Maintaining Emotional Sanity
By: Daniel Caruana Smith
Tags: Life Lessons, Emotional Intelligence, Mental Health, Psychology, Self Improvement

What is sanity? That’s easy; the ability to think and behave in a normal and rational manner; sound mental health. At least that’s what the book says. Pinning it down to something measurable is a little harder — we’re not on an even keel here.

“To some, compromise may mean not going out on the weekend. To others, it may mean ending a marriage.”

All individuals start at different points mentally. Each and every one of us has had to compromise at some point or another. To some, that may mean not going out on the weekend. To others, it may mean ending a marriage. Does that mean one compromise feels harder than another? Although some decisions have a lot more weight to them, the reality is that to many of us, a compromise just feels like what it is — a decision we’ve had to take for a greater good. We don’t necessarily notice the consequences (positive or negative) of our decisions until they're done and dusted, which in some cases can be a few years down the line.

“if we know that sanity is an elusive, hard to maintain concept, why do we even bother trying to achieve it?”

Putting the above into context, we can safely assume that the concept of long-lasting sanity is either unreachable or elusive. A bold statement no doubt, but let's think about this for a minute. As humans, we have accepted that we are; emotionally vulnerable to devastating losses, that concepts like love tend to leave us wanting, and that afflictions or infatuations don’t last (see Emotional Perfection?).

“Running around in circles trying to attain something that is unattainable is a form of insanity in itself.”

All of the above have the potential to destabilize us emotionally to the point of insanity. Therefore, if we know that sanity is such an elusive, hard to maintain concept, why do we even bother trying to achieve it? Running around in circles trying to attain something that is unattainable is a form of insanity in itself.

“A sane insanity, or organized chaos where things are out of our control, but that’s okay.”

Before you stop reading what is probably the most fatalistic article in this series (so far), let’s focus on what’s attainable here. Just because we can’t attain a perfect state of whatever we’re striving for doesn’t mean we should quit altogether. Perfect, everlasting sanity may not be attainable (at least not during our lifetime), yet we can easily achieve a wise, knowledgable, and self-controlled relationship with our desires, or in some cases, our compulsions. A sort of sane insanity, or organized chaos where things are out of our control, but that’s okay.

“Panic attacks, anxiety strikes, envious or jealous streaks — all are forms of insanity that suddenly lose their power once acknowledged and exposed to the world.”

What separates the ‘sane insane’ from the crowd is that they are honest and accurate in what is within their control and if it is entirely right with them. They may not be perfectly balanced and do not pretend to be, yet they have accepted this as part of themselves. They are not bothered with seeking out what they should do to appear ‘normal’ in an environment where normality is an illusion and rarely ever exists.

They feel no particular loss of dignity in acknowledging their differences, and do not go to lengths to hide what they get up to in the proverbial dark. Panic attacks, anxiety strikes, envious or jealous streaks — all are forms of insanity that suddenly lose their power once acknowledged and exposed to the world. They might not be glamorous, but they are emotions we can all relate to.

“What separates the ‘sane insane’ from the crowd is that they are honest and accurate in what is within their control”

The more we learn to lay bare our fears, doubts, longings, cravings, and ‘irregular’ habits, the easier they become to overcome. Strangely enough, they may also make us more relatable to those around us. The sane individuals we may look up to are as human as we are; they simply represent a more emotionally open and honest evolution of ourselves.