What are the symptoms of mental health?

The core manifestation of mental health is not "always positive and never angry or sad" as people think, but that the whole person's state remains flexible enough to be able to withstand different situations and get along with not so good selves.

A typical example was a visitor I received last week who worked in Internet operations. He had seen a lot of short videos saying that "emotional stability is the top quality of adults" and he always felt that he had a psychological problem. When working on a big project, he was so irritable for two or three days that he couldn't eat. His subordinates leaked core data and he couldn't help but get angry in public. Afterwards, he scolded himself for half a week about "why he couldn't control his temper." He even went to sleep to review the results. Was it too rude at the time?

I told him at the time that you were in a healthy state, but what really went wrong was that when a project was imminent, you still had no energy at all. After you got angry, you would either fall into continuous self-denial and not even want to go to work, or you would feel that it was all the fault of your subordinates and you would intensify your efforts to target others. You see, after finishing the project, he turned around and took the team to eat skewers to make up for his apology. Then he turned around and put it down. Being able to put it away or put it down is the most intuitive manifestation of health.

Nowadays, academic circles have different emphasis on mental health. Scholars who focus on clinical diagnosis and treatment will give priority to excluding pathological characteristics. For example, there will be no unexplained depression, insomnia, physical pain without organic disease for more than two weeks, and no uncontrolled self-injury or suicidal thoughts.； Researchers who prefer social psychology will pay more attention to the integrity of social functions, that is, normal work, social interaction, and life can be maintained, and they will not avoid all normal interpersonal interactions for no reason, nor will they suddenly lose interest in hobbies that they have invested a lot of enthusiasm in before.

In fact, you can compare the state of mental health to the adaptive brightness adjustment of a mobile phone. When the sun is dazzling outside, you can brighten it to see the screen clearly. You can also dim it when you are lying on your phone late at night without dazzling your eyes. It will not always be stuck on the brightest setting, consuming power and getting hot, nor will it always be so dark that you can't see clearly.

A while ago, a reader left a message for me, saying that her roommate never had any negative emotions and would always smile and say it was okay. However, last week he suddenly broke down without warning and locked himself in the room crying all day without even going to work. In fact, that meant that his flexibility was lost. His usual "good emotions" were suppressed, which is not a healthy state.

In the final analysis, mental health is never a question of getting full marks. There is no need to apply the rules and regulations on the Internet to yourself. Occasionally emo, occasionally lose your temper, turn around and live a good life, that is better than anything else.