How You May Be Sabotaging Your Mental Health

counselorbarb ♦ April 26, 2012

Congratulations! You have made the brave and potentially life-altering step of getting some counseling. Good for you. But did you know that some very simple things you are doing right now could be sabotaging your progress?

When people come to see me, naturally the focus is on whatever relationship, sexual, or emotional issue they are having. But what I explain to all of my clients is that taking care of their physical health is just as important.

You are spending hundreds of dollars on counseling, but you may be unintentionally sabotaging the entire process. How? By not taking care of your physical health.

Nutrition and exercise are essential to mental health, yet many of you ignore both of these important ways of taking care of yourself. You are eating junk food, or not eating at all, drinking too much alcohol, not taking vitamins and not exercising. Then you come to counseling to say that you feel “depressed.” Of course you do. Your body feels like crap, and because the body and mind are connected, your mind does, too.

Now I’m not saying just eat right and exercise and all of your problems will go away. What I am saying is that treating your psychological issue without taking care of your physical health is like driving a bus with a broken wheel. We may make some progress, but we’re going to go in circles unless we fix that wheel. There is a plethora of studies on how nutrition and exercise affect mental health, heed them! Fix your nutrition and start exercising. See how much better you feel. Or at least do these things while you are in counseling. Then counseling can help you with whatever bad feelings are left.

For more detail on the connections between exercise, nutrition and mental health, visit this previous blog post.