The term Mental Health is all over the place right now. I think that’s because in large part we know that poor mental health is no joke. In fact, it’s a killer. The statistics around suicide are deeply concerning. The sad reality is that many of us will know someone either directly or indirectly individuals and families impacted by this – and famous examples of celebrities losing their battle with poor mental health have been a catalyst for change encouraging people to talk.
Such high-profile stories have generated far more awareness around poor mental health, but having lived through multiple lockdowns, many of us will have knowingly experienced what poor or impacted mental health actually feels like…and perhaps for the first time experienced what it feels like to be out of control, anxious, irritated and frustrated by the things that were happening to us without any ability to change the situation for ourselves.
We all react to the stresses of daily life, physically and mentally. When we experience or react to physical stressors however we tend to respond very differently than when we experience or react to mental stressors. If we wake up with a headache in the morning, we are equipped with the knowledge of how to move toward being physically healthy and we take steps to do so – we drink a glass of water, go for a walk, or take some medicine, all to feel better.
However, our responses to reacting to mental stressors tend to be very different. Either because we don’t have the knowledge to know what to do, because we are ashamed of how we feel, or because we think we need to ignore feelings of sadness, or low mood, or anxiety in the hope that they might go away. So often our immediate response to mental stressors is not to move toward feeling healthy, but to say nothing. If we took the same approach to our physical health, we would be in a lot of trouble, very quickly!
If we cut ourselves we immediately move for the first aid kit to stop the bleeding and prevent infection – if we did nothing – losing blood or a wound going septic are both potentially fatal!
So all that points to why Mental Health and Physical Health are important…but why Mental Fitness?
Quite simply – every member of this gym isn’t just interested in good mental health. You have each made the positive and conscious choice to join a community of people who have joined the life journey of becoming and remaining physically fit. You have made changes to your routine or your diet, you have joined regular classes and you have probably begun to educate yourself about how the body works and understand the things you can do in order to reach your goals. You are seeking to be Physically Fit in order to be resilient to the physical stresses that you face throughout your life.