How to overcome mental health difficulties could be the most common question humanity has ever posed to itself. Mental health is fundamental to our general sense of well-being and our experience of life. And yet millennia of literature on the subject from philosophers, religious leaders, physicians, and psychologists have failed to produce a single method that will consistently resolve a psychological problem for the majority of people who try it.

This realization is both good and bad. It is bad because there is no surefire method that everyone can use to overcome their emotional afflictions. It is good because it means that there is hope for everyone to return to good mental health regardless of income or access to counseling. Every day, people overcome mental health problems in their own unique way. From the problem going away on its own accord to years-long psychotherapy, it would be no exaggeration to say that there is no method that has not been effectively used to return to excellent mental health.

Almost all psychological afflictions fail to fit the conventional model of disease. People who supposedly have a ‘mental illness’ are simply at the lower end of the mental health spectrum in one or more dimensions. Mental health can be seen as a multi-layered spectrum. In mental health, there are very few, if any, disorders that present in everyone with the same exact set of symptoms and effective treatments as there is with physical health.

An individual can rate higher or lower on a multitude of psychological scales, such as overall happiness, constructive thinking, relationships, self-esteem, and many other facets that constitute what is thought of as “mental well-being.” Progress on any layer has the potential to bring you closer to recovery from any mental health issue.

The sources of mental afflictions are limitless. Everything that can influence us can cause a psychological disturbance in us. Human influences can be put into four categories: biological, cognitive, lived experience, and unknown. One or any combination of the four may result in a mental or emotional issue.

Biological influences include genetics, fetal and childhood development, nutrition, physiology (i.e., high blood pressure, hormones), drugs and addiction, and pollution. Studies have estimated heredity to be responsible for 37% of the probability of developing depression.¹ Medication or recreational drugs clearly affect our mind. For instance, marijuana makes some people feel paranoid or anxious while others receive a mild euphoric feeling. Hormones can have a strong effect on our mental state. Adolescent males, for example, have relatively high testosterone which can cause anger or restlessness.

Care of the fetus in the womb — how well the pregnant mother eats and abstains from recreational drugs–has a large impact on the future health of the child. For example, a mother who consumes alcohol while pregnant may give her child Fetal Alcohol Syndrome which carries symptoms such as impaired judgement and short attention spans. Drug addiction can cause someone to feel very low when not under the influence because of the dysregulation of dopamine, stress response, and reward systems in the brain.² Nutrition affects our mental health as well. A deficiency in vitamin B12, for instance, can cause emotional issues such as depression and irritability.³

Although we may not hear of it frequently in the news, modern society is awash in countless toxic chemicals. Pesticides, mercury, BPA, and countless other chemicals found in our food, water, air, and electromagnetic space affect our cognitive functioning and mental health.^4,5

Often, there is no discernible cause for depression or another psychological issue.

Cognitive, or thought-related, factors have a direct effect on our mental health. Our mental responses to situations, the automatic thoughts we have throughout the day, our values and beliefs, and our mental coping strategies have a powerful effect on how we feel emotionally. Someone who regularly engages in an inner dialogue attacking himself for being a loser, for instance, is at high risk for depression. Another who perpetually worries about her finances, will tend to have anxiety.

Our mental health is also influenced by our values and worldview. People who put a positive spin on things (i.e., “My classmate was mean today but he was really stressed out so it’s understandable.”) consistently have better mental health than people who focus more on the negative side (i.e., “There is no justice in this world.”).

Cognitive factors include how we cope with our emotions. For example, people who catastrophize excessively, wondering about all the ways that something can get worse, will tend to have more anxiety and depression than people who don’t catastrophize as often. A person who deals with problems through denial may have to deal with them for a longer period of time than one who does not.

Lived experience can also cause a disruption in mental health. Our experiences and life situations, from recent to the distant past, directly impact what is on our minds. A strongly negative experience can be re-lived for decades. The bad memory may be of a two-minute experience or that of years of enduring a difficult environment. Of course, it could also be an unfortunate situation that you are currently living in.

