Mental Health Recovery
Mental health recovery is most effective when you- the person challenged with it both understand and is empowered to take the right steps.
The UK passed the Mental Health Discriminatory Act into law in 2013
Our stress responses when overloaded leads to mental illness from which too many people never recover from.
Animals spend short periods of time in the sympathetic range. The para sympathetic is the nervous system’s brake. You are longest in the para sympathetic during sleep. It’s your mental strength that will keep you going in the sympathetic. The sympathetic is the accelerator.
It’s far easier to digest food in the para sympathetic mode of relaxation. Your immune system is most powerful in the rest and digest [para sympathetic] mode.
Allow yourself sufficient compensatory recovery in every environment. We are hard-wired for the sympathetic mode to experience stress. It’s through nurturing that we develop our para sympathetic nervous system.
Breathing is key to triggering the relaxation response.
It’s critical in the animal kingdom to go from flight/fright to rest/digest mode.
Overdose on cortisol or cortizones can be dangerous. It shrinks the hypo-campus.
Your stress response narrows your focus of attention.
Two important hormones of sleep deprivation are
Ghrelin – appetite inducer
Leptin – appetite suppressant
In effect, you either become obese or too thin as a result of sleep deprivation.
Questions you should ask yourself
What are your automatic responses?
What is your coping behavior?
Don’t confuse stimulants with proper physiological recovery. MEDICATION PROVIDES STIMULANT. This unfortunately introduces a control element to unscrupulous people .
Do not confuse mental strength with resilience. Sometimes it can be your excellent qualities that cause you to fall ill when you are not careful enough and let yourself to be wound up in frustration
We cycle between flight/fight and rest/digest every 90 minutes. It’s worth bearing this in mind when developing your mechanism for coping and proper physiological recovery.
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