A Matter of Alignment

A mentor taught me a simple definition of mental health. They taught me that mental health is when your head, heart, and mouth are in a straight line. The work that we all must do in life, the work that the existential therapist is particularly concerned with, is trying to help people create this kind of alignment in their lives. 

Many of our problems stem from being out of alignment. Our heads (thoughts) reflect one reality while our hearts (emotions) or our mouths (words and actions) reflect another. This misalignment creates internal turmoil and confusion. It makes it difficult to consistently show up as one’s best self and to act with integrity. And integrity is a necessary part of mental health–it is both a product of good mental health as well as a contributor to it. 

We use our values to measure whether or not we are living with integrity and to guide us towards alignment, but it is difficult to stay there because of our tendency to focus on things that do not matter and things that we have no control over. The frequency with which these two categories are synonymous with one another is not a coincidence. 

When mental health begins to worsen, one of the first things to do is examine if somewhere, somehow our lives have gotten out of alignment.