Is My Body a Temple or a Motel 6?

If you grew up in the Christian culture, you might have been told to treat your body as a temple (1 Corinthians 6:19). If you grew up in Top 40s culture, maybe you think of your body as a wonderland. Either way, do we ever actually intentionally treat our bodies as special and critical to our mental and physical health?

Of course, I say, as I shove red dye 40 candy into my mouth while bed rotting, staring at a tiny screen, wearing polyester clothing. We love to talk about mental health these days, but we have reduced the conversation to superficial and unhelpful strategies for achieving well-being. “Taking a mental health day” would proceed as I just described for a good 12+ hours straight.

Is it possible to achieve optimal mental health while experiencing poor physical health in a body that is essentially poisoned by our modern environment? I’m starting to really question this...

Three opposing statements appear to be truths (in therapy, we would call these dialectics):

You can have seemingly perfect physical health and still have problems with your mental health. (Example: a marathon runner who has anorexia)

You can have poor physical health and/or complete lack of movement and still experience mental well-being. (Example: this dude)

The condition of your body may be keeping you from recovering from your mental health symptoms. (Example: gut health influencing mental health)

I believe we have to stop treating physical and mental health as separate. In psychology, we might develop a biopsychosocial conceptualization of someone’s illness, lightly suggest getting some exercise, or collaborate with a medical team, but we are overall failing at integrating these factors. Most of us are working with the knowledge we learned in school 10, 20, or 30 years ago, which was discovered 40, 50, or 60 years ago. We are not following the modern science related to gut health. We are also not considering the wisdom of our ancestors, who sometimes really got it right when it came to health, while trying to supplement with modern technology, such as apps for mental health.

Knowledge is power. Only you can take scientific knowledge about the brain and body, apply it to yourself, and keep going with this process until you achieve optimal health. Therapists are just here as a vehicle of change – we can’t do it for you and we’re not always right.

A few things I believe to be true: eat whole foods, get as much movement as possible, spend plenty of time outdoors while protected from the sun, get off screens, spend lots of time with other people, express gratitude, show kindness, avoid modern environmental toxins, and you’ll be better off than 99% of the population of Western cultures.

If you’re “too good” at the physical health stuff, to the point of unhelpful perfectionism that’s actually making your health worse instead of better (e.g., restricting to healthy foods or over-exercising to the point that you’re obsessed and it’s all you can think about), then it may be time to add in some cognitive-behavioral strategies to your health routine.

If all the health mumbo jumbo is too much for you, remember the iron lung guy and try to figure out how you can achieve joy, peace, contentment, etc. Physical health is not just diet and exercise. Hugs and kindness may be just as important as vegetables.

This could be a book series and I made it a short blog post... Comment your thoughts below! Let’s make this into a discussion.

P.S. I just have to add the irony that I wrote this on a laptop and will proceed to spend lots of time on my screen and social media getting it out to you and the world instead of being outside or moving myself. We’re all a bunch of hypocrites! Kidding (kind of) but this follows what I said: do even better than the people giving you advice!