Our lived experience includes all of our relationships and interactions with others. The experience of social isolation or an abusive relationship, for instance, may result in depression, poor self-esteem, or a host of other psychological issues. Even positive experiences sometimes result in mental issues. This can be seen, for example, when someone lands a dream job and consequently develops imposter syndrome. There are numerous factors at play in the development of a mental problem.

Finally, the source of a mental problem may be unknown. Often, there is no discernible cause for depression or another psychological issue. Everything is going good in your life and boom — you’re crying everyday and can’t figure out why. Perhaps there is a discernible cause that has been overlooked like a repressed schema or a neurological basis that has yet to be discovered. Or perhaps, the cause is supernatural, belonging to the realm of religion and the paranormal.

Emotional wellness is a continua, one with some of the attributes of disease. The fact that anything one does to improve one’s happiness has the potential to reduce symptoms of “mental illness” is a testament to the continuum nature of mental health. The dual continua model has received widespread acceptance in the mental health field. In this model, both the disease model and the health continuum model coexist. Mental symptoms can look and/or act like a disease, an indication of being low on a continuum of well-being, and any combination of the two.

In many cases, emotional problems do act like physical diseases — they cause suffering, disability, have a physical (or no identifiable) basis, and respond well to medical treatment. Take the case of a man who suffers from seasonal depression, which is relieved by taking saffron pills and using a light box every morning. You have a discernable physical cause for his source of suffering: depression secondary to lack of sunlight in the winter. You also see resolution, or significant improvement, in symptoms via two evidence-based physical interventions.

However, the medical model doesn’t fit the majority of mental disturbances. In most cases of ‘mental illness,’ the individual can identify a situational cause (e.g., relationship breakdown, general life disappointment) and no particular treatment(s)–medical or not–produce a reliable improvement. For instance, a hypothetical woman who reports that her anxiety began with using social media and has tried medications and talk therapy to no avail. Her anxiety only went away after a few months of being off social media and hanging out with her friends in person more often.

This woman’s experience of mental illness does not follow the disease or medical model. The source of her mental problem was a life experience, not solely her biology. Established psychiatric treatments made no difference to her, but her symptoms gradually subsided after changing how she spends her time. In this case, her anxiety did not present as a disease, but a dimension of well-being along a continuum (level of calmness) corresponding with a continuum (quality of social interaction) in her life.

The dual continua model helps us understand mental problems because it demonstrates how they can present and/or be effectively treated as a disease, a continuum, or both at the same time. For instance, a mental problem that has a definable life cause (e.g., depression stemming from job loss) can often be effectively resolved by a medical means, like using St. John’s wort.

Likewise, a mental problem that appears to have a biological basis can also be treated effectively without medical or professional treatment. Take the case of someone with a family history of depression entering a severe depression out-of-the-blue. Perhaps he will be able to return to good mental health by spending more time on his hobbies and distancing from his destructive thoughts. His depression appears to have a biological cause, but its resolution required him to take action to move his mental wellness along its continuum.

A case of a mental illness with a suspected biological basis may require medicine/herbs or a manualized psychotherapy intervention, but as the dual continua model suggests, it often responds equally well to cognitive or behavioral actions that increase happiness in any way. Moreover, it is possible to bring relief to someone who is unhappy due to his life situation through medical means such as herbs, psychedelics, medicine, or a psychologist’s services.

The ways out of mental disturbances cover the same dimensions as the ways in — biological, cognitive, life experience, and/or unknown. If your present anxiety is caused by a negative life situation, fixing the situation could resolve your anxiety. If your depression is related to low testosterone, hormone replacement therapy could fix both your depression and your testosterone problems. Anything that can cause emotional problems has the potential to resolve it if reversed or corrected.

The beauty of the human mind is that it provides us with countless paths towards excellent mental health. Whether your mental issue has an unknown origin or it demonstrably has a specific cause, you generally can resolve the issue without addressing the original cause. For example, you could have a genetic predisposition to anxiety but maintain thinking and lifestyle habits that keep you in a calm state most of the time. Maybe you suffer from school-related stress. You don’t have to drop out of school to resolve it. You may find adequate relief simply by talking to someone regularly about your school pressures and finding more time for the hobbies that help you relax.

