Mind Wellbeing: A Workbook & Manual for Achieving Mental Wellness and Healthy Relationships

By Sahba Saberi

This practical and easy-to-follow workbook is a guide to living a happier, more content, and more peaceful life while preventing mental illnesses and fostering fulfilling connections with others. Think of Mind Wellbeing as your personal 'how to look after the vehicle of your mind' manual, empowering you to become a skilled mechanic for your own mental well-being.

Inside this quirky and engaging illustrated workbook, you'll explore how to manage your thoughts and emotions, reduce anxiety, cultivate happiness and self esteem, overcome the lingering impact of past experiences, improve your ability to manage tasks and organise your life, and to improve the health of your relationships.

Mind Wellbeing is designed to be accessible to anyone with an interest in their mental health. Discover the transformative power of self-care and embark on a journey towards a more fulfilling life. Get ready to unlock the secrets to a happier mind!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fount Institute
• Release date: Apr 20, 2023
• ISBN: 0646872419

Book preview

How to Use This Book

There are 3 ways to study this book:

1.Grab a book and start reading!

2.Form a book club or read with a friend or two!

We recommend this option as it would be accessible to most people, and yet it would give you the benefits of enjoying this book in the communal setting which it was designed to be enjoyed. Why do we think a communal setting is best? For several reasons. For starters, it gives you the opportunity to discuss the topics with others, feel supported and learn from the experiences of others as they try to practice what they are learning alongside you. But perhaps the most important reason is that it creates community excitement and momentum for everyone to get busy improving their mental health. So go ahead and start a trend for everyone to get together with a few of their friends and learn about mental health!

3.Join a Fount™ Mind Wellbeing Workshop!

If this option is available to you, it would be a great way to get even more out of this book. Fount facilitators are trained to enhance the learning of Fount materials for participants, and to foster healthy group and community dynamics.

Don’t Skip Ahead

Most of us have done it: picked up a book, were so excited to get to the section that was relevant to us that we flicked through the book and only read those specific sections, or only read sections that seemed interesting. This style of reading lends itself more readily to some books than others. And this book is certainly not one of them. For starters, the first few chapters of the book provide you with a foundation that you will need in order to understand or practice effectively what comes later in the book. By not having the proper foundation, you will simply not benefit from the later chapters as much as you would otherwise.

The second reason for this is that this book has been written based on a foundation of transdiagnostic psychology. Transdiagnostic psychology looks beyond our traditional complaints and diagnosis and instead looks at the common features that connects most mental health issues. In other words, regardless of what issues you are trying to tackle in order to improve your life, you will most likely benefit from learning what is in most other parts of this book. So if you do get tempted, flick through the book and read ahead, at least make sure you come back and read what you missed in a chronological order.

Symbols

Below are 2 symbols which you will notice throughout the book, along with a description of what they each mean.

Go Within

This symbol means: it is now quiet reflection time! It is suggesting that you sit in a comfortable position and begin paying attention to your own thoughts, emotions or the world around you. We suggest that when you see this symbol, you close your eyes. This might help you with focusing. But at times you may find that keeping your eyes open is more helpful to you.

Homework

This is the ‘Homework’ symbol. Homework practices emphasise specific activities that you could focus on to build on what you have learned in the book. You are your own homework police, so see if you can come up with ways to remind yourself to practice what is suggested.

A gift to yourself

Imagine someone you really love and care for. Now imagine finding out that this person has a wish. A wish for something that would make them really happy. Something that would change their life in a really good way. Would you try to give them what they wish for? What if giving them what they wish for meant that you had to put in a bit of effort? Would you put in the effort and work hard to make your friend happy? Now what if that friend was you? Would you work hard and put in a bit of effort to grant yourself more happiness and peace? If your answer is ‘yes’, let us tell you a little secret. Your commitment and hard work can help you get so much more out of this book.

If you like, take a few minutes to make a promise to yourself to commit to reading this book thoroughly, and stopping to practice the exercises.

My commitment scribbles:

Below are a few other tips that may help you get the most out of this book:

Keep an open mind and open heart - you will learn a lot of new ideas. We recommend you keep an open mind, try what you learn and be open to allowing positive change into your life.

Be patient - this book is structured to achieve long lasting change and improvement in your life. The first few chapters are about building a solid foundation. Then the following chapters use that foundation to empower you and help in improving your wellbeing. So be patient. Early on you may start wondering ‘When will I start feeling better?’ And if that happens, remember that a foundation is being built. For some, change will take longer and for some it will be quicker. Both are okay, as everyone’s journey is different. So be kind and patient with yourself as you journey towards improved mental wellbeing.

