A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Ignore

July 8, 2007

A couple of weeks ago I started a series of posts called Mind Body Spirit. In the original introduction I talked about the general idea behind the theory: the experience of being human can be divided into three broad categories - Mind, Body, and Spirit. All three components work together to bring about a well-rounded, healthy person.

The Mind

“Mind” is a broad umbrella category that covers several specific components. In the original post of the series, I described mind in this way:

“Mind represents just what you’d think it would - the human mind. A lot of diverse aspects of our lives fall under the mind category, including: mental health, intelligence and learning, emotions, outlooks, perceptions, behaviors, and the ways in which we bring these things together to process the world around us.”

But what does that really mean?

In and of itself, “mental health” represents a lot of things. To be mentally healthy, one must be in command of all their mental faculties. They must be self-aware and they must be in control of their emotions, behaviors, and thought processes. They must be able to process the world around them in rational, logical, and realistic ways.

A person with mental instabilities is likely to view the world in a skewed way. They’re likely to suffer from wild emotional swings (depression - mania, lethargy - anger, etc). In a lot of situations, irrational or illogical thinking sets up a self-fulfilling cycle of reaction, response, and consequence.

Intelligence is also a part of the mind category. While it’s quite possible to be happy and live a fulfilling life without advanced education or even average intelligence, our cognitive abilities do play a role in how we deal with the world. People living with MR, for example, are often unable to take care of themselves independently or make rational, logical decisions. They often need help with even some of the most basic life skills and, while they are often very happy people, they’re not always capable of processing the world around them in the same ways that the general population does.

I really could go on and on about the importance of a healthy Mind. But there’s literally so much involved in it that it would take pages and pages of writing to even scratch the surface (heck… a big chunk of this website is dedicated to exploring the things that make up the “Mind” sphere).

Needless to say… without a solid mental foundation… the world would be an even stranger place than it already is.

The Interplay: How does Mind play into Body & Spirit?

To see how all of these spheres tie together, look at how Mind can affect Body & Spirit:

• A person with mental illness is far less likely to take care of themselves physically. They often fail to follow a proper diet… they let hygiene go… and they don’t seek help for physiological conditions (or they seek help for conditions that don’t exist).  They often engage in reckless behaviors that put them in physical harm or abuse their bodies with illicit drugs, medication, or self-mutilation.
• Mind and Spirit are infinitely connected. People with irrational or maladaptive thought processes often fail to see a purpose to life (hence high suicide rates). They may become obsessively fixated on religion or even suffer from fears of religious retribution or persecution. They may also begin to believe in mystical or supernatural entities/abilities/etc that do not exist. In fact… without Mind, Spirit cannot really exist in a healthy way.

On the same token, Body & Spirit both make a healthy mind possible:

• Someone who doesn’t take care of their body physically is far more likely to suffer from mental instability. Poor diet, malnutrition, drug use, and any number of other “body” related behaviors or habits can contribute to poor mental health. You can see the sell-fulfilling cycle at play here: Poor Body leads to poor Mind… which further perpetuates poor Body… over and over again.
• As I’ve said in the past, a large portion of the patients I used to work with were dealing with spiritual torment of some kind. Some of them thought God or Jesus or another deity were after them. One girl thought she was a prophet (maybe she was) and slashed her dog’s throat to punish herself for some perceived religious faltering. Others would be so at a loss with their inability to figure out a purpose or meaning or explanation for life that they’d decided it must have none.

These are really just a few examples. But as you can hopefully see, Mind Body and Spirit are not isolated aspects of our lives. They interplay with one another and can have a lot of influence on each other. If we ignore the Mind aspect of our lives, not only do we suffer mentally… but we also have added stress and hardship from the Body and Spirit parts of life.

This post is part of a series called “Mind Body Spirit“. Visit the main series page for more posts in a series.

Posted in Human Nature, Noteworthy, Series

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