Skip to main content

CHIME


Throughout this month, I have seen many patients struggling with deep emotional instability. Given the circumstances, this is more than expected. However, I find this an opportune moment to reintroduce a model of emotional sustainability that can serve as a guide in times of adversity while you work towards a more pleasant, fulfilling, and meaningful life.  

You are already familiar with the foundations of this guide, as I have outlined its core concepts in my last five articles. They are:  

  • C – Connection: Building and maintaining supportive relationships with family, friends, and the community.
  • HHope and Optimism about the Future: Believing in the possibility of a better future and working towards positive change.
  • IIdentity: Developing or rediscovering a sense of self that is positive and resilient.
  • MMeaning in Life: Finding purpose through personal values, spirituality, work, or community engagement.
  • EEmpowerment: Gaining confidence, control, and the ability to make choices that shape one's own life.

These five elements form the basis of emotional sustainability, all of which are directly linked to psychological recovery following significant emotional challenges. They are part of the CHIME acronym in positive psychiatry, which, in turn, represents some of the most well-established evidence-based insights on how to develop and maintain emotional well-being in the face of impactful adversities.  

The practical importance of this approach is that it equips you with greater positivity and fosters resilience, regardless of the difficulties you may encounter. This does not mean dismissing problems, which would inevitably lead to toxic positivity. However, as I discussed in my article from 18 March this year, healing the negatives does not create the positives. You must actively work to cultivate your emotional energy.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What Winter Asks

Lately, I’ve found myself anticipating winter — not because it is here, but because its presence has begun to register. A shift in tone. A quiet deviation from the familiar. We are still within autumn, yes, but the pattern is clear: a cooling, a thinning of light, a withdrawal. Winter does not arrive with grandeur. It infiltrates. It operates in intervals — a guest that does not overstay, yet rearranges the room all the same. It brings with it not only the chill, but a quiet audit of our habits. Our homes, designed for air and openness, falter in the face of this visitor. We adjust. Coats reappear. Blankets are retrieved from high places. Improvisation becomes method: Havaianas with woollen socks. Soup, made not only to nourish but to ground. This is where hygge emerges — not as aesthetic, but as principle. The deliberate act of creating warmth within transience. A structured comfort, built from attentiveness. Outside, clouds obscure the light. Inside, a countermeasure: sof...

On slowing time: multivitamins, acupuncture, and the art of ageing well

A major randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, recently published, has demonstrated that daily multivitamin supplementation may decelerate biological ageing, as assessed by epigenetic markers. Conducted by researchers at Columbia University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the study followed over 2,200 participants aged sixty and above for a period of two years, evaluating the long-term effects of daily micronutrient intake. Epigenetic age — distinct from chronological age — was estimated via DNA methylation, a biomarker increasingly recognised for its accuracy in gauging biological ageing. The results revealed a marked slowing of this process among those receiving the multivitamin: on average, participants exhibited approximately two years less biological ageing when compared with their counterparts in the placebo group. These findings lend weight to the hypothesis that subtle yet chronic micronutrient deficiencies may hasten the ageing process, even in the a...

The Navel and the Whole

In the course of daily life, concepts such as knowledge, self-knowledge, and the practice of goodness ought never to be forgotten. Yet not only are they neglected — they are actively abandoned, especially when they stand at odds with the ambitions of humankind. And therein lies the blind spot of human pride: the self — the ever-contemplated navel. I see it manifest in the most absurd of circumstances, where there is no sincere interest in understanding the other. The affluent denigrate the poor; the poor resent the affluent. But where, I ask, is our shared humanity? Where is the recognition that the destiny of one is bound to the destiny of all? That recognition remains — dimmed, tucked away in some forgotten recess — awaiting the rekindling of light. When I welcome a homosexual patient, I see someone in search of that very light, navigating life in a conservative, restrictive city that offers little room to breathe. When I receive someone ensnared in substance use, I encou...