2023-02-17

Last updated Aug 15, 2023

#psychology #personaldevelopment

Now that you know more about habits, stress & mental health, write around a 500 to 700-word advice column on addressing ==ONE stress, psychological injury, or “bad” habit.== Be sure to use the techniques I’ve shared about ==claim-reason-evidence-counterarguments==, and ==how to write an introduction.== Please underline your main argument/claim.  Bonus points will be given to those who share this in public on their Facebook, IG, or blog. If you share it, show a screenshot of your page with some comments. You may include this screenshot at the end of the essay. It will be counted as an essay.

1. Habits when dealing with Negative emotions
   1. Can you identify a habit you do when experiencing the feelings of loneliness, failure, or rejection?
      1. What are the usual triggers for this? (CUE)
      2. What do you do when this is triggered? (ROUTINE)
      3. What do you get out of doing this action? (REWARD)
   2. Do you want to change this habit? Why?
   3. What’s your plan of action now?
   4. Do you believe you can pull through your plan?
2. Habits when dealing with stress
   1. What is your relationship with stress?
   2. Have you been stressed in the past month?
   3. What are your habits when dealing with stress?
   4. Do you want to change this habit? Why?
   5. What’s your plan of action now?
   6. Do you believe you can pull through your plan?

• Bad habit: Emotional bleeding
• How to Cards/Stop emotional bleeding
  • Revive your self-esteem, and protect it
• Possible insights
  • seeing self-validation? self-love? as mental health exercises…..which I struggle with
  • sports psychology approach? emotional or mental fitness
    • “If you want to lift heavier objects, you need more physical strength. Large biceps and a strong back will go a long way toward helping you do the heavy lifting. Well, the same can be said for your mental muscles. ==If you want to be able to tackle bigger challenges and overcome more obstacles, you need more mental strength.==”
    • progressive overload mental heallth -> habits
      • can be related to Cognitive load too
  • Eastern approach? Magic manifestation approach? The law of attraction
  • Portraying
• Concepts
  • Cards/Psychological fitness; Cards/Mental fitness; Emotional fitness
  • Cards/Neuroplasticity
• References
  • Sources/Hit the Emotional Gym - The Founder’s Framework for Emotional Fitness
  • Why our minds need progressive overload too
    • “We need to view meditation, jotting down our thoughts or a quiet moment to ourselves as our ==mental progressive overload.== It needs to be as much a part of our daily routine as going to the gym or preparing healthy snacks. Again, the payoff won’t be immediate but it will in the long-term.”

Mental Fitness

Mental fitness can be defined as having the skills and practices to  improve and sustain your own state of well-being and perform at your best. It involves developing core psychological resources and becoming aware of how you think, behave, and feel. When you are mentally fit, you lean into challenges and feel able to navigate change and stress, no matter what day-to-day life presents. Mental fitness enables you to reconnect with what it is that you love in your work and your life. Mental fitness is more than the absence of mental illness. It’s beyond self-care and recovery. It’s about growth and thinking, feeling, and performing at your best in all areas of your life. Mental fitness is developed by equipping people to treat  mental health as something that they can strengthen and improve. When you’re physically not well, you know it — the symptoms come on and you know it’s time to get some sleep (and a cup of tea). When you’re  experiencing anxiety, depression, or a sense of languish, you don’t always know it. When it comes to our physical health, many of us aspire for more than just to get back to “fine” — that is, the absence of undesirable symptoms. We know that, ==even if we’re not ill, we can increase our fitness and health to achieve a goal or level of performance.== Our physical fitness can be integral to our desired way of life.  The same can be true of our mental health.  Fine is just fine — it’s not thriving. And that’s not good enough. With our mental health, we don’t even know the upper bounds of how fit we can become. ==Mental fitness embraces the idea that individuals can develop a positive mental state that exceeds “fine.”==

Mental fitness, though, means much more than living without pain or disability. It is about building strength and improving your well-being. Someone who doesn’t have an ailment may still not be at the level of fitness that they want to be at, and that may impede their goals. Put another way, just because you’re not ill  doesn’t mean you can climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

Changing our focus from mental health to mental fitness means asking people about what — and how — they want to be. What are you training your mind for — that is, what is your mountain?  The conversation starts with a new definition of mental health that embraces the idea that people can be more or less mentally fit. Everyone’s needs and journey to mental strength and fitness is unique. But with support, everyone can be the best, healthiest version of themselves.

