threatened, a mentally sound person should be able to recognize the need for assistance when they think they need it by taking advantage of any available outside resources ( beyond themselves ) such as counseling, talking to a trusted friend or family member, or using self-help courses and books.

Knowing that you are never alone, and that you do not have to struggle or cope with troubled times all by yourself, is not about admitting defeat, failure or a weakness. If you think that a mentally healthy person should be void of all negativity or struggle, then those are the people who are, on the average, the farthest away from being mentally sound.

Most of us need a little help from each other, every now and then, to get us through the really tough times. We could use less put-downs of ourselves, and stop doubting our entitlement to deserving a happier and better life. A lot of us don't know ourselves nearly as good as we think we do.

As young children, from our earliest moments of understanding, we believed just about everything we were told. We developed certain attitudes from our family backgrounds. Some of these unproductive attitudes are so subtle in nature that we do not even realize that we have, sometimes, carried them right on into adulthood. They have created expectations that are so unrealistic that they have influenced our behavior in nearly everything we do, or have ever done, without our realizing it.

Can you imagine what it would do to your mind if, as a small tot, you had grown up being repeatedly told that you were going to be the ruler of an entire nation, because you had been born into a family of wealth and hierarchy? How about the opposite? What if you had grown up being told that your options of amounting to anything at all were rather limited and hopeless because you had been born into a poor family?

I don't believe any one of us came here to have the ultimate perfect life. If this were true, then how boring things would quickly become, and how would we ever experience the joy of a much needed improvement in certain areas of our lives? We are all pretty much the same, we each feel the very same emotions. We must have come here to experience the different contrast of all of them. A healthy mind just knows that if we can think it, we can create it. If we believe in ourselves enough, then we most certainly can achieve some of our highest dreams.

We must, therefore, be very mindful about what we are always thinking and creating. It is absolutely critical that we filter through our thoughts, ideas, and emotions on a daily basis. Have faith that you will meet the right people to give you some of the toughest life lessons you never wanted to get, and on the flip side of that very same coin, you will also meet the right people to get some of the most wonderful, loving life lessons you ever hoped to have. The hardest part, is trusting that wherever you are right now is always the perfect place for you to be in the present moment, and believing that you will soon have what you can not see, hear, touch, smell, or taste.

But, it will be delayed, somewhat, in coming to us if we can not get a handle on our emotions, by getting rid of the negative knee-jerk reactions we have to our problem situations, such as impatience, doubt, anger, and fear. From improving the outcomes of our relationships with others to bettering our career outlook, this book can help you sort through the muck that must be cleared from your mind that holds you back from getting what you want.

Emotions, they are the biggest part of who we are. We can learn how to understand their meanings and to manage our lives for the best possible experience we came here to get, in living more fulfilled lives on this planet we call 'Earth'.