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The New Paradigm of Mental Health

1/22/2020

The world of mental health is changing. If you’ve been on any of the major social media platforms lately you may have discovered one of the plethora of psychologists, therapists, psychotherapists or psychiatrists leading the move towards a new paradigm of mental health. They are making their work accessible, available to the masses, and shift the emphasis towards the idea that with the right tools you have the ability to heal yourself.

The old paradigm believes depression is caused solely by a chemical imbalance in the brain. It teaches that your struggles with mental health are hereditary, and that medication and talk therapy are the only ways to cope with it. The biggest message it tells us is that you can only ever hope to manage your mental health, and you can never cure or heal it.

Unfortunately, the majority of practitioners still follow this mindset.

The new paradigm looks at things differently, and empowers YOU in the process. It believes that symptoms of depression have multifactorial causes ranging from physical, emotional and even spiritual.

It follows the updated approach to genetics called epigenetics which has shown that the expression of our genes are affected by both our external and internal environment. This means genes aren’t fixed but can be switched on or off ,and you can affect this process through your lifestyle choices. Epigenetics consequently affects all areas of our health and wellness, including our mental health.

The new paradigm also addresses root causes by healing trauma, and shining a light on your life purpose. It has showed time and time again that total recovery is possible and teaches you the skills and awareness you need to heal yourself.

Yes, the new paradigm of mental health gives us the power to heal ourselves.

- It involves taking care of your body through the food you eat, nutritional supplements like Truehope EMP, regular exercise, a focus on good sleep, as well as nervous system regulation.
- It focuses on your mind by teaching you how to bring yourself into the present moment, to notice the subconscious programming you have picked up throughout your lifetime, and to understand the impact of your ego on how you feel everyday.
- It acknowledges the importance of your soul, and it’s need for play, community, genuine connections, having meaning in our lives, and the importance of time in nature.

The thought of healing yourself might seem overwhelming, which is perfectly normal especially when we’ve all been immersed in the old paradigm our whole lives. It happens slowly, step by step and with the support of a community of others who are working on it with you.

There are many free resources to get you started, and we’ve found many of them on Instagram (sign up for free). We recommend learning from the psychologist Dr Nicole LaPera @the.holistic.psychologist, psychiatrist Dr Drew Ramsey @drewramseymd, therapists Lisa Olivera @lisaoliveratherapy and psychotherapist Sara Kuburić @millennial.therapist.
You will discover a whole network of further teachers from them!

Is Self Betrayal Affecting Your Mental Health?

1/15/2020

We live in a society of people who don’t trust themselves. We lack confidence, and feel out of control of our lives. When we can’t trust ourselves, our abilities and decisions we start to betray ourselves.

Self betrayal has become an epidemic.

When we’re growing up, we’re led to believe we need to be different in order to receive love. You might remember things like:
- “You’re too loud!”
- “Everything is ok, you’re just being too sensitive”
- “You’re going to be a lawyer just like your Dad”
- “You’re going to be a [insert sports team of choice] just like us”
- It’s keeping secrets for our parents like
- “Don’t tell Mom we stopped for ice-cream”
- Or it can be much bigger and involve acting as if abuse isn’t happening when it is.

Whenever we’re not our authentic selves, we betray ourselves. Whenever we hold back the tears because we’ve always been told we’re too sensitive, whenever we censor ourselves because we’re “too much”, and whenever we make choices based on “what our parents would have wanted” we are rejecting who we truly are and betraying ourselves.

When we’re taught self betrayal as children, we practice what we’re taught as adults. Psychologist Dr. Nicole LePera, known as The Holistic Psychologist, says signs of self betrayal are:
- Being indecisiveness
- Feeling out of control or stuck
- Ending up in relationships with people who betray themselves (and therefore you)
- Hoping to be saved, fixed or rescued
- Feeling resentment or bitterness towards others
- Continuously being overwhelmed by the feeling of not knowing where to start
- Constant need for approval
- Strong fear of criticism

How do you go about being the REAL you? How do you become your authentic self?

It starts with practicing being present and in the moment with how you think, and what you do. Our article How to Practice Being in the Present Moment has some great tips to get you started. It means setting a reminder to take your Truehope EMP, and taking care of yourself before you take care of others. Being your true self means noticing how you’re feeling, before you consider the reactions of others.

Being authentically yourself can often take courage when others are used to another version of who you are. Taking small conscious steps however, are small steps to better mental health and happiness.

How to Practice Being in the Present Moment

1/8/2020

Have you ever driven to work, and when you arrived realized you don’t remember how you got there? Were the traffic lights red or green? Did you stop at the stop sign? Did you slow down through the school zone? We’ve all been there, and unfortunately spend much of our day like this.

