Why Photography is Mental Health Self-Care for Me.Pin

Why Photography is Mental Health Self-Care for Me.

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

I came across this post the other day and couldn’t help but identify with what the subject of the interview was saying:

Photography is Presence

Photography goes against everything society says we should be doing. It requires you to slow down and notice the things around you. It requires you not to be in a rush and to be still, waiting for the right moment and the right scene. It demands attention and forces you to open your eyes to what is happening around you, rather than what is happening in your own mind.

It also often requires moving your body – walking in nature, wandering around the neighborhood, or even your home and yard.

Personally, I struggle with mindfulness. My brain tends to move a million miles an hour in six different directions most days. On good days, I can rein it in and focus on one or two things. On bad days, well, it’s chaotic in there. A hobby like photography requires not only focus, but also stilling my brain long enough to notice my surroundings. It’s a kind of forced mindfulness for me because I enjoy taking photos, and getting better at photography is an ongoing lesson in slowing down and paying attention.

I especially enjoy photographing new places and nature. Both require me to move. Photography often prompts me to explore a location, which involves movement. Like a forced mindfulness practice, it’s also a bit of forced exercise that gets you time in nature.

Photographing birds also gives me some of the same benefits others get from bird-watching.

Once I’ve taken the photos, I share them. I’ve been committed to sharing one photo per day (six days a week, with Sundays off to share links to other images) on my photography blog for years now. That commitment acts as a positive influence. I have to get out and take pictures to live up to that. Taking photos requires me to move and to slow down my brain. Sharing those photos online also creates a little community. Sure, it’s mostly just friends and family, but it’s a little way that I try to connect with them each day.

We all know how important small acts of connection can be to our mental health, too.

For me, this is a full circle of mental health goodness packed into one hobby. I encourage you to find a hobby that can become an integral part of your self-care routine.

I also invite you to visit my photo blog and follow along to connect through a photo each day, if you enjoy that kind of thing. I certainly enjoy sharing them with you and would love to be a small part of your daily routine if the photos can bring a bit of beauty and fun into your day.

Additionally, I will be launching a platform where anyone interested can purchase some of my photos as art. I’m just getting started and will keep adding more images. Feel free to take a look and consider adding some artwork to your collection. As you know, I don’t ask my readers for subscription fees or anything like that for this site. I think the content and connection are too important, and I’m happy to cover the costs of running it myself. On the other hand, if you’d like to get something nice to hang on your wall and also help offset some of the costs I incur every year in hosting the site, I won’t turn you down.

Either way, I’ll still be here, doing what I do, and ensuring there’s always one place on the internet created by a fellow survivor, not an AI. 😉

If you’re also a photographer, I’d love to follow you on social media. Drop a comment or hit the social accounts on the photo blog, and we can connect!

Similar Posts

  • |

    Why I Took Part in the AFSP Virtual Overnight Event

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 8 minutes

    It was the stories. It was all of those people doing this in memory of someone they lost. Or, like me, in memory of the fact that we are still here instead of leaving others to tell our stories. In our day to day lives, it’s too easy to forget how many people are impacted by suicide each and every year across the country, and the world. The further in time I get away from that time in my own life, the easier it can be to put it behind me and forget about it. But, that is something I never want to do. As painful as it is, I want to remember what it was like to no longer want to be alive. When someone is in that place, I want to be able to say, “I’ve been where you are”, to recall all of the details, and be able to sit and understand. Because that is how we save people. Not by talking in hushed tones about depression, or mental illness, but by sharing the stories of people who survived and healed, and of those we’ve lost.

    Let’s face it, if you spend much time considering those losses, and listening to those stories, it is impossible to walk away without realizing that we have lost a devastating number of people to this disease. Many more than some of the diseases we all gladly talk openly about every day. Yet somehow, maybe because we don’t understand it, or are afraid of it, we keep silent. After all, it might make someone uncomfortable. Even I have, at times, kept the details to myself in fear of making other people uncomfortable, or risk having them worry about me. The more I read and heard these stories though, the more I realized that I needed to share my story, if only so that anyone who reads it would know, and maybe even understand a little bit, what it’s like to be so far down into the darkness of depression, that you don’t want to live any longer. So, with that said, let me share my experience with you, now that it’s been some 25 years, and maybe now people won’t worry so much about me. (Warning, this is about to get dark, and we will talk a bit about suicide, though I will keep those exact details out)

  • Exercise update

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    I was reminded by seeing the throw-away remark by Robert Scoble in a long post about the need to get some excercise to help deal with stress, that I haven’t really discussed our exercise plan here lately. So, by way of an open letter to Scoble, here’s an update:

  • Stress related

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    I’m showing all the classic signs of someone struggling with stress related disorders right now. Headaches, fatigue, jaw pain from gritting and grinding my teeth, etc. That’s not good, but at the same time, it’s something I’ve got to learn to live with. You see the stress comes not from looking for a new job,…

  • When People Show You Who They Really Are…

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Now, as many of you know, I’m not big on politics, and never really have been. I am pretty accepting of most political views, and don’t really find that many extreme political views, one way or the other, are useful at all. This year though, this one has gotten to me. There are definitely some folks who I’m not really going to go out of my way to stay in touch with, and really it’s not the politics of the pandemic as much as it’s the fact that these views exposed something else that makes it obvious that these may not be great friends.

    It’s because these views are often expressed with so much selfishness.

Mentions

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

To respond on your own website, enter the URL of your response which should contain a link to this post's permalink URL. Your response will then appear (possibly after moderation) on this page. Want to update or remove your response? Update or delete your post and re-enter your post's URL again. (Find out more about Webmentions.)