Halfpoint/Shutterstock
Happy May! This month represents our annual opportunity to turn inward, take stock of our health, and focus on self-care.
Adapting to remote work during the global pandemic and assisting students and colleagues through this difficult time has given us plenty to juggle, emotionally and logistically. On top of that, many of us have also supported family members as they’ve navigated these complexities. It’s been a long, difficult stretch.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Take the invitation that May affords us. Check in with yourself. Stop moving for a moment and assess how you’re managing all of this. For many of us, we haven’t taken the customary breaks that keep us balanced like vacations, day trips, and weekend getaways.
It feels like we may be emerging from the thick of our pandemic danger. But how do we make sense of the unprocessed trauma we’ve been carrying? Where do we put the anxiety and stress that has accumulated? How do we emerge from our pandemic pods and make a healthy return to our social lives?
Make a commitment to your mental health starting this May. Consider these points as you begin this work.
“Mind Your Margins”
The pandemic has been an all-hands-on-deck challenge. It’s been a taxing, full body exercise; yet many of us found little room to recognize, or care for, our own needs. We simply had to make things work in an environment where we were both living and working with the members of our household.
Dr. Emily Stone, owner and senior clinician at Unstuck Group shares this advice for beginning the work of prioritizing our needs: “Commit to slowing down. Pause. Take a break. We tend to ‘amp up’ when we should be ‘gearing down’. All of the pressure has a way of making everything feel more urgent…more dire…more like an emergency. Go on a walk. Sit in the sunshine for a few moments. Instead of letting your brain instruct your body, use intentional activity to instruct your mind…reminding it that anxious energy doesn’t have to be in charge in order for you to be ok.”
Existing in crisis mode while sharing space and resources with your household for an extended stretch is complex and challenging. Dislodging from that, reframing your experiences, and finding your way forward is a process. Dr. Stone reminds us:
“Margins are those spaces around your paper that help keep you on target as you write. They help you stay within the boundaries of the paper and give the overall look of the page a nice, easy-on-the-eyes feel…not overwhelming. Margins help the reader hold onto the page without covering up words with fingers. . . Our days need margins, too. When we fill our lives to the brim it can be difficult to ‘grasp the page’ without ‘covering something else up’. Something is sure to get missed. It can feel overwhelming. Without margins it is difficult to do the work of self-reflection and awareness…it is more difficult to grow. There is no space to sit and engage thoughtfully with what is going on in your life.”
Many of us are surprised to find that even after we’re vaccinated, we don’t feel refreshed, energized, relieved. Instead, we feel more of the same sense of sadness, exhaustion, and worry that have come to characterize the experience of living through the pandemic.
The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) reports: “During the pandemic, about 4 in 10 adults in the U.S. have reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder, a share that has been largely consistent, up from one in ten adults who reported these symptoms from January to June 2019.” KFF also found that throughout the pandemic more Americans reported difficulties around sleeping and eating, plus an increase in substance abuse.
Dr. Stone points out:
“As usual, it can be difficult to figure out the ‘chicken and the egg’ effect, but often a lack of margins is associated with greater feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression. Sometimes we fill up our ‘pages’ in order to AVOID engaging with our lives…to avoid reflecting. Slowing down feels scary. It is easier to lose ourselves in busy-ness so we don’t have to reach out to a partner that may struggle to be emotionally available or physically present due to their own stuff, or so we don’t have to notice where we need to make changes that will require serious disruptions.”
Learning to Administer Good Self-Care
Many of us know how to be care-givers. Especially during the pandemic, we have been working overtime in this capacity to take care of our children, parents, students, direct reports, and other colleagues. But we get stumped when it comes to caring for ourselves. We may make efforts here and there, but when it comes to adopting a comprehensive program for our self-care, it can feel hard to figure out how to make this a priority.
Dr. Stone describes it: “Self-care is about taking time to know yourself so that you can be a good parent to yourself. Being an adult means being your own mom or dad. It is telling yourself to go out and get some sunshine. It is telling yourself it is time for bed. It is noticing when you have had ‘too much’ and need some quiet time. We learn to be our own mom or dad from…our mom and dad. Because none of us had perfect parents, we all have work to do in this area. We have work to do in getting to know ourselves and learning how to love ourselves better, truer, and deeper with each passing year.”
How Do We Know When to Ask for the Help of a Professional?
It can be hard to sort through and understand what we’re experiencing. How do we know when to invite the help of a professional? One of the goals of Mental Health Awareness Month is to fight the stigma around seeking the help we need.
Dr. Stone offers this insight: “I think the time to call in a professional is always now. We all can use professional help with our mental, emotional, and relational health. We ‘should’ normalize that as a given. We get annual physicals. We get dental check-ups every six months. We even take our car to get oil changes regularly. Why would it not be a given that we need a mental, emotional, and relational health professional as part of our care team? That is good self-care. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming or a weekly appointment. Most professionals will work with you to set up the regularity that you need, which can vary over time.”
The Value of Taking Good Care of Ourselves
Dr. Stone points out: “We tend to bottle things up and prize hyper-independence in our culture.” One thing that living through a pandemic has clarified: nothing is as precious as our health. Let’s take better care of ourselves, inside and out, beginning this May.
