This is why I harp on this quite a bit. We lose people to depression and mental health struggles when they are disconnected from the people in their lives. Our best prevention is to remain connected, yet it’s become so easy today to be disconnected from each other. (I am perhaps more guilty of this than most, I admit. I should spend more time taking action on the tips in this article too.)
On the other hand, if we know this, maybe we can start to do something about it. That might look like finding ways to lower the stress we have some control over, understanding what is happening with our abilities in these areas, and seeing these struggles in others for what they are. In short, give ourselves and each other some grace and step back before making rash decisions or digging our heels in on decisions and beliefs. If we suffer cognitively when stressed, let’s admit that maybe, just maybe, we get stuff wrong occasionally.
We are human after all, and “to err is human.”
Yes, I believe in the importance of self-care. I will encourage it for everyone. It helps. But it can only help so much. Until this becomes a society that equally cares about everyone and actively seeks to offer care for everyone, self-care can only go so far. We need to recognize that and spend as much time promoting that as we do self-care.
The bad news, however, might be that almost everyone does this. So instead of connecting with each other, we are each stressing over all the things we may have done wrong when we interacted. Which isn’t great. That makes it harder to connect with other people, which has a ton of negative effects on our mental health.
As children in an abusive situation, we may have learned a lot of things that helped us survive that situation. Outside of that situation, as adults, however, it may be time to unlearn some of those things.
For example, we can’t learn to trust a person as an adult until we first unlearn that “fact” we took from childhood that no one was to be trusted. We can’t learn to love ourselves until we unlearn the blame and shame we took upon ourselves due to the abuse.
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