🌵First: what does “staying mentally alive” mean?

When you are deep in illness, depression or grief and you often say:
“I feel numb”
“I’m tired of trying and not getting anywhere”
“I’m stuck in a loop”
“Nothing makes sense”
“It’s like I’m watching life happen from behind glass”
“I’m not giving up, but I’m also not moving forward”

That’s psychological deadness.
The brain’s model of the world has collapsed, but nothing new has taken its place.
So it just loops.

Staying mentally alive means interrupting the loop.
Not with positive thinking.
But with exposure to something unexpected – a new thought, a new perspective, a new experience that wakes the mind up.

That tiny mental spark is called “psychological richness”

🌵 2nd: What does it mean to “become someone new”?

Let’s say you:
Hear a story from someone with a totally different life
Read a book or watch a film that shakes something inside you
Visit a place that redefines your feel of what’s possible
Have a conversation that makes you question what you thought you knew

You don’t feel better right away.
But something in your model of the world changes.
You stop asking, “How do I get back to normal?”
You start asking “What if I never go back – and thats okay?”

That is when you become someone new.
Not because you “chose to grow”
But because life bent you – and instead of snapping, you rearranged.

🌵 Third: How does psychological richness work?

It works by:
1. Interrupting mental autopilot → You stop running the same thought loops
2. Introducing unfamiliar information → You have to rethink, not just cope
3. Requiring perspective building → You construct new meaning, even if temporary

This doesn’t mean booking a flight to Marrakesh.
It could mean:
Going to a place in your neighborhood you’ve never noticed
Having an honest talk with someone from outside your bubble
Trying something that feels strange
Looking at your own life from a new angle – through someone else’s eyes

🌵 Bottom line:

Psychological richness is what you reach for when:
You can’t fix the problem
You can’t feel much of anything
You’ve lost the plot
And still, you refuse to go numb.

You let life throw you somewhere unfamiliar.
And you pay attention.
You let yourself change.

That’s staying mentally alive.
That’s becoming someone new.
That’s a way out of hell.