MENTALLY HEALTHY PERSONALITY?

Text by Ensad Miljković, CBT psychotherapist

What does it mean to be a mentally healthy personality? Before I try to answer this question, it may be best first to break down, explain and define the terms MENTAL, HEALTHY and PERSONALITY. Mental concepts mostly refer to our mind, that is, a person's emotional and intellectual response to external and internal reality. Alongside emotional and intellectual processes within the mind, mental concepts also affect and relate to our behavior, reactions and interaction with the environment, although we mostly focus only on thought and emotional processes. Now we can move on and expand to the concept of health. One definition of health is the absence of illness and pain. But if we follow this definition, if we are not seriously ill, is it enough to just be healthy!? We will come back to health. Finally we arrive at the last, perhaps key, concept, personality. Personality is a very complex and dynamic set of traits that includes abilities, a system of values, motives, emotional regulation, goals, intentions, ways of behaving and much more, which contributes to a unique person who has never been repeated before and will never be repeated in a completely identical structure. We can conclude that personality is a broader and more complex concept than mental. We might even say that in this definition, mental is a somewhat superfluous term.

When someone does something bad to us, or we do something bad to someone else, we often tend to draw general conclusions. Instead of saying bad behavior or an inadequate act, we tend to blacken the whole personality, like a drop of ink in water. From the previous definition you can see that personality is too complex a concept, and is it really fair and realistic to judge ourselves or others on the basis of one or even several isolated acts!? To build on the previous definitions, if a person makes one mistake, that would mean they have a mentally unhealthy personality. Such conclusions are in fact jumping to conclusions and completely wrong.

Before we continue talking about normal and healthy people, I will briefly mention psychologists and psychotherapists. Clients often say they envy me, because as a psychotherapist I probably have a perfect and peaceful life, without stress, and I never get angry. Mostly at that moment I burst out laughing. I am not even sure I would want to have such a life all the time, always. How can I know what sunshine is if I have never seen clouds!? After I have laughed until I cry, then, mostly in line with the limits and permission of my conversation partner, I share some experience of my own. Perhaps the experience when an angry speed camera photographed me even though I was absolutely not in the wrong while rushing to a meeting, or when during the renovation of my apartment I had a mini panic attack and wished some not so nice thoughts on my workers, or perhaps something from the inexhaustible source of work colleagues who earned doctorates in mobbing like wolves under Satan himself. Of course, a new topic always comes up from time to time. If you have a pulse, you will have a problem, sooner or later. The question is not whether a psychotherapist or any other person will have a bad day, an unpleasant experience or an inappropriate reaction, but how long they will stay in that state and what they will do about it! How much time they need to jerk themselves out of such a state! We come to the key word STATE!

State is a word that may be missing from the mentally healthy personality. A state denotes something that is current and temporary, while the previous concept, a mentally healthy personality, alludes to a lasting structure. Losing control over our thoughts, emotions and behavior is not proof that we are defective, but that we are simply human beings and have strayed a little off course. A human being who breathes and makes mistakes, with a wandering and sometimes slightly naughty mind like a dog on a leash that dashes after a cat from the neighborhood, but always comes back home. This does not free us from responsibility, far from it. We can always be a better version of ourselves, and that process never ends, it just keeps building.

When a person in an emotional crisis seeks help from a psychiatrist, they mostly receive the famous code and diagnosis, without much information about what it actually means. With respect to the exceptions, it is not always, but unfortunately it is a common case. Like a tattooed unique personal number that we receive at birth and use literally until our death. Unfortunately, it is rarely emphasized that the person is probably currently in a given state, and that just as it came, it can also pass. I have CURRENTLY, not I AM FOREVER! With hard work and proper guidance, a given state can certainly pass much faster. A state that mostly comes and goes, like mini tattoos that could be found inside chewing gum wrappers. A state that with the first rain, clean water, a warm word and a hug can be bleached out and disappear as if it had never even been part of our skin. We are not all the same, and so not all psychiatrists know how to recognize that surfacing does not mean we have reached the shore. Of course, some states are a bit more lasting, and ordinary rain cannot do much, a hug helps, but still something can at least be done, and we simply learn to live with the rain on our glasses as we walk through life.

Now we need to return to the term healthy. As I have already said, at the very least it is problematic, perhaps even somewhat dichotomous and exclusive. In that context, after a loved one leaves our life, regardless of how it happens, we feel sadness, and by this definition that would mean we are doing something wrong and that at that moment we are unhealthy. But how can we be unhealthy if we are behaving the best we can and simply listening to our body!? Instead of healthy and unhealthy, perhaps we should use the terms hindering and helpful. Hindering behavior, emotions and thoughts distract us from the things that matter to us in life and move us away from our values. Helpful emotions, thoughts and behaviors bring us closer to everything that is close to our heart, even when we are grieving, even when dark clouds are above us. Please note that even hindering parts of us can teach us something!

Personality is untouchable, just as it is. Part of personality is, among other things, behaviors, thoughts, emotions, sensations and a multitude of other aspects that are changeable. Personality is like a ship, and all the other segments are passengers who have likewise paid their fare honestly for our life journey. We can condemn a part of ourselves, but never our personality. We can live without a part of ourselves, but without personality, not so simply! Learn to build a compassionate mind as we sail through life. Such a mind will help us a lot more to get through the storm with less panic. As the old scriptures say, hate the sin, not the sinner.

Instead of a mentally healthy or unhealthy personality, perhaps we should focus on the unhelpful and helpful behaviors, thoughts, emotions, sensations, images and all the other segments that make up that famous, unrepeatable concept with countless possibilities that we call personality. Let us first recognize that this is a state that can pass. If it is unhelpful and burdensome, if it blocks us in life, let us see how to remove those obstacles. Even those unhelpful parts of us are still part of us. On some other occasion we will talk about how they are not the real enemy either, but simply passengers who deserve and have the right to travel on our life ship, only they should not steer from the deck, but simply sit somewhere in the cabin. And those unhelpful segments have their important place in our life and are there to teach us to appreciate the sun.

Reading a book starts from the first page. Personality is important, but at the beginning work on everything that is much closer within reach. As the verses say, grain by grain makes bread, stone by stone makes a palace. Start with individual behaviors, thoughts or emotions. Allow them to be there, but still try to find a way to see the other side of the board. Where you are now is a state. A state that, like black clouds, has gathered over your life. But a state that can likewise pass. A captain cannot drive away the storm and the restless sea with shouting, but can simply navigate carefully into some safer waters, at least until the next storm. As long as you keep trying to work on yourself, you are always a healthy personality, even when you do not succeed the first time, or the second or third time. To begin with, the intention followed by action is what matters.

If your attention has not already wandered and you are still here with me, I leave it up to you to make your own term, concept and conclusion if you really need them, whether it is a helpful state of personality, a healthy spirit or restlessness on the path to peace. If you need one more label to describe yourself, feel free to choose or invent a new term. What matters is that you do not give up on yourself, no matter how many times you stumble, and you certainly will stumble, sooner or later! Tell yourself clearly and loudly: I wish I did not feel and think this way RIGHT NOW, but I have the right and I can bear it, and this state says nothing about my personality. For my future, I want to steer myself step by step toward a life that is worth living.