Our brains carry thoughts along neural pathways. These pathways are like ruts that we create and reinforce over time. You can think of these as your brain’s “habits.” When we repeat a thought pattern many times, that neural pathway gets reinforced. This makes it more likely that you will repeat the pattern in the future. Sometimes, these thought patterns can make us react in ways that aren’t helpful. Instead of reacting to the current situation, we take well-worn pathways to past behaviors. It’s as if you were taking your usual route to work, taking the same exit on autopilot — even when you meant to stop somewhere else. As you build mental fitness, you’ll have the awareness, strength, and agility to identify options. You can choose another route instead of responding automatically. Improving your mental fitness is good for your brain’s  neuroplasticity, which benefits our emotions and memory. Automatic thinking comes from our survival brain, the limbic system. It is constantly scanning the environment for threats and has been throughout evolution. We inherited the limbic system from chimps and it can protect us. But, left unchecked, it can give rise to thoughts and actions that don’t align with our values and our goals. The good news is that we can reprogram our brains. With the same kind of practice that we use to build muscle, we can create neural pathways that better serve us.

Emotional push-ups

One possible solution, says clinical psychologist  Emily Anhalt, is to add an “emotional workout” to your self-care regimen. “Just like working out prevents high blood pressure and heart disease, emotional fitness can be a proactive stance toward stress management,” says Anhalt, the co-founder of  Coa, a gym for mental health. In Coa’s virtual classes, Anhalt and her team teach exercises called “emotional push-ups,” which are small ways to work on yourself each day. “The purpose is to strengthen your mental health muscles so that you’re in a better position to face life’s challenges,” she says.

Being interviewed recently, Dr Anhalt defined Emotional Fitness as ‘the ongoing proactive practice of strengthening your mental and emotional health, helping build the tools we need to face and move through the inevitable ups and downs of life’. The ambition cited was ‘to make working on your mental health as accessible and proactive a practice as working on your physical fitness’ and one example used was that of ‘emotional push-ups’ _A regular push up is a small physical exertion that puts you a little bit outside of your comfort zone - it helps you grow and when you do them often not only will you be able to do more push-ups you’ll also be able to do more of other things, as well as preventing (physical) issues down the line. The emotional equivalent is ==putting ourselves a little bit outside of our emotional comfort zone so that we can grow and do more emotional work and also prevent mental health issues later.== _

Three tips:

• Build resilience with a self-esteem file
• Increase productivity by scheduling a worry hour

These include striking up conversations with strangers, saying thank you, or accepting compliments without deflection.

Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria

Instead of relying on avoidance or the negative expectancy that fuels  anxiety, understand that your responses to rejection follow a pattern. Your goal is to create new patterns of responding, thinking and behaving to reduce both the perceptions of rejection and the reactions when it actually occurs.

1. Question (Dear Bianca…)
   1. Hook/Context: I have ADHD, and RSD has been ruining my life…
      1. Emotional dysregulation
      2. Mention emotional bleeding and rumination
   2. Question: How do I deal with rejection sensitive dysphoria?
2. Advice (Dear Reader…)
   1. Answer/Thesis statement: Workout your mind. Emotional fitness
   2. Reframe the mind as a muscle
      1. Explain Cards/Neuroplasticity
   3. Dealing with rejection
      1. Default response to rejection: habit of rumination
         1. Cue: can be triggered by perception of rejection/criticism from others, or by a sense of falling short
         2. Routine:
            1. negative thought spirals/catastrophic thinking
            2. self-punishment: negative self-talk, self-harm
            3. self-isolation
            4. coping mechanisms: binge-eating, scrolling social media
         3. Reward:
            1. “Positive”
               1. Distraction
               2. Rationalization
               3. catharthic release
               4. “The purpose of anxiety is it makes us feel like we are going to be able to handle a tough thing if it happens. But especially now, there’s so much uncertainty, so we have no ability to know what will happen. It sends people into a tailspin that’s not really useful”
            2. Negative
               1. even lower self-esteem
            3. These tactics are called  “defenses,” which are thoughts and behaviors that keep us from feeling the unbearable. But when we solely rely on defenses, we avoid feeling our emotions, which hinders our ability to process them.
      2. Instead, Cards/Stop emotional bleeding.
      3. Coping strategy 1: distraction
         1. replace the habit
      5. Do the following workouts:
         1. Journalling/writing
            1. “self-reflection push-up.”
               1. This push-up uses the “3 Js, which stand for join, jealous and judge” to guide you. Ask yourself if the other person’s behavior is something you also do (join), are envious of (jealous) or criticize (judge).
            2. Befriend your feelings with “affect labelling”
         2. Meditation
            1. “As a marathon runner, I was always in the habit of taking rest days to let my body recover. These daily 30-minute meditations feel similar—I’m giving my brain a break from all the noise and my mental health has never been better”
   4. Preventative care (for future rejections)
      1. Change your response to failure. How?
      2. Mindfulness
         1. Acknowledging discomfort?
      3. Rejection exposure therapy
         1. Talk to strangers more
      4. Reviving your self-esteem.
         1. Affirmations
         2. Gratitude
            1. remember times you’re persevered, remember your strengths, remember happy moments
3. Summary
   1. Aspire not just to be fine, but to be fit

