Staying Engaged in a Life That Matters: Why Mental Health Requires More Than Regulation

(Reader note: This post discusses mental health, resilience, and engagement with life. Please read with awareness of your own limits and practice self-care as needed. If parts feel overwhelming or activating, pause and consider reaching out for support. For those with a history of trauma, chronic stress, or significant loss, the process discussed in this blog may look different and often unfolds best with support. If this is you, I want to gently encourage you to keep reaching for the help and care you need—you are not meant to do this alone.)

I don’t know how it is for you, but for me, January often brings an increase in pressure—constant messages about change, improvement, and becoming a better version of myself. 

There is often an unspoken message that if we just try harder, regulate more, rest more, or optimize better, we will finally feel peaceful, happy, and fulfilled. 

While some of these ideas are rooted in real psychology, many of them quietly miss the heart of what mental health actually is. Before we talk about fixing, improving, or reinventing anything,

it’s worth slowing down long enough to ask a more honest question: 

What do we really mean when we talk about mental health?

Mental Health Is Not a Finish Line

From a psychological and research-based perspective, mental health is not the absence of struggle, stress, or symptoms. It is not a permanent state of calm, and it is not something you either “have” or “don’t have.” 

Mental health is best understood as a dynamic capacity—the ability to cope with stress, stay connected to ourselves and others, adapt to change, and move toward what matters, even when life is hard.

Dr. Lisa Damour explains it this way (and I often borrow her explanation to explain mental health to my clients): mental health isn't about constant happiness or feeling good; it's about having feelings appropriate to the situation and managing them well.

Additionally, is important to remember that mental health exists on a continuum. A person can experience anxiety and still have moments of peace, grief alongside gratitude, exhaustion alongside meaning. 

When we believe mental health means feeling good all the time, we often end up feeling worse—ashamed of our normal, human responses to a complicated world.

The Rise of “Protect Your Peace” Culture

In recent years, mental health conversations have increasingly emphasized slowing down, nervous system regulation, protecting peace, and prioritizing comfort. These ideas did not come out of nowhere. They are grounded in real research on stress, trauma, burnout, and the nervous system. 

Regulation matters. Rest matters. Safety matters.

Where the message becomes distorted is when regulation quietly becomes the goal instead of the foundation. When mental health is framed as something we achieve by avoiding discomfort, pulling back from challenge, or maintaining constant calm, it shifts from capacity-building into avoidance management. 

The implication becomes that struggle means failure or dysregulation, rather than a normal and meaningful part of being human. That is not what the research supports.

Rest, Detachment, and Comfort: Buffers, Not Replacements

Psychology and occupational health research consistently show that rest, emotional detachment from stress, and comfort act as buffers for mental health. They reduce physiological stress, prevent burnout, restore depleted emotional and cognitive resources, and allow the nervous system to recover.

But buffers are meant to help us recover—not keep us from moving forward!

Rest helps us recover from life; it does not replace the need to engage with life. When rest becomes a long-term substitute for engagement, something subtle can happen. 

Confidence erodes and tolerance for discomfort shrinks. 

Life slowly organizes itself around avoidance—not because a person is weak, but because comfort alone does not build the capacity needed to stay present to a meaningful resilient life.

Why Challenge and Engagement Matter for Resilience

Resilience—one of the strongest predictors of long-term mental health and well-being—does not develop through comfort alone. 

Resilience is not the absence of stress; it is the ability to move through stress and remain intact, or even strengthened, on the other side.

Decades of research show that resilience develops through:

• manageable challenge

• meaningful effort

• opportunities for mastery

• and repeated experiences of “this is hard, and I can do it anyway” 

On the other hand when we don’t have the capacity to engage with life, anxiety often increases, identity narrows, and tolerance for normal stress decreases. When peace is over-protected, resilience quietly weakens.

What We’re Actually Chasing When We Talk About Mental Health

If we’re honest, most of us aren’t chasing perfect calm, and over time many of us learn that, as long as we’re alive, perfect calm isn’t realistic. 

