Everything in Moderation is the key to mental health. This may sound oversimplified (and it is to an extent) but it is generally true. In order to be successful, moderation must pertain to both our behavior and to our thinking. Let’s look at how moderation can help us achieve optimal mental health.

Moderation in Behavior

In an earlier post I discussed the Healthy Trinity, the three building blocks of mental health. Moderation is important for all of them.

1) Exercising should be done in moderation. If you do too much, you don’t have time for other activities and you lose too much weight. Too little and you aren’t physically healthy. You are more likely to have diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease if you do not exercise.

2)You have probably heard the phrase “everything in moderation” related to portion size and eating junk food. Eat too much and you are probably going to be overweight and have the accompanying heath issues. Eat too little and you don’t feed your body needed nutrients. Both are unhealthy.

3) Finally, if you are sleeping for 9 hours or more a day there is probably something wrong. Too much sleep can be a sign of depression.  Too little sleep and your cognitive processes and mood suffer. I’m sure you can easily recall a day where you were irritable because you did not get enough sleep. As you can see from the Healthy Trinity, moderate behavior is almost always the optimal behavior for mental health.

There are many more behaviors we engage in every day besides the Healthy Trinity.   These may include socializing, working, household chores, etc. You should always keep moderation in mind when performing any behavior; in general, you want to avoid extreme behavior to achieve optimal results.

Moderation in Thinking

Moderate thinking is just as important as moderate behavior. In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy the goal is to avoid extreme, or distorted, thinking. You want your thinking to be appropriate for the occasion. Your perspective on a situation will define how you feel about it. Let’s look at a couple of examples that highlight extreme positive and negative thinking.

1) Ever see someone laughing during a funeral?  Probably not very often.  An appropriate response to a funeral would be sadness. Someone who is overly positive in their thinking would appear happier than what you would expect at a funeral.  I think we have all met people that are always a bit too upbeat no matter what is going on. Those people are too optimistic in their thinking.  When you are overly optimistic, your actions don’t always fit the situation.

2) On the flip side, there are people who seem to turn any situation negative. There used to be a funny skit on Saturday Night Live where “Debbie Downer” ( a funny Rachel Dratch) would take some neutral sounding situation and always make it hugely negative. Unfortunately, there are lots of people out there who think this way, many of whom are depressed. These are the people that you do not want to invite to your party because you fear they will suck out all the fun. They are extreme negative thinkers.

As you can see, the goal with thinking, as with behavior, is moderation. The extremes tend to get us in trouble. In general, moderate thinking will lead to you to feelings that are appropriate for the situation. Add that to moderate behavior and you will be on your way to achieving your optimal mental health.