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Mental toughness isn’t just "thinking" your way through a situation. If we are experiencing significant anxiety, depression, or the effects of trauma, we need to first attend to our emotional well-being. Seeking professional support must often come before "changing your mindset".
Sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard we try to "think" better—we are naturally hardwired to be driven by emotions. The limbic system, the emotion center of our brain, was one of the first parts of the brain to develop in the human species. Emotions are evolutionarily important.
The cerebral cortex, associated with consciousness, decision-making, reasoning, complex social interactions, and advanced planning, is the newest part of the human brain. Thus, it is important to remember: "We are not thinking beings who feel, we are feeling beings who think."
There is nothing more "mentally tough" than dealing with our own emotions. We can’t always control them, we can’t always change them, but we need to better understand them. With this understanding comes freedom, validation, and acceptance; and with that, comes healing and growth.
