Growth mindset and mental health aren’t phrases I see grouped together very often, and truthfully, it’s a disservice. Developing a strong growth mindset at a young age has been monumental in my journey with depression and anxiety.
Coping with mental illness is a lonely experience, no matter what your support system may look like. At the end of the day, you are battling the thoughts and symptoms of your illness alone. This is why it’s crucial that you develop a growth mindset for your mental health so you can effectively take care of yourself.
What is a growth mindset?
To understand a growth mindset, you’ve got to first understand what mindsets are.
Mindset is the malleability of attributes like personality, intelligence, and behavior. In other words, it’s our beliefs about the ability of our attributes to change.
Now, if you have a growth mindset, that means you assume your personality, intelligence and behavior can change if worked on.
The opposite of a growth mindset is a fixed mindset, meaning you assume your attributes are fixed and cannot be changed no matter how hard you try.
Affects Of Growth Mindset On Mental Illness
An interview with Yale fellow and Harvard researcher Jessica Schleider on InnerDrive reveals that there is a link between mindsets and mental health, specifically saying “[an] intervention teaching a growth mindset of personality improved social stress recovery, increased perceived control, and reduced depression and anxiety in high-symptom adolescents (ages 12 to 15).
To develop a growth mindset means to change your own presumptions about your capabilities. People with mental illness can struggle with this because a lot of their symptoms are out of their control.
One study suggests that a fixed mindset can exacerbate mental illness in young teens because it encourages them to internalize problems. This is pretty consistent; if you believe your personality can’t change and you’re stuck being the person you are today for the rest of your life, you’re more inclined to believe that your problems are your fault.
However, with everything, we can control how we respond. To change your innate reactions, you’ve got to change your mindset.
Meaning, change how you believe you function as a person.
Now, let’s get into why you need a growth mindset for your mental health.
Why You Need A Growth Mindset For Your Mental Health
Your Recovery Starts With You
With a growth mindset, you believe your personality, behavior, and/or intelligence can change. I throw in ‘or’ because it’s true; you can have a growth mindset about your intelligence, for example, and still believe your personality and behaviors are fixed. Or, you can believe your personality is fixed, and your behaviors and intelligence are malleable. And so on and so forth.
To believe that all three are malleable is the most optimal for your mental health. You believing you can change in several aspects of your life is fundamental for your recovery attempts to work.
You know the saying, ‘nothing is going to help if you don’t want it too’? That rings true for mental illness, to a point.
It’s not that you have to want methods like therapy or medication for them to work. There just has to be a willingness to try in order to get the ball rolling.
Developing a growth mindset can be the motivating force for you to want to change…something. That small shift in mindset is enough to make it happen.
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A Growth Mindset Is A Thriving Mindset
It’s common for people to interchange grit and growth mindset, but these are similar yet different ideologies.
A growth mindset doesn’t mean you have to give it your all over and over again. It’s not perseverance, it just encourages it. It’s simply the belief that you can change, that you can learn more, do better, and be better if you decide to.
When big stressful life events happen (or small stressors reoccur, or your mental illness symptoms are acting up, etc), it’s easier to handle it with a growth mindset. You can be hopeful of the future because things are malleable. Instead of being stuck in distressing emotional cycles for a long period of time, you can fully experience your emotions and let go of what’s not in your control. Because what you can control, i.e. your behavior, intelligence, and personality, can change.
A Growth Mindset Promotes Self Trust
If you haven’t read my post about how to build genuine self-trust, I talk about how self-trust is essential for healing your relationship with yourself as well as taking care of yourself. All of these characteristics require a growth mindset to begin with!
Those of us with mental illness are constantly having to be proactive with our thoughts so we can tackle our daily tasks. Adopting a growth mindset can make us more consistent with our other coping strategies, which makes us reliable to ourselves.
For example: Simply deciding to reach out for help when your symptoms are getting worse is how you actively advocate for yourself. You can rely on yourself to get help when you need it. That’s BIG.
This is the building block to self-betterment, whether you have a mental illness or are a psychologically healthy person!
Potential Dangers Of A Growth Mindset
Unfortunately, some of the common teachings of growth mindset have done damage, and it stems from a misinterpretation of the term.
A growth mindset has been treated as a personality trait in and of itself, where teachers praise students for having a growth mindset for dubious reasons. A growth mindset has become synonymous with being a hard worker. It’s making young people believe their failures are a result of not working hard enough for progress in school.
In an interview with the Atlantic, Dweck states that a false growth mindset is “false in the sense that nobody has a growth mindset in everything all the time. Everyone is a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets. You could have a predominant growth mindset in an area but there can still be things that trigger you into a fixed mindset trait.”
In other words, toxic positivity has really twisted the original purpose of this strategy – which is exactly what a growth mindset is!
To coin a growth mindset as an identifier is to miss the point entirely. It’s a coping strategy, a way of thinking to adopt when faced with failure or stress, or the unknown. It’s reacting to failure with optimism for growth, and not as an indicator of your abilities as a person.
The Big Take Away
Dealing with your mental health can feel disempowering when it’s at an all-time low, and adopting a growth mindset isn’t going to change how your depressive or anxious episodes feel.
What it will do is help you get back to baseline afterward and continue to tend to yourself in the best way you can. Because “growth” doesn’t have to be making big leaps. It can be small steps where your only goal is to put one foot after the other. That’s having a growth mindset.
This was all about growth mindset and mental health. Remember that your journey with mental illness is never linear, but how you show up for yourself is what matters most.
Until next time.
I don’t think I have thick skin, but I heal fast. It’s easy to break through, but I heal fast.
Trevor noah