The failure of the field of psychological research to find a ‘scientific,’ ‘evidence-based’ method that will work for anyone’s mental issue has an upside. With unlimited paths to good mental health, there is always hope for recovery. Indeed, most episodes of psychological distress, small or large, resolve more-or-less on their own within a few months. With some deliberate action, the natural process of healing the heart and mind can be hastened.

Ninety years ago, psychologist Saul Rosenzweig coined the term Dodo Bird Verdict to describe the appearance that all forms of mental health counseling were equally effective. Systematic analyses today continue to find the same result. From cognitive strategies of monitoring thoughts to deep probing of childhood memories, empirical research has not found significant differences in outcomes among the various forms of psychotherapy. The expression comes from the book Alice in Wonderland in which a dodo bird states, “Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.”

The Dodo Bird Verdict can also be applied to self-help. People usually recover from serious psychological disturbances without seeing a professional or taking medication. Considering that the disturbances are almost always temporary and a small percentage of people receive counseling or psychiatric medication, recovering without professional assistance is the norm.

As with counseling modalities, self-help also does not appear to have a specific path that must be followed to return to good mental health.

Regarding the similar effectiveness of all psychotherapy modalities, the common factors theory is the most widely accepted in the field. According to this theory, the techniques specific to a counseling modality are less important than therapeutic aspects common to all types of counseling.⁶ These are some of the most commonly cited factors for why people undergoing counseling see an improvement in symptoms:

Placebo effect: The expectations and hope that clients have for counseling ‘working’ create a self-fulfilling prophecy, no different than the placebo effect of medication.

Therapeutic relationship: If the counselor and client develop emotional closeness and a constructive dynamic, the client’s mental health is more likely to improve. Whether the client sees her counselor as an authority or a friend, if she works with and has a bond with her counselor, she will be more likely to benefit. Even without a mutual close bond, clients receive considerable benefit if they feel like their therapist genuinely cares about them and wants to hear about their troubles.

Motivation: If the client has faith in his counselor and the type of counseling provided, he is more likely to put a conscious effort into practicing the counselor’s advice. Greater effort on the client’s part is associated with better results in psychotherapy. The client may also be motivated because he is paying for the service and wants to get his money’s worth or he wants to avoid embarrassment from disappointing the counselor.

The concept of brain plasticity, or neuroplasticity, provides a biological explanation for why mental health is known to improve with innumerable disparate methods.

Emotional expression: Most modalities of counseling encourage clients to express their thoughts, memories, and feelings. Often, these cognitions have been suppressed and the counselor’s office is the first place the client has expressed them. It is universal to want to share these with others, especially if they are troubling or traumatic. Clients generally receive considerable psychological benefit simply from ‘letting it all out.’

Facilitates independent thinking: With our busy lives, we may not have much time to think ‘long and hard’ on important issues. In therapy, you are encouraged to think aloud while your therapist gives minimal input. In many cases, clients progress while seeing a head-nodder just because the sessions provide the opportunity to thoroughly think through their issues.

Shared practices: There is considerable overlap in the methods taught in different modalities of counseling. For instance, you will probably learn grounding techniques, such as feeling your body against your chair or taking slow, deep breaths, from any type of therapist. Problem-solving skills are also commonly taught across modalities (i.e., making a list of all choices of a problem and the pros and cons of each).

Some of the common factors which explain why counseling works can easily be applied to self-help. Devoting time to deep thinking about a personal issue can be done alone, for instance. Many people have a friend or relative to whom they can let out their emotions. If there is a mental health influencer that holds your confidence, watching her content could motivate you to recover as strongly as if you were her counseling client.

The concept of brain plasticity, or neuroplasticity, provides a biological explanation for why mental health is known to improve with innumerable disparate methods.⁷ Neuroplasticity is the ability of your brain to develop new connections and behaviors. Your neurons and neural networks have the ability to communicate and act in new ways to allow you to learn and adapt.

