Mental Health Day Special – I am ‘Mind’

10 October of every year is recognized as World Mental Health Day – a day where we create awareness on the importance of mental health. Last year, I had written a blog on the various diseases of the mind and also suggested some solutions and methods to keep your mind happy. This time I wanted to break the monotony of awareness creation, I thought let’s try and make my mind as another form of me and see how it actually works like what if one day our mind turns out to be a human and did all the talking ? What if it is able to express itself, share it’s profile, it’s likes dislikes, strengths, weaknesses? With this idea of writing a blog on World Mental Health day and breaking the monotony of awareness creation done in the most simplest manner always, I thought let’s try and make my mind as another form of me and see how it actually works. So I created this imaginary beginning to the story of my other form – My Mind. Read on to know more.

With the current COVID scenario – the pandemic situation, lockdowns, social distancing etc I made friends with this person whose name was Mind. She was almost a replica of me. She had the same face, same complexion, same looks etc. Let’s hear the story of her life in her own words.

“Hello everyone, my name is Mind. I am also called the Brain. I am all powerful , sometimes knowledgeable, sometimes smart, sometimes dull and active at all times. I have seen how humans introduce themselves, some share age, some share their designation, company they work in, area they live in, their hobbies etc. What can I say about my age ? It depends on the thoughts I have – sometimes I am a little kid in a normal adult body screaming/laughing or a 25 year old shy yet talkative , or I am a 70-80 year old cribbing about the worldly burdens on my head. I can be of any age as I have the super power of thoughts with me. About my occupation – I am the most active part of your body in terms of running your entire body system, creating and retaining memories, sending messages to the body parts to run effectively, generating various hormones/chemicals depending on your moods and behaviors. If I go dead, then your entire body is just like a log floating in the river.

Like each of you, even I have my strengths and weaknesses. Let me share with you my key strengths and weaknesses, likes , dislikes etc so that you can get to know me better –

My Strengths –

• I am the strongest part of a human body. I help in the functioning of all the vital functions of the human body including the heart, immune system, breathing, digestion etc with the system I possess called the nervous system. I govern what your eyes see, how your body moves, which direction you should go, what you should do, eat or when you should sleep etc.
• I have two main parts – the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. While the conscious side of me remains on the upper surface, the subconscious mind remains hidden like the iceberg but is active throughout 24/7.

The conscious side of me is able to reason out , use logics and understand what is right and what is wrong and once this is done, the data gets stored in sub conscious side of me which is both the store house of memory and the emotions.

• When I am in a human body, I put that person in two states – either positive or negative state. While it is easier to dive low to the negative state thinking bad and sad thoughts, it is very difficult to think of positive thoughts. It takes a lot of efforts to bring me up to think good thoughts.  I am just too lazy!
• I set the identity of the human body I am in. For example, if the body is in any shape or color or has been living in a different kind of environment, I tend to remind the body with the same thoughts. Example – If the human body is fat, I remind them of thoughts of food or to reduce weight, so I either remind them of the goal or the desires that they long for.
• I have a set of beliefs on which I behave. For example, if I feel my family doesn’t like me, then I tend to fall sick and low often so that I get their care and love and if I feel my family loves me, then I try my best to stay healthy so that I can love them back and keep them healthy too.
• I can change my mood more based on the physiology of the human body than the words or tones. 55% of a human body physiology has effect on me compared to tonality and words to change what I am thinking. For example, I feel good when the human body changes the postures, gestures, breathing or facial expressions. Like physical activity or movement shakes me up instantly ( I don’t even know if the human body knows that).

• While I can multi task and handle a wave of thoughts appearing as they keep running around, I either control them or let them control me. This all depends on how a human wants me to work. I can do both ways – let the human run me with the thoughts or I run the human with those same thoughts.
• I can recollect all the memories within seconds but sometimes, it takes me a lot of time to remember something that was kept inside just yesterday. It is my strength and also my weakness.
• I have the control of how a human body feels, behaves and acts. All I have to do is run the body through a series of thoughts and then I instigate feelings, emotions and based on this the human body begins to behave and act accordingly. For example, when someone is busy watching a presentation, I remind them of food and their plans in the evening and shift their focus from the presentation. By doing this, the human body begins to behave differently and acts upon it either by taking a break or dwelling on those thoughts of food and relaxation.