Be curious - a good attitude to have when reading this book is curiosity, a wish to understand yourself and others. It is important that you do not blindly accept any ideas that are shared with you. Instead, aim to really understand these ideas for yourself and put them to the test.

Only apply what you learn to yourself - everyone learns at a different pace. Regardless of whether your friends and family members have read this book or not, they may be at different stages of learning to you. Make sure you accept where they are, as we all learn at a different pace. So don’t expect them to understand and apply all the new ideas that you have been learning and applying. It is okay to hold dialogues with others about what you learn. But allow them to learn at their own pace and to take away from this book whatever they are ready to take away.

Revisit this book from time to time - as you practice what you learn in the months and years to come, you might find that it helps to come back to this book and read parts of it again. This is in part because, with time and practice, you may be able to put into place more and more of the strategies and tips offered in this book. Another reason is that at times when a lot of new ideas are presented to you, you may not retain everything all at once. So re-reading what you have learned can refresh your memory.

Studying this book with a group

As previously mentioned, this book is best to be studied within a group setting. This means you can read it with a friend or a group of friends, as part of a book club, or as part of a formal workshop. Below are some tips for your book club or group to help you with the study of the book:

—Read at home or with the group - as a group, you may decide to have designated home reading before each meeting, or just get together and read with the group.

—Revise or re-read - you could read all or some of the sections again with the group, or just recap and revise, while discussing your thoughts, experiences or challenges. If you decide not to re-read the sections, make sure everyone in the group has had a chance to catch up with the designated reading.

—Practice going within - it may be a good idea to practice mindfulness or the other ‘going within’ exercises with the group members. There are many benefits to this, including benefiting from the group momentum and learning from the experiences of other group members. There is also the pure benefit of repetition when you practice the exercises one more time with the group.

—Compare answers to written exercises - see if the other group members answered questions in a similar or different way to you. Plus you can ask questions from each other when unsure, or learn more through discussions with the other group members.

—Socialise - and of course socialising is always an important aspect of book clubs or friends getting together. Enjoy the social aspect, but make sure your group stays disciplined and does not allow the social portion to take over from the study portion of your time together.

Group Dynamics

What are some group dynamics that could make this experience more pleasant for you and the rest of the group? Here are a few suggestions for creating a group that is safer, more comfortable and more enjoyable for everyone:

—First one is all the obvious things: respecting each other’s opinions, non-judgemental attitude, kindness, respect and so on.

—It’s okay to be quiet and not talk much during your time with the group. You never have to share your personal experiences at any stage, if you don’t wish to.

—Some people find that studying this book can at times be emotional. So make sure your group is a safe space for emotions. Perhaps have a chat with your group members about what this would look like. For example, all members could agree to be supportive and non-judgemental if one member is feeling emotional. Tears are okay. Laughter is okay. Your group can come up with practical strategies to make anyone feeling emotional more comfortable, such as having a quiet corner that they can go to if they would like to be alone and process emotions.

—If you finish a ‘going within’ exercise before the other group members, do your best to stay quiet and not distract them from their practice. You could keep yourself busy with some art work or mindfulness exercises. You could even colour in some of the illustrations from the book as a relaxation activity! Be particularly mindful of any fidgeting or restlessness in your body, if your mind is a bit busy. See if you can use mindfulness or any other strategies from the book to overcome it.

—Your group may agree to the rule that what happens in the group should stay confidential. This means that you agree with each other not to talk to others outside of the group about personal matters that any members of the group bring up.

—If a member of your group is struggling, refer them to a doctor or other appropriate mental health services in your local area.

Any other ideas for making the group a safe and comfortable atmosphere for everyone? Have a chat with your group.

When to Seek Further Help

There are times when it’s a good idea to seek extra help. This includes the following scenarios:

—If you’re overwhelmed with depression, anxiety or struggling emotionally in other ways. Basically, if you feel that you’re not coping on your own. Particularly if you feel that you may put your own safety or the safety of others at risk.

—If you find that strong emotional challenges, lack of motivation, agitation or restlessness are disrupting your ability to read this book or practise the exercises and strategies covered. A bit of extra help might help you get more out of this book at a later stage.

Expert help could include seeing a mental health trained medical doctor, a psychologist, or other mental health professional. An expert could help you in a variety of ways, such as one on one therapy sessions or, at times, with medications like antidepressants.

You may also like to speak to a trained therapist or counsellor if you feel the need to talk about your concerns in a safe and confidential environment. A therapist or counsellor would provide you with a suitable environment to speak and express what’s on your mind.