Neuroplasticity is highest in childhood. That’s why children have a unique ability to learn. From ages 13 to 25, neuroplasticity remains fairly high. After age 25, our brains still retain the adaptive ability to restructure themselves, although the stimulus required for such adaptation is greater. Our thoughts, actions, environment, experiences, and physiology all affect the neural pathways in our brains. Excessive negative thoughts and emotions are therefore the result of (malleable) maladaptive pathways.

The concept of brain plasticity explains why everything and nothing works in mental health. Not only do our brains have an infinite number of ways to wire (in early childhood) and rewire themselves (throughout life), they can be rewired using an infinite combination of stimuli. Perhaps it would be fair to say that the number of ways to improve your mental health equals the number of ways that your brain is able to rewire itself for better well-being multiplied by the number of ways to incite each of those adaptations. That is almost infinite!

Neuroplasticity explains why no psychological hack or medical treatment works for everyone: each brain is wired differently before the intervention, and each brain rewires itself differently (if at all) after the intervention. The same can be said for why seemingly every biopsychosocial remedy substantially improves the mental health of a subset of people. No two brains are wired identically; nor can they be rewired in exactly the same way.

Biological Interventions

Mental health actions targeting our biology include medication and herbs, physical activity, breathing practices, eating habits, sleep hygiene, and recreational drug use/abstention. Each of these actions has potential to improve mental health and they are not mutually exclusive.

Exercise is well-evidenced to be advantageous to mental health with effect sizes in clinical trials not far below that of psychotherapy or antidepressant medication.⁸ People who regularly exercise, play sports, or engage in physical pastimes are considerably more likely to report good mental health than people with highly sedentary lifestyles. Exercise releases endorphins and other neurotransmitters associated with well-being. It lowers cortisol and improves blood circulation. The WHO recommends 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day.

Low-intensity physical activity, such as going for a daily walk or doing household chores, is also good for mental health.⁹ Optimum activity levels depend on age and physical ability. For many seniors, it may simply mean getting more steps in throughout the day. The WHO recommends that seniors be as active as their physical ability permits.

Nutrition is associated with mental health.¹⁰ Low vitamin D or iron, for instance, is linked to higher rates of depression.^11,12 Obesity is also linked to poorer mental health, though there is undoubtedly bidirectionality.¹³ Breathing exercises have demonstrated clinical efficacy in reducing stress and anxiety. In particular, slow, intentional breathing, with exhalation longer than inhalation has been shown to engage the parasympathetic nervous system and induce physical and mental calmness.¹⁴

Cognitive Interventions

Cognitive (thought-based) strategies have potential to improve mental health. Western mental health wisdom tends to center around the identification and elimination of troubling thoughts. Redirecting attention away from the negative thoughts, if successful, will bring relief from the pain those thoughts carry.

Mindfulness practices, such as focusing attention on your five senses or towards your body, are one type of cognitive intervention.

It can be performed throughout the day to keep negative thoughts and feelings at bay. It can also be used in an attempt to dissipate emotions one is currently feeling.

Religion and spirituality can also provide cognitive approaches to overcoming mental issues. Putting aside the question, “Is what this religion teaches true?”, adherents to religions (or personal spiritual beliefs) have access to an array of mental tools that can help them deal with life. For instance, belief in a just afterlife can allay one’s anger over injustice on Earth. Praying with the idea that a God cares about you could have the same comforting effect as confiding in another person.

Lifestyle and Environmental Interventions

Your well-being is closely related to your relationships, how you spend your time, and the diverse environments of your life. If your woes can be traced back to a situation in your life, such as your work environment or family relations, addressing the problem at its source has the potential to rectify your mental health along with the situation. Not all situational problems are fixable, however. If you have already tried to resolve the situation to no effect, you still have many biological, cognitive, and lifestyle/behavioral/environmental options for coping.

Regardless of the cause of your mental disturbance, manipulating your lifestyle, social/romantic life, or living situation can greatly help your mental health. Take the common problem of a depression–social isolation cycle. You are depressed because you are isolated and you are isolated, in part, because your depression has caused you to withdraw socially. In this scenario, taking incremental steps to increase socialization should help diminish your depression.

