Mental health, just like physical health, isn’t just the absence of disease, but a state of well-being that we constantly strive for. And mental health practitioners can help us improve our mental health skills.
A lot of these skills you’ve acquired growing up. There are skills about social interactions like turn-taking, sharing, reciprocity and empathy. There are also skills about self-regulation and ‘coping’, like eating chocolate, talking to friends, journaling, exercise and using positive affirmation.
Most of the time, the skills we have work well, when we remember to use them. But sometimes we begin to rely on a few too heavily, like emotional eating or regularly shouting to be heard by our partner. Sometimes we encounter a new situation, where our old skills don’t see to be enough, like police officers working in hostage negotiation.
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