What we are actually chasing is meaning, connection, purpose, and the ability to show up to our lives without feeling constantly overwhelmed or depleted. Psychology suggests that happiness and joy tend to emerge not from constant comfort, but as byproducts of meaningful engagement, healthy relationships, and living in alignment with what matters. 

Research in positive psychology consistently shows that fulfillment is more strongly tied to meaning and engagement than to comfort or pleasure.

Comfort soothes us in the short term. Meaning sustains us in the long term. And meaning almost always involves effort, vulnerability, and risk!

Putting It All Together: Rest and Keep Showing Up

So what do we do with all of this?

If mental health isn’t about feeling calm all the time, and if both regulation and engagement matter, then the work isn’t choosing one over the other. It’s learning how to hold them together in real life—and that’s where resilience is built.

We rest so we can return.

We regulate so we can stay engaged.

We slow down so we don’t disappear from our own lives.

Sometimes caring for your mental health looks like listening to your body and taking a break before you’re depleted. Other times, it looks like gently doing the next right thing even when it feels uncomfortable—making the phone call, showing up to the conversation, keeping a commitment that matters to you. Each time you do this, you strengthen your capacity to meet life rather than retreat from it.

A helpful question in moments of uncertainty might be:

Am I needing recovery, or am I avoiding something that actually supports my well-being?

Mental health—and resilience—grow through a rhythm most of us have to practice again and again: noticing strain, allowing recovery, and then choosing to step back into meaningful parts of life with the capacity we have. This is not about pushing past limits; it’s about building tolerance, confidence, and trust in yourself over time.

So maybe the invitation this January isn’t to fix yourself or retreat from life. Maybe it’s to care for your nervous system and keep showing up. To rest when you need to—and then return.

That’s how resilience grows.

And that’s how we stay engaged in a life that matters.

For Those who Hold Faith: 

For those who hold faith, this conversation fits beautifully within a biblical understanding of the human experience. Scripture does not promise a life free from struggle, but it consistently invites us into a life of meaning, trust, perseverance, and love. Peace, in the biblical sense, is not the absence of hardship—it is the presence of God within it.

Faith invites rhythm rather than extremes: rest and work, surrender and action, dependence and courage. We are reminded that our lives are finite and fleeting, and that fulfillment is not found in constant comfort, but in love—love of God and love of others. 

Until next time, keep showing up with care and courage.

GO brave. GO strong.

About the Author

Written by Gaby Ortiz, MA, LPC, NCC.

Gaby is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Colorado who helps children, teens, women, and families grow with resilience, warmth, and hope. She believes that healing begins in safe connection and that every story holds the possibility of renewal.

For further reading on this topic: This blog is informed by research and clinical frameworks in psychology, trauma studies, resilience research, positive psychology, and Christian thought. Key influences include but not limited to:

• Lisa Damour – Her work reframes mental health as emotional appropriateness and regulation rather than constant happiness, emphasizing that healthy emotional responses vary by context. The Emotional Lives of Teenagers (2023)

• World Health Organization (WHO) – Defines mental health as a dynamic state of well-being that includes coping with stress, functioning meaningfully, and contributing to community—not the absence of distress. Mental Health: Strengthening Our Response

• Stephen Porges – His work on the autonomic nervous system explains how chronic stress dysregulates the nervous system and why safety is necessary for regulation and social engagement. The Polyvagal Theory (2011)

• Bessel van der Kolk – Highlights the role of the body and nervous system in trauma recovery while emphasizing that healing involves both regulation and re-engagement with life. The Body Keeps the Score (2014)

• Ann Masten Defines resilience as “ordinary magic,” developed through relationships, adaptive systems, and experiences of mastery—not comfort or avoidance. Ordinary Magic: Resilience in Development (2014)

• Viktor Frankl – Groundbreaking work on meaning as the foundation of resilience and a life worth living, especially in suffering.

  Man’s Search for Meaning (1959)

• Curt Thompson – Integrates neuroscience, attachment, and Christian faith, emphasizing connection, embodiment, and presence in healing.

  The Soul of Shame; The Anatomy of the Soul

• Dallas Willard – Offers a theological framework for formation, perseverance, and faithful engagement rather than avoidance or comfort-seeking. Renovation of the Heart