“CONSULT A MEDICAL DOCTOR”

Absolutely — healing through fitness is real and well-documented, both physically and psychologically. 

Here’s how it works across various levels:

Physical Healing

Regular exercise promotes biological repair and resilience:

Increased blood flow delivers nutrients and oxygen to injured tissues.

Improved immune function helps with inflammation control and cellular repair.

Muscle and joint recovery is enhanced through strength training and mobility work.

Chronic pain reduction, especially for back pain or arthritis, is often observed with tailored fitness programs like Pilates, yoga, or swimming. Example: People with type 2 diabetes often improve insulin sensitivity and reduce medication needs through consistent exercise.

Psychological & Emotional Healing

Fitness can be deeply therapeutic for mental health:

Endorphins & dopamine release during workouts improves mood and reduces anxiety and depression.

Routine & discipline help rebuild a sense of control and identity after trauma or loss.

Somatic movement like yoga, tai chi, or dance therapy connects body awareness to emotional processing (especially for PTSD, grief, or anxiety).

Body empowerment through strength and endurance improves self-image and confidence.

Example: Many trauma survivors report feeling more “present” and emotionally grounded after adopting movement practices.

Spiritual & Energetic Healing (Holistic View)

In holistic traditions:

Movement is medicine — Qigong, martial arts, or conscious movement facilitate energy flow (chi/prana).

Grounding and presence are heightened through physical awareness, helping reconnect with the body.

Some believe cellular memory (of trauma) can be released through specific movement patterns.

“The body keeps the score” — trauma is often stored in the body and can be released through conscious physical activity.

 Tips for Healing Through Fitness:

Start gently, especially if recovering from illness, trauma, or emotional distress.

Choose activities you enjoy: walking, dancing, swimming, lifting weights, martial arts.

Add mind-body practices: yoga, tai chi, breathwork, or mindful stretching.

Stay consistent, not extreme — healing is a long-term process.

Shervan K Shahhian

Tattoos and Mental Health:

Tattoos and mental health have a complex and evolving relationship.

Here’s an overview of the key connections:

1. Self-Expression and Identity

Positive: Tattoos often help people express their identity, values, or life experiences. This can lead to improved self-esteem, a sense of control, and emotional catharsis.

Example: Survivors of trauma may get tattoos as a symbol of healing or empowerment (e.g., a phoenix, semicolon for suicide prevention, etc.).

2. Coping Mechanism

Mixed: Some individuals use tattoos to cope with emotional pain or psychological distress. While this can be therapeutic, it can also be a form of self-harm or signal unresolved trauma.

Example: People with a history of self-injury may turn to tattoos as a safer or more socially acceptable form of bodily expression.

3. Social Connection and Stigma

Positive: Tattoos can foster a sense of belonging in subcultures or communities (e.g., veterans, artists, trauma survivors).

Negative: Stigma still exists in some cultures or professional environments, potentially affecting mental health through social judgment or discrimination.

4. Association with Mental Health Conditions

Some studies have found correlations between tattoos and higher rates of mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, or impulsivity. However, correlation does not equal causation — tattoos may simply reflect a person’s journey through mental health challenges rather than being a cause or symptom of disorder.

5. Therapeutic Uses

In clinical settings, therapists sometimes explore the meaning of a client’s tattoos as a way to access deeper emotional themes or unresolved issues.

Shervan K Shahhian

“Filtering reality” usually means that our minds don’t perceive or process all information available around us — we automatically filter it based on what we expect, believe, need, or fear.

What it is:

It’s a mental process where the brain selects certain details for attention and ignores others.

It happens unconsciously most of the time, based on personal biases, survival instincts, habits, emotional states, and learned conditioning.

Why it happens:

Efficiency: If we took in everything without filtering, we’d be overwhelmed. Filtering lets us focus on what seems most important.

Survival: Our ancestors needed to quickly detect threats or food, not admire every leaf. So evolution favored brains that filtered for relevance.

Meaning-making: Filtering helps us interpret reality instead of being drowned by raw data. It simplifies the world into stories and categories we can handle.

In short, filtering reality is how consciousness survives complexity — but it can also limit growth if the filters become too rigid or outdated.

Shervan K Shahhian

Human Performance Psychology, (HPP):

Human performance psychology is the field that studies how psychological factors (like motivation, focus, stress, confidence, mental toughness) impact someone’s ability to perform at their best, especially in high-pressure environments. It’s used a lot in sports, military, performing arts, business leadership, and even astronaut training.