1. Ask
   1. Context: ADHD
   2. Question: How can I conquer rejection sensitive dysphoria?
2. Advice
   1. Thesis statement: To become resilient against rejection, you must actively dedicate time to working on your emotional fitness
   2. Physical health is like emotional health
      1. What is emotional fitness?
      2. Why is emotional fitness important?
         1. A lack of illness does not mean that you have good physical health; you could still be physically weak or eating unhealthily. Preventive care is crucial — when you work on your physical fitness, you get stronger and you’re less likely to get sick later.
         2. Emotional health is similar. Many people wait until they’re having debilitating anxiety before they start to think seriously about taking action. Maintaining emotional fitness is an ongoing, proactive practice that increases self-awareness, positively affects relationships, improves leadership skills and prevents mental and emotional health struggles down the line. Think about it less like going to the doctor and more like going to the gym.
         3. “That one hour a week you set aside to tend to your emotional health frees up so many hours that would have otherwise been spent on thoughts that were subtly pulling you away from your work.”
      3. How does it work?
         1. our brain is also a muscle
         2. Cards/Neuroplasticity: the brain’s ability to change in response to new experiences.
         3. Neuroplasticity is a two-way street
            1. Traumatic experiences like rejection can cause the brain to use maladaptive pathways
            2. Neuroplasticity can also be used in ways to help individuals overcome stressful and traumatic experiences (connect to emotional pushups?)
   3. We can build fitness through “emotional pushups”
      1. Definition: A regular push up is a small physical exertion that puts you a little bit outside of your comfort zone - it helps you grow and when you do them often not only will you be able to do more push-ups you’ll also be able to do more of other things, as well as preventing (physical) issues down the line. The emotional equivalent is putting ourselves a little bit outside of our emotional comfort zone so that we can grow and do more emotional work and also prevent mental health issues later.
      2. Connect to Cards/Neuroplasticity
      3. Strategies:
         1. Self-awareness: Emotionally fit people are self-reflective.
            1. Journalling for self-reflection
            2. Seek external support: friends, counsellors, and therapists
         2. Mindfulness: Emotionally fit people can sit with and process through discomfort.
            1. Yoga/meditation to build up tolerance for discomfort
               1. This can then be applied to rejection exposure therapy?
            2. Gratitude
         3. Resilience: Emotionally fit people desire to grow more than they desire to to avoid criticism or failure. (creating a strong sense of self)
            1. Start a self-esteem file on yourself: creating a stockpile of past praises and success
            2. Talk back to your harsh inner critic
      4. Reminder: try not to do all these push-ups all at once. Instead, try to fit one in your routine slowly
         1. Related to habits
         2. Cognitive load
         3. progressive overload
3. Summary
   1. Instead of trying to avoid rejection (which is impossible), become capable enough to face it head-on
   2. Aspire not just to be emotionally fine, but to be emotionally fit

Question: “How can I conquer rejection sensitive dysphoria?”