When we can drive to work but not remember it, we’re running on “automatic”. It’s like we’ve installed a computer program that’s operating in the background of our mind, going through the motions of your life for you.

Today we’re going to use this drive to work as an analogy for how we can practice living in the present moment.

It is possible to drive your car to work and remember every twist, turn, and stop sign you encounter on the journey. This way of being has several names. You might have heard of the idea of “being present”, “in the moment”, or fully “conscious”. They’re all referring to the concept of being fully aware of where you’re putting your attention. In any given moment you can be doing what you choose to be doing, thinking what you choose to think, and are aware of the feelings you’re experiencing as a result.

When you are fully present you:
- Are able to direct your attention to the road.
- Are aware when your mind slips away to think about your to-do list, and are able to bring it back to the current moment of being in your car to drive to work.
- Notice when you start feeling anxious about your big presentation that afternoon, and are able to bring yourself back to the present moment where there is no need to feel that way.

Automatic mode however is:
- Thinking about what has happened in the past, and bringing back all the thoughts and emotions without realizing it has happened. All you know is you’re suddenly sad, angry, or overwhelmed for example.
- Thinking about the future and allowing your imagination to paint a dark picture of what’s waiting for you. This often triggers stress hormones, racing thoughts, anxiety, and other negative sensations.

Being present in the current moment means mind and body can keep their attention on what’s happening right now, not what has happened in the past, or what may or may not happen in the future.

You can practice being more present with yourself and others:
- Throughout the day practice taking several deep belly breaths and notice 3 things you can see, touch, hear, smell, and taste (if possible in that moment).
- Observe and name how you’re feeling, and notice what you’re thinking about.
- Practice observing your thoughts and not judging them as good or bad. - Direct your attention to where you want it to be, not where it wanders on it’s own. Take control and bring it back to the present moment.

When we can start bringing our attention into the present moment, we can learn to be aware of what we’re thinking, how we’re feeling, and why. We can each begin to improve our mental health and be truly supportive of others by being truly present with ourselves, and to be completely present in a non-judgemental way with others.

Why You Need to Sleep More to Get Sick Less

12/18/2019

About one-third of Canadians get less sleep per night than is recommended for optimal physical and mental health. That's over 12 million people whose health is suffering because of a lack of sleep, or one people in three of your circle of friends!

Being under-slept has very real everyday effects on our immune system. The 2009 study “Sleep Habits and Susceptibility to the Common Cold” shows us that with poor sleep comes a greater likelihood of catching a cold.

The study discovered that poor sleep efficiency (the time you’re actually asleep during the time spent trying to sleep), and duration of sleep in the weeks running up to exposure to the viruses that cause the common cold were associated with a reduced resistance to the illness:
- People with less than 7 hours of sleep were almost 3 times more likely to actually develop clinical symptoms of a cold than those with an average of 8 or more hours of sleep.
- People with less than 92% sleep efficiency were 5.5 times more likely to develop a cold than those with 98% or more sleep efficiency. This essentially means that the more you struggle to fall asleep and the more you wake in the night, the more susceptible you are to catching the cold that’s circulating.

The researchers even checked their results by looking at other things that might influence the immunity of the participants in their study. They discovered that sleep was so fundamental to immune health that the season of the year, the existing antibodies participants had to viruses, body mass, demographic, socioeconomic status, psychological variables, and the wider health habits of the participants did not affect the results of the study.

This conclusion may be explained by the results of experimental studies that have demonstrated that sleep deprivation reduces the efficacy of parts of our immune systems. It reduces natural killer cell activity, suppresses interleukin-2 production, and increases levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines.

A full night’s sleep with good sleep efficiency improves immune function and increases stress tolerance.

Being under-slept is a significant and country-wide health problem, and is associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, depression, anxiety, and getting injured.

Improving your sleep often means going counter to our cultural values of productivity and activity, and instead spending more time on rest and relaxation. For some it may require a focus on hormone balancing, stepping away from our digital devices, getting blackout curtains, building a new evening routine, or politely passing up some late night social invitations. It may mean building an exercise habit, or taking up meditation to calm a frayed nervous system.

But for all of us, it means getting to bed earlier to capitalize on the hours before 3am when our most rejuvenating sleep happens, and fiercely protecting our sleep rather than pushing it aside to fit more and more into our days.

Author

We want to provide nothing but the highest quality information and advice for our followers to improve their health, which is why at Truehope Canada, we're happy to say our writer is a Certified Life Coach and Registered Holistic Nutritionist.
We know, we're excited about this too!

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