Mental hygiene recommendations can make our life easier depending on us. As much as we lament the hectic pace and inconveniences of modern life something totally true, the way we live reality is up to us. In fact, if we carry out a quick honesty exercise, we could see that many of those inconveniences and negative thoughts of our day to day depend on us and how we deal with them. Obviously, problems exist, but being aware of our mental power we can simplify our lifestyle and many of our thoughts to live better. As explained by Adela Berrozpe Blasco, professor of the Degree in Psychology at UIC Barcelona and professional from Support, University Clinic of Psychology and Psychiatry, it is about carrying out mental sanitization processes and deconstructing more obsessive ways of thinking and functioning and improving toxic relational dynamics that have proliferated in an already obsolete culture, more based on excess and superficiality.” We spoke with her, with Laura Palomares, from Avance Psicólogos, and with José Elías, a psychologist who is an expert in laughter therapy, to learn how to make our lives and our way of thinking much easier.
Learn to manage mental loads
We have talked at length about mental burdens that daily decision-making that subtracts time and energy invisibly, but it is important to remember that the way we deal with them also depends on us. “The mental load can become unbearable. Throughout the day we are receiving millions of stimuli and experience millions of situations that can range from very mild to serious and from positive to negative. As soon as we get out of bed, things start to happen to us, the coffee maker doesn’t work, our toast burns, we’ve met a friend and she’s late… Without realizing it, in the search for explanations we make negative assessments of those events and all these destructive thoughts gain more strength and overshadow what is good for us. We are accumulating the experiences, both daily and historical at a vital level, that have caused us worries or traumas in the worst case, and we are also accumulating the unpleasant emotions that derive from them. In addition, we mix them, generating a mountain of psychic residues, made up of bad memories, negative thoughts and undifferentiated unpleasant emotions.” Explains Berrozpe Blasco.
Do things one by one
In the age of hyper-productivity, wanting to have everything under control and assuming multitasking as something normal also prevents us from emotional balance. Laura Palomares speaks of “irrational hyperactivity due to having everything already done, with no room for doing things one by one. This generates thoughts of anticipation of the future that increase anxiety and lower our performance. Better to attend to things one by one, if necessary in order of priority or urgency, but one after the other, knowing that this will generate the right rhythm without blocking us.” She explains.
Beware of information overload
In the era of WhatsApp groups and social networks, we are exposed to an overload of information that we must rationalize. Palomares recommends dosing the search for information and learning not to have everything under control in order to be in the present. To do this, it invites us to seek moments of quality and calm without screens in between: either with our loved ones, outdoors or doing activities that require us to keep our attention on a single stimulus such as crafts, dancing, playing sports or listening to music.
Less activities during the day
The psychologist José Elías spoke of trying to find time in the day to be with ourselves -one or two hours- And although we know that this is not always easy, reviewing all the activities we do daily and trying to distribute them, as Palomares points out, throughout the week it also helps us to simplify our day. It’s about learning not to want to take it all in at once.
How to recycle negative thoughts
Berrozpe Blasco calls these negative thoughts “psychic residues that burden us emotionally, making our lives not work as we wish”. For this reason, he invites us to learn to differentiate our thoughts and to recycle and even throw away those that are not necessary. The expert talks about discriminating if necessary with paper-those thoughts by doing the following:
Evaluate if the previously differentiated facts are important at a vital level and which ones are rationally insignificant. Always having as a reference what is important, what is essential, in terms of basic needs.
Measure the intensity of the emotions that we are feeling in each of the situations and assess whether they are appropriate. It is common to feel excessively for issues that do not have much importance.
Relativize, the value from an appreciative look, reduce emotional intensity and discard what does not build us positively, what is in our hands. Delegate to others the responsibilities and concerns that belong to them.
Avoid negative assessments of reality
It is interesting to know that on many occasions, most of the assessments we make of the things that happen to us do not correspond to reality. That is why the UIC Barcelona expert insists on the importance of making a constructive assessment of the facts in order to have an appropriate emotional response. “ We always have the possibility of making different evaluations and visions of the same event, in the same way, that we build a drama, we can build another reality that comforts us more.”
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