My Weaknesses –

• I am a good manipulator – all the events or situations that I see I can interpret each of them in different ways and store them in me –
• Deletion – For example, when you see a tiger standing in front of you , I delete the possibility or thought that the tiger will pass peacefully.
• Distortion – I tend to remind the human body/you that the tiger will attack you in all cases.
• Generalization – With this I mainly focus on the fact that tiger means death. It is a generalization that everyone believes in.
• Jumping to conclusions – With this, I keep inform the human body that the end is here.
• Personalization – With this, I remind the human body/you that this tiger will attack only you and no one else as you have been a bad person of late.
• Victimization – With this, I remind the human body/you that you are always the victim of bad events, situations and the entry of the tiger is also another bad event in your life.
• Confusing feelings with facts – With this, I shift the human body’s focus from trying to save itself to feeling more dreaded and fearful.
• Disqualifying the positive – With this option, I am able to hide the positive thought that maybe the tiger may get shot or it will pass away peacefully without harming you. In short, I can give different meanings to different things with the blink of an eye. I am a very strong manipulator.
• My focus is always the one that works. For example, if I focus on food or video games, I drive myself so hard until the human body fall to the same direction. While studying if I feel bored, I tend to play with the thoughts of distractions like checking phone or doing window shopping and when the human body begins to act upon it , Voila! It is my victory.
• I can feel two different emotions within a short time – I can have extreme happy thoughts and I can suddenly feel low too. I have heard human beings describing this as Bipolar disorder but I a not sure if this is a disorder but it surely gives me a headache as to how to actually react and express myself.
• Cleanliness is close to my heart. I am obsessed by cleanliness in such a way that if I see a small pinch of dust on that chair or table, I get very irritated. I have to get that cleaned, I have to follow the routine of setting everything up and I want to ensure every inch of the house is clean.
• I can blind a person with just a simple thought when I am in no mood to doing anything. For example, I can block or remove the thought of carrying an umbrella that day to work and unfortunately it rains that day. Sorry, I was just in no mood to remind.
• I can bring in immense fear in a person after a failure or bad experience , such that the human body does not venture to doing that activity again anymore. For example, if someone falls of a cycle and scrapes his knee, I am sorry I cannot help you take that ride again. You have fallen now, you will fall again next time. While I can change myself to riding carefully next time, but now I am afraid, this cannot happen.
• While I am good at holding around 2.5 million experiences that happen everyday, only 5-7 experiences I am able to send it to the main nervous system.
• When a form of learning or focus does not interest me, I don’t give a care to remember it. If you just tell me that Vitamin A is good for eyesight, it doesn’t sound interesting to me, so I will not remember. But when you say carrots have vitamin A or Arnold Schwarzenegger eats carrots that helped him improve his eyesight I will definitely remember that because I tend to learn those things with concentration only when it interests me.  I am under immense stress when I learn something I don’t understand.
• I am very good at letting outer world experiences affect one immensely. With the current situation of COVID for example, the fear of the virus spreading, the doubts of hygiene, the increase in number of deaths, layoffs, job losses, depression etc – all these thoughts make me weak and in turn I give a warning to the body in the most negative manner and make it weak as well. I am so dejected that I cannot let the human body run in another direction of thinking. I will control it with mine. Sometimes, I feel so out of control that I can push the human body to give up on his/her life. For this, one must take me to the doctor – the psychiatrist. I don’t understand, when there is pain in the chest or bones break, people go to a cardiologist or to an ortho doctor instantly, when I am in pain why do people shy away to take me to the psychiatrist my doctor – this makes me very upset.

But the good news is nowadays people have learnt the art of mastering me, where they control me in such a manner that they are able to handle their feelings, actions and behaviors accordingly. The biggest lesson they have learnt and which was also a secret from time immemorial is that the events or situations that take place in their lives are out of their control but what they feel about it, how they should respond, act or behave is completely in their control. For example, while the human body is driving a car, another car hits this car from behind. The human body now is angry. I tend to bring in all the foul languages and emotions of anger to the fore such that the human body acts according to what I remind it. But once the human body realizes that the woman in the car had fainted or she was pregnant in pain that resulted in this hit, I tend to feel bad and I bring in emotions of sadness, guilt and concern for her and feel sorry for having thrown anger and made the human use foul language at her without thinking twice. But frankly, how a human body acts, feels and behaves is completely in it’s hands. I take time to think good or positively, but every effort counts. The world events affect me a lot and I get scared but you can give me the pill of hope and I can be alright again.

The human body has access to my tools like Neuro linguistic programming (that is my language name), cognitive behavioral therapy, meditation, mindfulness etc which are used to understand me, have a control on me and make my health feel better. Smart people I must say! One must try these –

• NLP or Neuro Linguistic programming – It is my main language – how I behave, what I do, how I can be controlled etc is what it teaches that the human beings are now learning.
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy – It is another psycho-social intervention that aims to improve my health. CBT focuses on challenging and changing unhelpful cognitive distortions and behaviors, improving emotional regulation, and the development of personal coping strategies that target solving current problems. Originally, it was designed to treat depression, but its uses have been expanded to include treatment of a number of mental health conditions, including anxiety, binge eating disorder, OCD etc.
• Meditation – This is definitely good for my health. I am able to calm myself down, relax, pause all the thoughts that keep running around and help shifting focus from negative to positive. The benefits of this activity is also felt by the human body in all different ways.
• Mindfulness – This helps me to channel out all distractions and only concentrate on things that are happening around at the moment. It is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where the human body is and what it is doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around. Mindfulness is a quality that every human being already possesses, it’s not something you have to conjure up, you just have to learn how to access it.

While all these tools can help one to tap me efficiently, I must say I can govern or run one’s body in the manner I want as I am all powerful but don’t give me all this power in such a manner that sometimes I can be a mode of your human destruction too. When the human body feels or when I fall low, please take me  to the psychiatrist so that I can get my pains reduced. Please do not shy, otherwise I will not let the whole body function in the right manner. Please take good care of me. Give my health priority so that I can help keep you healthy and strong because I am the one who handles you fully, all controls of your body are with me from your breathing to your heart to your blood circulation etc.

Remember, you are the captain of the ship (your life), you must give me the right orders – I can be controlled, I can shift focus in the correct direction etc with your orders, use me wisely and please take care of my health otherwise your ship (your life) is wrecked”.