The curious case of mental strength

Greg Jemmett 3 October 2020

'I've always had to be the mentally strong one'. I've heard this statement very often in a consultation with a patient. Most often the words are uttered with a sense of defeat, shame or resignation: a life event has made this person's seemingly unshakeable resolve, or unassailable fortitude feel less steady, and they believe they are now broken because they feel vulnerable, uncertain and overwhelmed.

As healthcare workers during COVID 19 many of us have found ourselves across from the desk of a colleague in a similar state. Perhaps we've felt more stigma or reserve than our patients in wishing to 'be stronger', because we're feeling scared and unfamiliar with the amount of vulnerability and uncertainty we've had to experience of late.

But whether for patient, or healthcare professional, what follows are some key tools and concepts to both learn and unlearn in moving forward from the space in which we find ourselves.

Firstly, mental resilience can be learned. Physical fitness can be improved upon, and the very same is true of our mental fitness. The belief that we can't change, unfortunately keeps us defeated, even before we even put our feet into the starting blocks. But as much as a thought can be our undoing, so too it can also be the very thing which offers us courage and hope. Often though this thought is something we need to hear of as a possibility in the story of another.

In my case, it was listening to Amy Morin's TEDx talk 'The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong'. Amy is a licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist, but she speaks mostly from her own lived experience in this clip. Her story is real and punctuated with tragedy, so she garners both pathos and respect. One of the key things she highlights is not just the learning of good mental habits, but rather focusing on weeding out our bad ones. Amy outlines these in three broad categories:

1. Unhealthy beliefs about ourselves
2. Unhealthy beliefs about others
3. Unhealthy beliefs about the world

The first can keep us trapped in self pity, problem focused and in a perpetual and perceptual state of magnified misfortune. Think of Miss Havisham in Dickens' 'Great Expectations': bitter, unhappy, living amidst rotting reminders of the past and unable to process and progress in her life.

The second can keep us paralysed, because we allow others to hold power over us in the comparison game. Envy, pride or bitterness toward the fortune or misfortune of others removes our sense of agency, and prevents us from doing the real comparative work: to who we were the day before. We may roll our eyes at someone's Facebook feed, but the thoughts behind those reactions are having an unintended negative effect on our mental thriving.

The third can have more profound seismic repercussions. Life very often doesn't work out as we wish it to: crooked people thrive, good people suffer, and hard work doesn't always stave off disappointment or produce the intended results we desire.

In the last category, Amy is honest about the difference between her 'head knowledge', as a mental health professional, and 'heart experience', as a grieving daughter and widow, in walking through difficult life experiences. She advises that good habits aren't enough to move forward and grow, but rather that we need to excise our bad ones no matter how small or seemingly insignificant they appear, because they siphon off mental energy, stunt our growth and keep us stuck.

This may start for some of us as it would with a small but significant move toward physical fitness: we may need to swop out one small bad habit (snoozing the alarm 3 times before we get up) and replace it with another small good habit (waking up 5 minutes earlier to do some gentle stretching to help us wake up).

Two practical suggestions to move forward then: switch your focus onto a point or three of gratitude, rather than the grind of the day. Then don't wait for the feeling to materialise first, but start acting like the person with the habits you want to possess, and allow the thoughts and feelings to follow the action.

We live in a world of assumed binaries: 'the mentally resilient' and the 'mentally not so resilient'. However, start with your daily mental pushups, make that list of bad habits to trim and even when you're feeling shaky and uncertain, allow yourself to become mentally resilient. One. Step. At. A. Time.