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Art and literature have been shown to benefit one’s mental health. A majority of the community say that art is a useful avenue for expression. Meanwhile, others comment that reading literature helps in re-evaluating beliefs and emotions as well as learning techniques to handle mental health. Finish reading “How Art And Literature Improve Mental Health”
The family is the first pillar of support where we get help with our everyday struggle. They are the ones responsible for keeping our emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being intact. Each member of the unit is our source of reference; the first persons we turn to when we experience challenges in our lives. Since they are essential in our growth and development, it is a priority to strengthen family support.
“This idea of feeling connected becomes very reinforcing, to all of us, and it contributes to happiness, it contributes to mental health and it does contribute also to physical health,” says psychologist John Northman, PhD.
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The Usual Scenario Of Family Relationship
Every family experiences challenge and struggle with different types of relationships. Not everyone agrees on the same opinion, and not all members of the unit are responsible enough to acknowledge their mistakes. There are times when we encounter misunderstandings and conflict. Those are the usual things that happen inside the family. But what’s sad is when decisions brought about by our weaknesses become a reason not to view our family as someone vital for our recovery. That instead of opening up our emotional problems to them, we choose to be with friends and strangers. We assume that other individuals are more capable of protecting us, helping us, and loving us unconditionally. With that, we do not find ways to connect and reconnect with our family. The particular action limits the chance of the family in knowing significant changes in the unit because there’s no open and honest discussion about what challenges and issues we are going through.
The dilemma with society nowadays is that they no longer believe that a family is capable of helping each of its members. What is worse is that most of them feel that it is entirely the number one cause of detrimental ordeals. Since there are tons of issues that arise every day such as neglect, abuse, and abandonment, most people don’t see the significance of the family’s support anymore. They think that a person’s development is only attached to social connection and that his overall growth merely depends solely on the environment. But that is not true. Since every individual starts their lives with their families, they will remain the most significant contributors to an individual’s emotional, spiritual, behavioral, and mental health.
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Changing The Habit Of Getting Closer
Every family has the same goal. That is to become healthy emotionally and mentally and make sure that the members of the unit grow and develop as sell- sufficient individuals. The focus of strengthening family support is to allow everyone in the family to become responsible for taking care of themselves so they can serve others as well. Because when families stick with each other, it allows the community to develop too. The unit is far more significant than just a group of people living in a household because they are different individuals who care, love, understand, and support each other no matter what.
So instead of us not talking and sharing our problems with our family, we should acknowledge the importance of opening up things that confuse and bothers us. We have to exert an effort in spending time with them and knowing everything about them. It’s not only for the benefit of getting useful information that will strengthen the relationship, but for the advantage of gaining respect, knowledge, and self-worth too. What we learn from our family’s values and disciplinary actions helps us to grow in life. That is because there’s honesty, kindness, and self-confidence. Their support becomes the foundation of our maturity.
Robyn Fivush, PhD, emphasizes the importance of eating with your family. She wrote, “[T]here is a lot of evidence that eating a meal together has positive benefits for children. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse finds that families that eat dinner together have children and adolescents that are less likely to engage in risky behaviors, including smoking, drugs and sex, and more likely to engage on prosocial behavior, including attending school and getting good grades.”
It’s important to reach out to your children, but you should also remember not to demand them to communicate with you. Arthur Bodin, PhD, tells parents, “You recognize they have a life of their own. You don’t try to micromanage them there.”
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Acknowledging The Family’s Worth And Influence
Family support is crucial especially in times when we don’t understand the things around us. We have to admit, we can’t survive alone in this world and that we need essential people to look out for us, give us hope, and become our strength. We wouldn’t be who we are without the support of our family. So instead of complaining and looking at our differences, we need to recognize the right sides of each other. Everyone will not agree on one thing, but that’s okay. It will teach us to have a better understanding of how each of us thinks and responds to what’s currently around us. Nothing can give us a complete emotional and mental safety other than our family.
Friends and special someone can have a choice to stick with us. But our family will never have second thoughts of doing so.
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