In light of Mental Health Awareness month, Mahrukh Khwaja discusses her Dentip for managing mental health and wellbeing.
In this month’s Dentip, I’d really like to spotlight increasing your levels of self-compassion.
What self-compassion really involves is talking to yourself in a way that you would a loved one or a close friend.
This is really powerful when it comes to counteracting the harsh inner critic and perfectionism that a lot of us actually experience.
There are three steps that you can take:
Practice mindfulness
Catch that negative thought when you notice your harsh inner critic pop up.
Remind yourself that you’re not alone
This is really crucial because it reminds ourselves that we all experience stress, and that we are all part of this human experience. It also really helps to put things into perspective for us.
Use words of self kindness
These are words that you would share with a loved one or a close family friend.
This can be when you notice stress pop up and just validating that suffering and experience by saying, ‘I know you’re going through stress. I’ve got your back – what do you need from me right now?’
And lastly using physical gestures can be really powerful, and this can be through squeezing your arm or your hand.
Mahrukh Khwaja
Mahrukh Khwaja is a dentist and qualified positive psychologist.
She is also the founder of Mind Ninja: a wellbeing start-up providing resilience and mental health training to dental professionals so they can thrive in any environment.
As well as this, Mahrukh specialises in applying positive psychology through training, coaching and wellbeing products, such as her flagship Mind Flossing Toolkit.
She was also was named Top 50 in Dentistry 2022 by FMC for her work on mental health in the industry.
Connect with her on Instagram @mindninja.wellbeing and www.mind-ninja.co.uk.
Watch more Dentips:
- Hassan Shariff – managing dentine hypersensitivity
- Aly Virani – post-operative instruction packs
- Anna Peterson – social media
- Nicola Gore – composite heaters
- Josh Sharpling – restorations.
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