Pastimes are very relevant to mental health. Spending a good portion of your time on your hobbies is an excellent way to maintain positive mental health.¹⁵ Depression often makes people want to give up on the activities that have made them happy for years. However, doing so is likely to worsen the depression.

Since the 2010s, news media and social media have become extremely toxic. Both industries have realized that the more angry and depressed we are, the more time we spend on their mediums. Reducing, if not totally abstaining from, these soul-draining time-wasters can go a long way in improving emotional well-being.

Empirical and qualitative research has uncovered subprocesses of the personal recovery process for mental illness. A 2011 systematic review of personal recovery in mental health by Leamy et al. identified five notable subprocesses: connectedness, hope, identity, meaning in life, and empowerment (CHIME).¹⁶ The researchers analyzed 97 papers on mental health recovery from the individual’s point-of-view.

They discovered that people who have recovered from mental illness viewed the recovery process as not just the cessation of symptoms, but a multi-faceted process with dimensions of socialization and personal growth. Deliberate engagement with each of these ‘recovery processes’ should therefore be expected to hasten recovery from mental problems.

Connectedness was the first category of recovery processes in Leamy’s proposed conceptual framework of personal recovery from mental illness. Peer support, relationships, and feeling like part of a community were listed under the connectedness subprocess. The second category was hope and optimism about the future. Being optimistic about recovery, motivation to recover, and aspiring to accomplish goals were included in this category.

The third recovery process identified was identity. Transcending stigma related to mental illness and reforming one’s self-image were listed as subcomponents of identity. The fourth category, meaning in life, included making sense of the meaning of the mental illness, spirituality, and rebuilding one’s life and social roles in a meaningful way. Empowerment was the fifth and final category of personal recovery. Taking responsibility for one’s life and focusing on personal strengths were included in the empowerment process.

Identifying as one who is mentally ill can be counterproductive since our realities tend to coalesce around our self-images.

Leamy’s empirical meta-analysis suggests that psychological recovery can be hastened by addressing processes tangential to symptom management. Connectedness can be fostered by seeking out friendship and emotional support. Hope can be fostered through optimistic thinking regarding one’s mental problems and the pursuit of goals and dreams. Re-evaluating your identity and the meaning of things in your life can provide closure and personal growth once you have started to gain control over your symptoms. Empowerment can be developed by directing your time and energy into things with the most potential to enlighten your life and mental health.

Regardless of the state of your mental health, an orientation towards the positive is generally advantageous. A positive orientation denotes that your thoughts will focus on how you want to feel and what you want to do.

With a positive orientation, your mind and your life are not beholden to your mental affliction — living is the focus of your life. Your mental issues are treated as just one more life obstacle. Why should it be more than that? Would you let the bills you have to pay or your mean neighbor be the central focus of even one evening of your life? If not, then why should you give your destructive subconscious habits such power over you?

What you focus on tends to increase. Thus, thinking about your mental problems extensively runs the risk of inflating them. For instance, monitoring your thoughts in an attempt to weed out negative thoughts often results in having even more negative thoughts.

There are other pitfalls to focusing too much on the negative. Noticing that you have more negative thoughts than you’d like can make you feel bad for failing at ‘cognitive therapy’ which in turns makes you more depressed or anxious, resulting in more negative thoughts and feelings. A similar trap exists regarding victim-identity. Since your thoughts and actions tend to follow your expectations and self-image, viewing yourself as someone who is mentally ill or a victim has the potential to perpetuate your symptoms.

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) recognizes the pitfalls of aggressively targeting offending thoughts and feelings. ACT practitioners recommend accepting that such thoughts and feelings occur while striving to live according to your values and goals. This passive, positive-facing approach has been known to result in negative mental habits diminishing without running the risk of inflating them.

In 2011, Dr. Martin Seligman, the founder of the field of positive psychology, introduced the acronym PERMA to describe a methodological way to improve mental health for people anywhere on the mental health spectrum:¹⁷

P  Positive emotions: Do things that you expect to bring you positive emotions.

E  Engagement: Engage in activities that you find fulfilling and immersive.