Key areas in human performance psychology include:

• Mental skills training: like visualization, goal setting, and self-talk.
• Stress management: staying calm and effective under pressure.
• Resilience building: bouncing back quickly from failure or setbacks.
• Optimizing focus and attention: managing distractions and maintaining flow states.
• Fatigue and recovery: understanding how mental and physical fatigue affect performance and how to recover.

In some ways, it overlaps with sports psychology, but human performance psychology is broader—it’s about any kind of performance, not just athletic.

Shervan K Shahhian

Lobotomy, what and why:

“CONSULT A MEDICAL DOCTOR”

A lobotomy is a type of brain surgery that was once used to treat certain mental illnesses, mainly severe depression, schizophrenia, and extreme anxiety.

The basic idea was to sever connections between the prefrontal cortex (the front part of the brain involved in thinking, planning, and emotions) and the rest of the brain. Surgeons believed this would reduce a patient’s intense emotional suffering and uncontrollable behaviors. The procedure was first widely promoted in the 1930s and 1940s, especially by a Portuguese neurologist named Egas Moniz, who even won a Nobel Prize for it in 1949.

Why it was done:

At the time, there were very few effective treatments for severe mental illness.

Hospitals were overcrowded with patients who had no hope of recovery.

Psychiatrists were desperate for anything that could calm violent or suicidal individuals.

However, lobotomies often left patients with terrible side effects:

Loss of personality

Emotional flatness

Intellectual decline

Sometimes even death

By the 1950s and 1960s, new psychiatric medications like Thorazine became available, and lobotomies quickly fell out of favor because the risks were too high compared to the benefits.

Shervan K Shahhian

Splitting in Mental Health:

In mental health, splitting is a psychological defense mechanism where a person is unable to hold opposing thoughts, feelings, or beliefs about themselves or others. This leads them to see things in black-and-white, all-or-nothing terms — someone is either “all good” or “all bad,” with no shades of gray.

Key Characteristics of Splitting:

Idealization and devaluation: A person may alternate between extreme admiration and intense dislike for someone, based on a single event or interaction.

Instability in relationships: People who split may have tumultuous relationships due to their shifting perceptions.

Inability to integrate positive and negative aspects of oneself or others into a cohesive whole.

Commonly Associated Disorders:

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD): Splitting is considered a hallmark feature of BPD, though it can appear in other conditions.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder and other personality disorders: It can also occur in these contexts, though often less pervasively.

Example:

Border Line, example:

A client with BPD may say of their therapist:
“You’re the best therapist in the world!” (idealization)
Then, after a perceived slight:
“You’re just like all the others — completely useless!” (devaluation)

Why It Happens:

Splitting often originates from early developmental trauma or invalidating environments, where the person never developed the capacity to tolerate emotional ambivalence or complexity.

Shervan K Shahhian

Suppressing Grief or Anxiety only extends Suffering, why:

Suppressing grief or anxiety only extends suffering because when these emotions are pushed away or denied, they aren’t actually resolved — they remain active beneath the surface, influencing thoughts, behavior, and even physical health in subtle but powerful ways. 

Here’s why:

Unprocessed Emotions Don’t Disappear Suppression is like stuffing emotions into a box and locking it — but the box is still inside you. Over time, those emotions may leak out as irritability, depression, panic attacks, or physical symptoms (like headaches, fatigue, or digestive issues).

Avoidance Blocks Healing Emotions like grief and anxiety have a natural arc — they arise in response to loss or threat and, when fully experienced, tend to lessen over time. Suppression interrupts this healing process, leaving you emotionally “stuck.”

Increases Internal Conflict Part of your mind is trying to feel or express the emotion, while another part is working hard to block it. This creates tension and drains mental energy, leading to greater stress and fatigue.

Impacts Relationships When you suppress your emotions, especially grief, it can create distance between you and others. You may seem emotionally unavailable or cold, which makes it harder to receive the support you actually need.

The Body Keeps ScoreAs trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk puts it, “the body keeps the score.” Suppressed emotions can manifest in somatic (bodily) ways — chronic pain, immune issues, or psychosomatic conditions.

Ultimately, allowing yourself to feel and express grief or anxiety — whether through talking, writing, crying, or meditating — is a form of respect for your inner life. It’s how you metabolize pain and create space for growth, connection, and peace.

Shervan K Shahhian