How to Fight Mental Attrition

“Eat your food as your medicine. Otherwise, you have to eat medicine as your food.” —Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was talking about food here, but he could just as easily have been talking about our mental health. Our healthy habits tend to abate our unhealthy ones. However, when we ignore, deny, procrastinate, or eschew our healthy thoughts and feelings, we set in motion all the power and potential to subvert our mental health. It is not only the possibilities of obesity or malnutrition derived from an inappropriate diet that threaten us, but all the maladaptive cognitive and affective processes that can lead to our mental attrition.

What Is Mental Attrition?

In this context, attrition is the process of reducing something's strength or effectiveness through sustained attack. ¹

When we allow the sustained judgment of others or when we reinforce our own negative self-talk, we reduce our capacity for mental strength. We have now initiated an attack on the process that will impede our mental health.

This process will be magnified over time should we perpetually reinforce our receptivity to the negative. Ruminations and fixation will also enhance these reductions in mental strength. Revisiting our traumatic past relationships, job losses, mistakes, or accidents will also heighten mental attrition.

Just as mental health needs a reinforcement schedule, mental illness is also maintained through reinforcement. We are repeating and sustaining the contraindicated processes that eventually erode our mental strength.

How do we reverse this process and turn mental attrition into mental nutrition? What strategies do we need to implement that will counter a negative spiral in our mental health? Do we have the tools to overcome the repeated judgment of others in situ or in our memories? Can we put a halt to our own self-judgment? Are we at times our own worst enemy?

The Role of Self-Sabotage

Why do we stand in our own way? What possible payoffs could entice someone to repeatedly self-sabotage? Are there any identifiable precursors that could help us comprehend the bewildering mindset of the self-saboteur?

Some have suggested that fear of failure, or even fear of success, could be a possible precursor to self-sabotage. How would this work? Perhaps by taking a preemptive view of self-judgment, the self-saboteur eliminates or at least minimizes the possible impact of any judgment from others.

Self-sabotage thus becomes an avoidance strategy to circumvent any external critique or evaluation. This preemptive strategy when reinforced gives the self-saboteur a perceived increase of control over the assessment of their work or performance.

With the fear of success, the self-saboteur may fear there is even more to lose. Once one has been recognized as being successful, how does one handle the possible loss of esteem that comes with the territory of even more outside scrutiny? ²

“A healthy outside starts from the inside.” —Robert Urich

Counter Attrition With Mental Nutrients

Source: Jack Sparrow/Pexels

Reversing negativity is not just positive thinking. To reverse the impact of being judged, we must recognize judgment for what it really is and not what it appears to be.

Judgment is a compensatory response to low self-esteem. When people judge, they are really revealing their own inadequacies. The judgment is an attempt to diminish another and raise oneself. The unstable person is the "judger." There is no need to absorb judgment from another. We have the ability to shield ourselves from this treatment.

Negative self-talk is another form of judgment that has no redeeming qualities. This practice will only create self-doubt, which seeds procrastination and a fear of failure.

We have the power to support ourselves if we choose. This can be an invaluable resource when we are facing a challenging situation. On the other hand, negative self-talk will only create more doubt in our ability to resolve the situation.

Pursue a Passion

Passionate people are compelled, perhaps even called, to do something meaningful with their lives. There is a sense of achievement, pride, and purpose in their pursuit of life.

Passionate people take charge. They are in control of their life and demonstrate this control through having personal agency, self-discipline, and autonomy in their life. Rewards are still important, but not central to their drive and ambition. They are not ego-driven. They are task-driven. They are all in on accomplishing goals and creating purpose and value in their lives. Fortunately, they notice their progress.

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Personal agency refers to the sense that one is causing or generating an action oneself. A person with a sense of personal agency perceives himself/herself as the subject influencing his/her own actions and life circumstances. ³

To develop personal agency takes time and effort. You will need to choose what you let into your mind. This would involve your physical environment as well as your social environment. This means choosing the people, experiences, and the stimuli that you are exposed to. You will need to learn to be very selective about who and what you let into your mind. Try to see yourself as a learner, and that includes paying attention to your self-observational skills as well.

Manage your emotions and your beliefs through introspection. Impulsive behaviour is a by-product of mismanaging your emotional being. This degree of self-discipline requires that you be into reflection, not reflex. Your intuition may at times need to be cross-referenced. Make an effort to be deliberate before you take any action. Realize that risk is not about being impulsive, but being impulsive can be a risk. ³