Readers With Disabilities

Some disabilities may impact your practice of specific exercises in this book. If you find that your disability stops you from being able to practice an exercise, consider using creative strategies to help you practice the exercise in another way. For example, if you have significant hearing loss or deafness, you could replace any mindfulness of sound activities with mindfulness of your own breath, heartbeat or taste (e.g. the taste of a sultana or other food in your mouth).

Let’s get started and begin learning about the wonderful world of mental health!

A Mental Health Crisis

What does it mean to be healthy? What is wellbeing? A healthy body is comfortable. A healthy body works well, feels well and is free of pain and discomfort. An unhealthy body, on the other hand, doesn’t work as well as it could - so there might be pain, discomfort or some other dysfunction. So, can our minds be healthy or unhealthy? How do we measure the health of our minds?

Just like the feelings in our bodies can tell us if we are healthy or unhealthy, our emotions and thoughts can tell us about the health of our minds. How we feel and what we think can give us pleasant or unpleasant experiences. Both pleasant and unpleasant emotions are completely normal and healthy. At times you may feel sad, angry, worried or scared. At other times you may feel happy, excited, and positive. These up and down emotions are a perfectly healthy part of life. But what if our emotions become too intense? What if we experience negative emotions too often or for very long periods of time? What if our thoughts and emotions constantly agitate us and don’t let us rest or relax? What if they begin to disrupt our normal life, work or social relationships? What if we lose our ability to enjoy things because negative emotions begin to dominate our moments? These may be signs that we are experiencing mental illness.

Mental illnesses come in so many shapes and forms, and impact people far more often than most of us realise. Just like people can catch a cold or flu, or other physical illnesses from time to time, they can also go through periods of being affected by mental illnesses. So given how common mental illnesses are, why are we so afraid to talk about them? For a lot of people, the concepts of ‘mental health’ and ‘mental illness’ are intimidating ones. Because, for years, society has created a negative stigma¹ around these concepts. But today we would like to paint you a different picture. Mental health and mental illnesses are a normal part of our daily lives and it’s okay to talk about them.

First, let’s explore the idea of mental health a bit more. Does mental health only mean being free of mental illnesses? Not exactly. Mental health is a lot more than that. Mental health means wellbeing and comfort for your mind - and your mind can infinitely grow towards more contentment, more happiness, more comfort, and more peace. Sure, it’s good to be free of mental illnesses. But it doesn’t have to stop there. There is always room to improve your mental health more, which can affect the following areas of your life:

—Helping you become happier, less anxious, more relaxed and more content

—Helping you sleep better and feel more rested

—Helping you cope better with the problems and stresses of daily living

—Improving your relationships with your friends, family members and coworkers

—Helping you feel more confident and less self-conscious

—Helping you work more productively and efficiently

—Improving your learning, memory and concentration

As you can see optimising your mental health can affect so many areas of your life! You don’t have to be suffering from mental illness to have an interest in improving your mental health.

Here’s another reason why everyone should have an interest in working on their mental health: prevention is better than cure! Consider this: If you had a car, when would be the right time to look after it? Before it’s broken down, or after? Most people would agree that the right answer is: both. If you completely neglect your car and keep on driving it without looking after it, you will end up with a much higher chance of a broken-down car and an expensive trip to the mechanic. You need to regularly do things like change the oil, check the engine fluids and so on. Our minds are no different to that car. They also need looking after every day. The difference is that no one tells us how to look after our minds! As a society we have wrongly learned that only people with already broken-down mental health need to look after their minds. Everyone else just keeps driving their minds every day without ever servicing them! And that’s why we have such a huge problem on our hands when it comes to mental health. More than 1 in 4 people worldwide experience a mental illness at some stage of their lives. And this doesn’t even take into account milder issues that aren’t severe enough to be classed as ‘mental illness’, but are still a cause of problems to our daily lives, relationships and work. They still take away from our satisfaction and the enjoyment of life.

It’s also worth noting that mental illness doesn’t just affect certain groups of people. We can experience it no matter where in the world we live, regardless of our ethnicity, regardless of whether we are young or old (and that includes young children), male or female, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, strong or fragile and so on.