1. Context of Advice
   1. Thesis statement: To become resilient against rejection, you must actively dedicate time to working on your emotional fitness.
   2. What is emotional fitness?
   3. Why is emotional fitness important?
   4. How does emotional fitness work?
2. Advised Strategies
   1. Emotional fitness can be built through “emotional push-ups”.
   2. What are emotional pushups?
   3. Here is a list of strategies you can use to help develop the following characteristics: self-awareness, mindfulness, and resilience.
   4. One way you can develop self-awareness is doing self-reflection through journalling. Another way you can do this relying on external support: family, friends, counsellors, therapists.
   5. One way you can develop mindfulness is by starting a yoga or meditation practice; this will help you increase your tolerance with discomfort. Another way you can do this is writing a gratitude list daily; this will help with deemphasizing negative thoughts.
   6. One way you can develop resilience is by creating a file of your past praises and success so that you can look back on them during tough times. Another way you can do this is talking back to your harsh inner critic.
3. Summary of Advice
   1. Instead of trying to avoid rejection (which is impossible), become capable enough to face it head-on
   2. Aspire not just to be emotionally fine, but to be emotionally fit

Rejection is a difficult emotion to grapple with, but it is something that we all face at one point or another in our lives. From job rejections to romantic breakups, the sting of being rejected can leave us feeling helpless and unsure of ourselves. However, with a bit of work and dedication, it is possible to become more resilient against rejection and build up your emotional fitness.

Emotional fitness refers to a person’s ability to manage and regulate their emotions in a healthy and constructive way. It involves developing skills such as self-awareness, mindfulness, and resilience, which can help us deal with the ups and downs of life. Emotional fitness is important because it allows us to be more in control of our emotions, and not be overwhelmed by them.

So, how does emotional fitness work? It involves actively working on our emotional health, just as we would work on our physical health. One way to do this is through what I call “emotional push-ups”. Just as physical push-ups help to build strength and endurance, emotional push-ups help to build emotional strength and endurance. This involves intentionally practicing skills that will help you become more emotionally fit.

Here are some strategies that you can use to help develop self-awareness, mindfulness, and resilience:

Self-awareness: One way to develop self-awareness is through self-reflection. This can be done through journaling, which allows you to examine your thoughts and feelings in a structured way. Another way to develop self-awareness is by relying on external support, such as family, friends, counselors, or therapists, who can provide you with feedback and insights about your emotional state.

Mindfulness: One way to develop mindfulness is by starting a yoga or meditation practice. These practices help you to become more aware of your thoughts and feelings, and to cultivate a sense of calm and clarity. Another way to develop mindfulness is by writing a gratitude list daily. This helps to shift your focus away from negative thoughts and toward positive aspects of your life.

Resilience: One way to develop resilience is by creating a file of your past successes and praises, which you can refer to during tough times. This helps to remind you of your strengths and capabilities, and can give you a boost of confidence when you need it most. Another way to develop resilience is by talking back to your harsh inner critic. This involves challenging negative self-talk and replacing it with more positive and affirming thoughts.

In summary, the key to becoming resilient against rejection is to actively work on your emotional fitness. Instead of trying to avoid rejection (which is impossible), become capable enough to face it head-on. Aspire not just to be emotionally fine, but to be emotionally fit. By practicing emotional push-ups and developing skills such as self-awareness, mindfulness, and resilience, you can become more in control of your emotions and better equipped to deal with life’s challenges.

Rejection is an ineradicable part of our lives. While it is already a difficult emotion to grapple with, some struggle with it more than others — particularly those with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD). One of the most understated symptoms of ADHD is emotional dysregulation, which can manifest as rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD): extreme emotional sensitivity and pain triggered by perceived or actual rejection, teasing, or criticism (Dodson, 2022 & 2023). What distinguishes RSD from normal emotional responses is this unbearable intensity; it is often experienced as a “physical” wound, making the afflicted feel like they were stabbed in the chest. When internalized, RSD leads people to subject themself to negative thought spirals; when externalized, it causes people to explode at whatever is responsible for their pain. To avoid this unpleasant emotional response, people cope in a variety of unhealthy ways: people-pleasing, giving up on trying, and overachieving. While these defense mechanisms can initially help with relieving internal stress, sole reliance on them prevents people from feeling their emotions, hindering their ability to process them. This enables the fear of rejection to overwhelm their minds, preventing people from making the most out of their lives.

