Selfie Does Mental Health Month
If you didn’t know, May is Mental Health Awareness month. I feel super passionately about mental health awareness , in general, including destigmatizing the conversation about mental health issues and ensuring the language we use around this topic reaches that aim. For example, I was reading an article yesterday talking about tips to deal with your anxiety disorder - which was the title- but the article was about dealing with stress. General Anxiety Disorder or having a panic attack or having any of those seemingly unrelated physical symptoms related to anxiety is not the same as being stressed out. Obviously, reducing stress is critical for one’s happiness and proven to be a serious component of living a healthy lifestyle but someone who has a mental health issue is not just simply “stressed”. That sort of conflation of two different things makes it seem like someone who has anxiety just needs to “calm down”. Similarly, understanding that there can physiological symptoms related to psychological issues and/or that someone with depression cannot simply just “buck up”.
My whole, and essentially, only point being that talking about mental health and taking care of your mental will make anyone’s life better. If you know someone who is struggling and you just want to understand better, there are a lot of resources out there for you too and this is a great month to seek out those resources. As Selfie’s Mom has Bipolar, ADHD and Conversion Disorder, trying to understand what that means for my mother, has helped our family ensure that she is getting what she needs. As far as taking care of your own mental health, especially if you, like me, deal with some level of anxiety disorders, I do sometimes get questions* about how I try to keep that from being disruptive to my life so, here was my recent list. Real, not-meant-for jokes disclaimer: I’m very obviously not a health care professional but if you’re looking for something new to try, maybe one of these will help.
Exercise
“Seriously? You’re starting with…go for a jog?” I don’t know that this will work for everyone. I do know that not everyone is able to work out the way I do, but when I start feeling like my anxiety is getting away from me, I start with asking myself when the last time I worked out was. So, I think exercise is a great way to look the way you want to but for me, it also helps me maintain the mental health I want, too. If you’re looking to try a new exercise to add some balance - even if you don’t struggle with anxiety but you want to unload some stress - may I humbly suggest kickboxing? You can definitely read about awesome kickboxing here.
Meditation
I’ve talked about this before (you can find that here) but meditation has improved my life in a definitive way. It’s also what I call a tool in my toolkit - when I need it on a day like today - I know this is likely to help and all I have to do is click an app on my phone.
Reduce Caffeine and Alcohol Intake
Yup. This is not a fun one but it makes a huge difference. Side bar: Is….Starbucks Coffee like EXTRA caffeinated because I swear, sometimes a 3 pm coffee helps perk me up and sometimes it just makes me miserable. Alcohol, though, to me is the critical one. If I’m feeling anxious in general, it might seem like a good idea to have a glass or two of wine but in general, it makes it worse the next day because…you know…caffeine and alcohol both impact your brain so that’s not a fun tip but it is real.
Just Generally Eat Better
Yes, I know this one is a little simplistic as well but shockingly, not loading up on fat and sugar and just generally, taking care of myself and my blood sugar, means that I don’t have any weird crashes and also, helps ensure that I’m doing what I can to ward of the fatigue that can be a symptom of a lot of mental health issues.
Talk to a Doctor/Take Medication
Much like therapy, this one’s not my personal favorite FOR ME, for a variety of reasons - so if I can do the other stuff first, I will. However, there is nothing in this world that will stop me from reaching for more help when I need it because there’s no reason to. I don’t like taking cold medicine because it makes me dizzy but when I can’t stop coughing and I have a marathon to run, work to do and people to see…I take the freaking cold medicine as long as I have to. I definitely have friends and family who take medication every single day and you know, it helps them live a more fulfilled life. Same thing with therapy - if you need to (or want to) go to therapy, you 100% should. There’s no requirement to have an issue THIS BIG to go to therapy. if you want to check it out and see what it can do for you - go!
So, those are things that I’ve tried that have been successful for myself and people I know and love - how about you? How do you take care of your mental well-being? How do you educate your self on the important of mental health, mental health disorders and the language used around this topic?