It’s clear that we need to do something about this. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a happier, less anxious and more content world? We know that prevention is better than cure. It’s easier to prevent a problem, than to fix things after they’re broken. Just as general hygiene and awareness can prevent many things that could go wrong with our bodies, we need to learn ways to prevent things that could go wrong with our minds. People all over the world need to know how to look after their mental health, using scientific techniques that have been shown to make the mind fit and enhance its functioning. Fount Programs have been created to do just that! This book has been designed to help people from all walks of life improve their own mental health and the mental health of their families. It can benefit people who are already suffering from mental health problems, as well as those who aren’t suffering from mental health issues but simply want to learn how to service their minds regularly to:

1.Keep improving and optimising their mental health

2.Prevent mental health problems for themselves and their families

Think of this course as a ‘how to look after the vehicle of your mind’ manual to teach you to become your own mind’s mechanic. Or, you could treat it as a mental health fitness regime. You can learn to improve your mental fitness and it can actually be so much fun! Just like when you achieve a personal best at the gym, imagine the satisfaction that you’d feel as you kick goals with your mental health and your whole internal space becomes clearer and more dynamic.

As you can see, improving mental health is a task for all of us. At the end of the day, mental health is about you. It is about your quality of life. It is about how you travel through your life: with ease and satisfaction? Or with stress and discomfort? And, what’s more, your mental wellbeing so often impacts the mental wellbeing of those around you. So this is also about the wellbeing of your loved ones: your family, friends and community. Mental health matters! Let’s take it seriously and make a real effort to improve it.

Mental Health and Mental Illnesses

Let’s learn a little bit about mental illnesses. There are different types and degrees of mental illness. They can be mild, moderate or severe; short term or long term. Depressive and anxiety disorders are the most common types of mental disorder. Every year millions of people are impacted by these conditions. You may have personally experienced them or know someone who has. Let’s take a look at what they are.

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Think of this course as a ‘how to look after the vehicle of your mind’ manual to teach you to become your own mind’s mechanic.

Depression: the most common signs of depression are feeling down and having less interest in activities that you used to enjoy. You may feel sad and hopeless. You may have negative thoughts or feelings about yourself. You may also notice changes in your appetite (decreased or increased) and sleep (too little or too much sleep) and may have lower energy and motivation than normal. Depression can feel like an emotional exhaustion: tiredness from over thinking. It may feel like your ability to cope with normal life stressors is all of a sudden less than it used to be.

Remember, people can experience depression at different degrees of intensity and for varying lengths of time.

Anxiety: anxiety comes in different shapes and forms:

—At times it is in the form of fears and phobias.

—Some may experience anxiety around people, especially crowds, and fear of being negatively judged.

—At times people feel anxiety that forces them to obsessively perform certain tasks, such as cleaning excessively or checking the lock over and over again.

—At times a person who has experienced terrible events in their past might continue to be disturbed by the memories of these events.

—At times the mere fear of having anxiety episodes creates anxiety.

—Some people may feel anxious if they leave the house.

—For some, performance, exams, interviews or other types of assessment are a cause of anxiety.

—Some people may worry about bad things happening in the future or becoming sick.

—Other types of anxiety or panic may seem to be there all the time or just appear out of the blue.

For those of us suffering from a mental illness at a given point, we should remember that change is possible. With the right kind of help, most people recover from mental disorders and enjoy increased life satisfaction and health. Mental illnesses should not be considered a life sentence.

The Causes of Mental Disorders

By now you may be wondering: so, what causes these mental disorders? The answer is not so simple. There are a range of things that can increase the risk of us developing a mental illness, and also a range of things that can protect us from it. Some of the things that can increase our risk of developing a mental illness are:

1.Stress - such as financial hardship, social pressures, physical illnesses and so on.

2.Genetic predisposition - which means that some of us are just a little more genetically prone to developing certain mental disorders.

3.Childhood environments and experiences - so much of our opinions, fears, and ways of viewing the world around us are shaped by our childhood experiences. You could say that what we experience in childhood forms a foundation for our experiences as an adult. Harsh, critical or uncaring childhood environments are detrimental to our mental health.

4.Unhealthy relationships - humans are social creatures. The health of our relationships plays a big part in our emotional wellbeing.

5.Drugs and alcohol - people are attracted to them as a way of feeling better, but in the long run they can create more emotional suffering and anguish.

6.Significant traumatic events - trauma can be an important risk factor, increasing our chances of developing a mental disorder.

On the other hand, there are positive factors that can protect us from developing mental illnesses and improve our mental health. Let’s see what they are:

1.Using healthier ways to cope with stress

2.Using healthier ways to think, manage emotions and process memories of past trauma

3.Increasing the health of the body through better diet and exercise

4.The existence of kind, understanding and supportive people in our lives, in our childhood, adolescence or adulthood.

5.Enjoying healthier relationships through good communication

This book takes advantage of psychology’s latest advances and methods to present you with a package to help your mental health by improving your life in all of the 5 areas listed above. We may not be able to change factors like our genes or