Have you heard about the concept of mental hygiene?

I first became aware of the concept of mental hygiene years ago when I was completing my doctoral degree in counseling psychology.  

I did part of my internship at the Sioux Falls Veterans Administration Medical Center in South Dakota.  

The campus is located in a sprawling park like setting and one day as I was walking from one building to another on an errand, I looked up at a very old building that had the words “Mental Hygiene Clinic” carved in stone over the doorway.

I was intrigued.

I had never encountered that old fashioned expression “mental hygiene” and I was curious about what it meant.

What is “Mental Hygiene”?

If you are like me, you immediately though of “dental hygiene” and wondered what these concepts they have in common.

Basically, mental hygiene is the practice of maintaining mental health through proactive behavior and treatment. 

 And yes, this does sound like what we do when we practice dental hygiene. 

We proactively brush and floss and rinse to maintain the health and well-being of our teeth and mouth. 

If for some reason we have not had regular cleanings, we will eventually have to set aside time at the dentist for a lengthy deep cleaning and other treatments.  Am I right?

How can we proactively maintain our mental and emotional well-being? And what does this have to do with managing fibromyalgia and chronic illness you may ask?

Sometimes we push aside feelings of stress and grief and loss because we are in survival mode or because we don’t want to deal with the painful feelings of working through grief. 

I’ve had many clients tell me they built an internal brick wall to partition off their distress so they could meet their daily responsibilities.  

But there comes a day when the wall crumbles and they can no longer avoid or bypass their emotional turmoil.  

It is time for a deep emotional cleaning. 

And for some people this may mean working with a psychotherapist to heal past wounds and trauma.

Health and wellness coaching is another approach that supports mental and emotional wellness.

Fibromyalgia Wellness Coaching

In Fibromyalgia Wellness Coaching I help my clients develop daily habits of:
journaling, meditation, self-compassion, managing their energy envelope, prioritizing, setting and enforcing healthy boundaries to name a just a few strategies that help support and maintain their mental hygiene and emotional well-being.

You know how good your teeth feel after a dental cleaning? 

In a similar way, as my clients incorporate these daily mental hygiene strategies into their daily lives they gradually begin to feel better.

They start to realize they have some extra energy to engage in the things that are most important to them.  

And this brings them so much joy!

If you were a fly on the wall in my office, it is very likely that you would hear me talking with a client about the day I saw the words “Mental Hygiene” carved into a building on the VA hospital campus and what practicing mental hygiene could look like for her.