Around the world, millions of us neglect our mental wellbeing every day. We neglect it in favour of our families, our working lives, and our ability to make money. Your mental health intrinsically links with your physical health. Burnout is real. Here’s what you need to know.
Pushing yourself has always met with approval in the modern world. We think that pushing ourselves to do more, make more, be better, is something to aspire to. The monetary reward system we all work under teaches us that this is the best way. It isn’t always. There comes a point of pushing yourself for too long where you buckle under the pressure. This is the grey zone, the battlefront where your mental and physical health collide. This is the land of stress induced ulcers and cardiac arrests in your thirties.
Heed this advice and amend your ways or risk a visit from the ghosts of workers’ passed.
Mental and Physical Health Link Together
Mental and physical wellbeing are so closely knitted together that you can’t separate the two without scissors. There is evidence of this in thousands of medical conditions. Let us review a few examples and prove it to you.
Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety disorders are a great starting point. With this mental illness, the sufferer experiences high rates of prolonged anxiety that strike at inopportune moments. It becomes difficult to carry out daily tasks because your anxiety gets in the way. Keep in mind that this is a mental disorder, a mental illness.
When a sufferer of anxiety disorder tries to do things that would normally bring out their fear, the anxiety response becomes overwhelming. Unless they remove themselves form their trigger, they will experience physical symptoms. A racing heart and cold sweats is one thing, but repetitive vomiting, mental confusion, loss of control over their actions (fight or flight), and incontinence can all occur. And all these symptoms from a mental illness.
Therapy can mitigate some of the symptoms of mental illnesses. You can join the online therapy chat dialogue yourself if it interests you.
Stress
Stress sounds so innocent. You get stressed at work, stressed behind the wheel. It’s something you brush off, right? Wrong. Prolonged exposure to stress can cause:
- Headaches
- High blood pressure
- Diabetes
- Heart conditions
- Skin conditions
- Asthma
- Arthritis
And more. But again – it’s all in your head, right?
Now let’s look at a physical illness that goes the opposite way.
Diabetes
Stress, anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses physically change your body to the point of no return. In a documented study in Canada researchers found that 40% of all Canadians with diabetes also had a co-occurring mental illness.
Heart Disease
That same Canadian paper notes that women with depression are 80% more likely to have a heart disease. Depression has links with strokes, with obesity, and worst of all – with suicide.
Who is Most at Risk?
While women show up more frequently in studies and observations regarding mental illnesses, men suffer in silence. Statistically speaking a woman is likelier to seek help for her mental illness while a man is not. You can read more on men’s mental illness here. Joining the conversation is all part of mending the stigma.