So what is positive psychology, and how can it help me? 

No one is 100% mentally & physically healthy. We are all born with the best possible set of brain and body cells, often far from perfect. From day one, life affects each individual uniquely and differently. It creates a specific mental and physical framework for each of us, a specific blueprint unique to the individual. Each one of us has a fantastic set of colours. That is what makes the world a very colourful and exciting place.

We all cope with a spectrum of psychological and physical imperfections or ‘dis-ease’ daily across our lifespan. When we get stuck in a disease state, we often feel like any beneficial aspects of ourselves no longer exist. We become the disease itself. Whatever condition or disease we get into at any point in our lives, there are always healthy parts of us that can be activated and employed to help regain better health.

The human body and mind are an amazingly resilient and adaptable creation of nature with natural solid tendencies towards regaining health balance. We are like an acrobat walking on a thin line, constantly re-calibrating our well-being. That is what life and health are. When we get too chaotic (which often happens when life gets too busy, crazy or unjust and complicated) or when we get too rigid (which can occur when we desperately try “to be perfect” and follow strict health regimes, or when we get stuck in “our way of doing things” ) we can lose access to our inborn natural ability to rebalance ourselves. An acrobat needs to remember how to play the game to regain stability. Positive Psychology knows how to approach that puzzle!

Positive Psychology activates your positive, healthy psychological resources (strengths) to help reintegrate and rebalance the healthy self. Positive Psychology helps us with our health because we can rebalance our lifestyle choices and habits to recover many diseased physical parts of our body.

Our bodies constantly interact with their environment; they change in response during that process. Millions of methods are continually happening inside our bodies and minds, potentially leading to different forms of the disease at other times. This is an everyday phenomenon, and we are not consciously aware of that. Our bodies are naturally repairing those processes. When this self-repairing mechanism sometimes goes awry, we are more susceptible to developing the disease. The disease is a dynamic process of constant change, not static or frozen in time. When we consciously utilise our healthy parts and strengths, we can repair and recover back into a healthy state. This process is called homeostasis.

If you are struggling with disease or health concerns, Positive Psychology approaches your condition from the point of strengths and health that is always present inside yourself. Finding small or big “nuggets” of mental strength and exercising them, employing them to engage all other healthy functions of our bodies (eating, moving, sleeping, communicating etc.) in naturally healthy and most enjoyable ways is at the core of Positive Psychology in medicine.

I CALL IT POSITIVE MEDICINE.

Positive Psychology and Emotional awareness are about reconnecting and then befriending and understanding our emotions, becoming increasingly aware of their constant presence and interaction with our physical body. It is acknowledging their transitory nature and significance. It is an entry point to recovering your inner body and mind balance, leading towards ease and away from disease. 

8 FEBRUARY 2021