They key to overcoming RSD is growing thick skin; this can be developed by maintaining emotional fitness: “an ongoing, proactive practice that increases self-awareness, positively affects relationships…and prevents mental and emotional health struggles down the line” (Anhalt, n.d.). Ryan Howes, Ph.D (n.d.), defines thick skin is “the ability to adapt and roll with changes and challenges common to life, as well as the ability to bounce back from particularly difficult times.”; consequently, those who have thin skin (whether it’s because of trauma or growing up sheltered) will end up experiencing all of life’s hazards with excruciating precision. Thus, emotional fitness is important because it serves as preventative care. Instead of getting stuck in the endless cycle of reacting to and healing from emotional pain, the emotionally fit have the strength to take on life’s challenges, making them less vulnerable to getting hurt by them.

What makes emotional fitness possible is neuroplasticity: the brain’s ability to change in response to new experiences and information. It does this by carrying thoughts along neural pathways, which are created and reinforced over time. These pathways act as habits; frequently occuring thought patterns reinforce the involved neural pathway, which in turns increases the likelihood of repeating that pattern (Cooks-Campbell, 2021). The brain’s neuroplasticity can work can work for us or against us. Traumatic experiences like rejection can make the brain develop and default to maladaptive pathways like rumination; conversely, the brain can also rewire itself to overcome such traumatic experiences (Schweig, 2022).

Better neural pathways can be built through “emotional push-ups”: small emotional exertions that puts one a little bit outside of their emotional comfort zone (Anhalt, 2022). The more push-ups one does, the more they grow outside of their comfort zone; this allows them to do heavier emotional work (e.g. processing rejection) and protect them from mental health issues in the future. Listed below is a list of exercises you can do to develop self-awareness, practice mindfulness, and build resilience (Anhalt, n.d.):

1. Reflect on yourself through journalling.
   1. If your mind often gets too loud, journalling can help clear out your brain. When you’re unloading all your problems and worries onto the page, you’re able to slow down and work through your thoughts and feelings.
   2. Looking back on previous entries can help you notice thought patterns in your life. After this, you can determine what’s keeping you in those patterns. Then, you can break these loops by coming up with solutions.
   3. attitude of gratitude… deemphasize negative thoughts
2. Take up a yoga or meditation practice.
   1. Through guided breathing and held poses, both yoga and meditation require getting comfortable with the uncomfortable — which is what mindfulness is all about.
   2. A greater understanding of your relationship with discomfort gives you more power to change your reaction towards it.
   3. So instead of automatically moving away from discomfort, try to sit with it for a while and show yourself that you can handle it. Silence doesn’t always have to be broken; issues don’t always have to be fixed immediately; difficult conversations don’t always have to be avoided.
   4. Remember: You do not need to break every silence, fix every issue immediately or avoid difficult conversations.
3. Shut down your harsh inner critic.
   1. You can support this healthy self by reminding yourself of your past wins, along with listening to positive affirmations.

Overall, instead of trying to avoid rejection (a futile task), become thick-skinned enough to tackle it. This capacity can be built through doing small exercises that challenge you emotionally; over time, these will turn into habits that help you adapt to difficult times. The main lesson you should take away from this column: never stop growing. Continue doing the recommended exercises even if you feel “fine”, because why settle for fine when you can be thriving (Eatough, 2021)? Emotional fitness is all about constantly striving to be the best version of ourselves; so aspire to be not just emotionally fine, but also emotionally fit.

Maintaining emotional fitness helps you not only reframe your approach to rejection, but also advocate for a better perception of emotional health. In order to address an emotional problem like RSD, it must first be understood. Good emotional health isn’t just determined by a lack of pain; one could still be emotionally sensitive or thinking unhealthily.

• ADHD, RSD
  • https://www.additudemag.com/rejection-sensitive-dysphoria-and-adhd/
  • https://www.additudemag.com/rejection-sensitive-dysphoria-adhd-emotional-dysregulation/
• https://psychcentral.com/blog/5-tips-to-develop-thicker-skin#1
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-habits-developing-emotional-fitness-mark-conlan/?trk=pulse-article_more-articles_related-content-card