You’re Treating Your Mental Health Backwards

Your mind evolved to take care of your body, not the other way around.

Most of us live in reverse. We care for our bodies in pursuit of long, healthy lifespans. We train our bodies to support our athletic hobbies. When you feel down, a therapist like me might encourage “behavioral activation” (think going for a walk) as a way for your body to help your psyche feel better. But…what if all of this is backwards?

Why Mental Health is Physical

You’re familiar with evolutionary theory, and Darwin’s contribution to the theory, “natural selection.” Adaptive changes are more likely reproduced and become dominant over time.. A mind, as Robert Sapolsky argues in Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers and elsewhere, is a great adaptation for managing threats, energy, reproduction, and social hierarchy.

Minds take a great deal of energy. They are costly, in terms of adaptations, so they must be quite the tool. And what an adaptation it was! Developing a mind led to consciousness, poetry, Spongebob, concertos, dinner etiquette, stand up comedy, and psychologists writing blogs (what an inspired adaptation). But we mustn’t forget that minds emerged as a way to survive and reproduce more effectively.

Of course, you should not ignore your subjective experience. It is helpful for maintaining your survival/reproduction–it is also how you experience the entirety of your life. The very capacity to consider downgrading your subjectivity is evidence of how unique this ability is (compared to, say, your skin’s ability to get goosebumps when you’re cold). Your mind may have developed as a tool for one purpose, but it is a tool that has…and I’m so sorry for this…taken on a mind of its own. It is the tool through which you think and feel and relate and experience your life. Sounds important.

How Physical Health Impacts Your Psyche

However, the state of your mind must be evaluated in light of its original purpose. Are you feeling depressed? Anxious? Indecisive? Think about how your mind is trying to support your body:

Depressed? Go for a walk. Cannot overstress this: get some sleep and go for a walk (preferably outside). These help just about everyone as they help your body–this is why exercise helps depression. Want to feel even better? Go lift weights (with approval from your doctor). Join a dance class. Eat healthier. Don’t just move your body a bit–get healthy. Want to feel even better than that? Explore how your mind facilitates (or hinders) your social relationships (which are good for your survival and reproduction). Want more? Find your reasons to keep your body (and your community and/or offspring) going. You could call this “meaning” or “purpose.” It’s good for survival and reproduction. And good for your mind too. Sleep, move, connect, and make meaning.

Anxious? Why does anxiety feel so physical? Threats. Evaluate the perceived threat to your survival and reproduction. Sound a bit grand? Evaluate threats to your relationships, your self worth, or to your resources (e.g., food and water, shelter, time, money, social capital). Determine if a threat actually exists, or if this is mostly a perception problem. Think of a highschooler with a pimple right before prom–perceived danger to social relationships, but unlikely to actually shatter a social network. 

Indecisive? Perhaps your mind is struggling to support your body. This may be in part a connection problem. Antonio Damasio described how emotions help make decisions by biasing options (e.g., ”this feels right/wrong”) and how emotions are interpretations of body signals (see his work Descartes Error and the “somatic marker hypothesis”). Therapy can help you get a clearer understanding of what your body is telling you, and likely help your ability to make difficult decisions. 

Mental-Health and Body-Health Co-Exist

If your mind is feeling badly, perhaps it’s because your body is feeling badly and/or your mind’s attempt to support the body is going badly.

There are obvious limitations to this. Your body may be doing great and you still feel terrible, or you may have chronic pain or illness and feel great. You may have deep, satisfying relationships and still feel completely alone. Everything may be going right as per the original purpose of the mind, and you still feel awful. There is room for the talking cure (psychotherapy) to make a difference for your psyche beyond what improving things for you body could do. Your work in therapy matters. The mind isn't just a mirror for the state of your body, but a massively a complex thing indeed.

The complexity of your nervous system is why I believe it is important to work with someone who knows what they’re doing. Such a person is a licensed therapist and in good standing with their state, and has as much training and experience as possible. This is only a starting point. I have the highest degree possible in clinical psychology and over a decade of experience, but I know plenty of folks with less training or experience who are extraordinary clinicians. Yet, without therapy being your career, you have much less information available to you–so start with credentials and experience and go from there–if you want to start, schedule a free consult with me here.

There’s a saying (often misattributed to Einstein) that “if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will think itself stupid.” If you are judging your mind by whether it keeps you happy, then you are judging it on the wrong merits. Fish eventually evolved legs and climbed trees. Our minds may, in fact, be capable of “climbing trees” (regularly being happy, satisfied, or joyful), but it remains useful to account for the original role of a mind: a support for the body.

So, check in with your body. Make sure your mind is supporting your body. And if you want to go further–to be happy, satisfied, and joyful–accept that you are extending beyond the original parameters which will take work and some help.