The Mental (Psychological) Self

What is included under mental factors?

• Cognition – perceiving, learning, remembering, thinking, interpreting, believing and problem-solving.
• Emotion – emotions are subjective feelings that affect and are affected by our thoughts, behaviour and physiology. Some emotions are pleasant, such as optimism, joy and love and others are negative, such as sadness, anger and fear. Emotions, as we shall see later,  relate to illness and stress in many ways.
• Motivation – is a term applied to expectations as to why people behave as they do – why they start some activity, choose a direction and persist in it. A person who is motivated to look and feel better might begin an exercise programme, choose the goals to be reached and stick with it.
• Mental imagery – the ability of the mind to conjure mental pictures/images. As we shall see later, mental imagery is a very important technique in addressing stress.

Mental Wellbeing

The ability of the mind to gather, process, recall and communicate information. Like a static radio station, stress jams the frequencies of a clear mind, decreasing attention span and increasing poor decision making.

Emotional Wellbeing

The ability to express the entire range of human emotions and to control them. Unresolved stress tends to generate unhealthy and destructive emotions such as unresolved fear, anxiety, anger and depression resulting in the inability to experience moments of joy, happiness and optimism.