R  Relationships: Seek and steward friendship and all types of good relationships with others.

M  Meaning: Introspect to uncover what you value and pursue activities which enrich and give meaning to your life.

A  Accomplishment: Develop your skills, set goals, and enjoy making progress even in small things.

Positive psychology, and its affiliated PERMA model, are not only meant for psychologically ‘healthy’ people. The positively-focused PERMA concept can also be used to help people recover from major mental problems without the risk of negative consequences inherent in more negative orientations.

Religion can also provide a positive path to recovery from mental issues. Religion tends to focus on positive things like worshiping a God or striving to be a better person. Thus, religious people have a positive outlet for their time and attention, making rumination less likely. This could be one of the primary psychological benefits of religion. It stewards mental health in a progressive, positively-oriented way.

Some counselors focus their practice on a positive strength-based approach. With this approach in counseling or self-help, positive attributes are developed and leveraged to improve mental health. For instance, a person with a good sense of humor can try to see the humor bad situations. Another who is a classical music fan can spend more time listening to classical music. A third person may work on developing relationship skills to improve his marriage.

People who struggle with mental issues are well-served to focus on expanding the positive aspects of their life and mind. This does not mean that directly targeting negative symptoms is necessarily a bad thing, but it should be done within limits. Relatedly, identifying as one who is mentally ill can be counterproductive since our realities tend to coalesce around our self-images. A positive orientation towards mental health recovery can avoid these downsides while moving you forward on the mental health spectrum.

The uncomfortable reality is that a century of mental health research has not produced any single method, medication, or specific combination of methods that will resolve a mental health problem for the majority of people. Worse yet, there is no reliable way to know what will work for whom. Therefore, experimentation is always required to overcome mental distress.

Experimentation occurs on various levels. You can experiment with biological, cognitive, and behavioral/environmental strategies to improve your mental health. You can also experiment within each strategy. For instance, you may come up with your own affirmation or hypnotic suggestion that works well for you.

One could even view the existence of mental problems in light of experimentation. Psychological disturbances result from our failure to experiment sufficiently enough to find the correct combination of strategies that sustain good mental health. Seen through the lens of evolutionary biology, mental symptoms are produced when your mind has failed to adapt properly to your environment. It isn’t hard to appreciate the importance of experimentation to adapt and maintain mental homeostasis with the evolutionary perspective.

Why shouldn’t experimentation be central to mental health? Medicine is based upon experimentation. For a given medical condition, you may need to try a few different medications before you find one that has a good combination of effectiveness with acceptable side effects.

Possibly, the mental health field downplays the importance of experimentation because of the inflexibility of counselors. Most mainstream content on mental health is written by professional counselors. Counselors often have fixed ways of doing things — one may only practice manualized CBT while another only performs person-centered therapy.

They may have specific techniques (e.g., mindfulness meditation) that they rely on and struggle to provide their clients with alternatives when those techniques fail to produce results. If psychologists were more open about the importance of experimentation in mental health interventions, the public would awaken to the fact that none of Western psychology’s techniques work for even half of the people that use them. The veil of authority would be broken.

Everyone has the potential to overcome their mental disturbances even if they have had them for many years. Disturbances occur when biological, cognitive, or life experience factors cause dysfunctional adaptations in the brain. Because our brains never lose their ability to form more productive adaptations and because there are innumerable ways to incite the adaptations, mental problems can be resolved in a limitless number of ways. Through cognitive, behavioral, and medical means, we can alter our subconscious habits and literally restructure our brains.

Everyone’s path to well-being is different because all brains are connected differently and respond to stimuli differently. That’s why everything works in psychology and simultaneously nothing works. Only with experimentation can each person find what works for him or her personally.

Recovery from mental issues is more than simply reducing your symptoms. Connectedness, hope, identity reconstruction, re-visiting the meaning of things, and life empowerment (CHIME) are subprocesses of recovery that are empirically linked to symptom reduction.

Mental health is a multi-layered spectrum. Thus, a (mostly) positive approach focusing on expanding what is good in your life tends to be more productive than solely focusing on symptom reduction.