Regardless of where someone you care about is on the spectrum between passive thoughts, and actively having a plan, you have the power to care, and that caring will create a connection, and the connection is a proven way to prevent suicide.
So go ahead and connect. You never know how much it might help.
There’s a lot to digest, so make some time. If you want to learn more about mental health treatment, digital tools, and where we are lacking when it comes to mental health treatment, you’ll learn a lot. Hopefully, you’ll also understand just how much needs to change in order to meet the mental health needs of so many.
I’ve had people refer to me as someone who is surprisingly self-aware. I don’t really think of myself that way, but what I do know is that reading and writing about mental health topics, as well as my own experience in therapy, provides me with constant reminders about the importance of mental health, and how that information either resonates with me, or doesn’t, and why.
I don’t think our current culture really encourages that kind of behavior. We are encouraged to be busy, productive, constantly hustling and then showing it off on social media. Self-reflection? Ha! No time for that.
But there should be time for that. Without knowing ourselves, how can we even start to care for our own mental health?
As a society, we have, rightfully, tried to move away from doing those things, but we haven’t really gotten better at helping people build resiliency. Is it any wonder that we had an epidemic of anxiety, even before COVID-19? We’ve kind of left people with an uncertain world, in which anything can just randomly happen to anyone, while leaving intact our belief systems that teach us that the world is fair.
It’s not. It’s not even close, and yes part of the reason it isn’t fair is that there are bad people in power doing bad things, but even if we could rid ourselves of that as much as possible, (and we should), the world would still be a random place where random things happen, for no good reason.
There would still be natural disasters, accidents, and yes, even abuse and crime. There would still be people with disabilities, mental and psychical, and there would still be victims. Because we’re human, and being human is kind of messy and random.
That’s not going anywhere. The challenge is to find the resiliency to live our lives anyway. This is where we’ve failed too many people, and where we have failed ourselves, finding comfort in false “explanations” instead of facing the hard truths.
As you know, I’ve been quick to share links and even write about what your depressed friends need, and how to help people struggling with their own mental health. What I’ve come to realize more and more is that I am also struggling, and failing at being a very good friend for many of these same reasons. I’m burned out, I’m tired, I have little mental energy beyond just getting through each workday, and taking care of myself, for reaching out, chatting, or virtually meeting up with people.
In short, I am experiencing exactly what Annie is talking about. I want to reach out and be supportive to my friends, but I haven’t recognized my own struggles. No, I don’t believe I am depressed in a major way, but I’m definitely suffering from anxiety, stress, and it’s exhausting me.
That makes it hard to be the supportive one in any relationship, even though I want to be.
To combat that, I’m going to be reviewing this article a few times, and thinking about how I might still be supportive, and how maybe people in my life be supportive of each other.
Having trouble with stress and anxiety? The suggested solutions often require adding even more to our to-do list. Meditate, practice mindfulness, do acts of self-care, etc. But we often forget that maybe the most important act of self-care is getting enough sleep.
Don’t even get me started on the fitness industry and the number of people who talk about “earning your food/sleep” through exercise. Argh!
This study would indicate that sleep is not something you want to mess with. Simply getting enough would help us with our mental “junk”. No, it won’t cure depression or eliminate symptoms of bipolar, or any of the other things that some of your friends will, unfortunately, suggest, but it does serve a core function for the healthy functioning of your brain, and that is certainly one place to start making things better, no?
