“You have a responsibility to yourself and others to care for yourself enough to be able to care for others and yourself.”
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Every Thursday evening we have a phone call, open to all to discuss mental health, wellness and illness. Hope you’ll join us—sign up for dial in information and reminders here.
On one recent call we talked about this: What are your favorite strategies for mental wellness?
1) Identify triggers—ie., external events outside of your control
— Cataclysmic event in the world — natural or man-made disaster
— Something bad happening to a loved one
— Financial problems that seem unsolvable
— One person remarked: “Politics are really triggering to me — there was a feeling of hate, and the hate is so persuasive.”
— Separation of a loved one, either by someone else, a misunderstanding, or physical distance
— Darkness. When there is a lack of natural light because of shorter daylight or extended periods of clouds or rain
— Death or Loss. Inability to be with family because of death (especially around holiday time)
— New year and spring — “A time of rebirth for many others, but I don’t see my life changing.”
— Sometimes it is a series of triggers — a lot of smaller triggers build up and overwhelm
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2) Identifying symptoms.
— Pushing away friends. tone of voice
— Withdrawal
— Wanting to stay in
— Not being interested in activities that ordinarily give you pleasure
— Tired, listless, mental illness disguised as physical one. “Of course you should stay in bed all day if you are sick!”
— Physical health does go down because you are not taking care of yourself
— Repetitive stress behaviors: nail biting, hair pulling
— Not eating well
— Negative self talk
— Inability to envision a future
— Not focused
—Not getting anything done
— The tendency to say “no” instead of “yes”. Or saying “but” in response to what other people are saying. Look for those simple words!
— Body protection layers — “I often wear many layers, wrap myself in coats and blankets, anything to keep the perceived harm from getting at me.”
3) Once you know what tends to trigger you, and you can see the symptoms in yourself—-you can prepare and act on them.
— Have an overall awareness of place, and what area of world am I in at any given moment
— Be mindful
— Understand that changes in mood are going to happen
— When possible, try to alleviate the more minor things that trigger stress.
Thought experiment:
— reflect on what is normal.
If you live in Chicago, perhaps in poverty, a city with a high murder rate — that sounds stressful, but it could be seen as a normal life. Poverty, lack of education, lack of access to food, family problems, abuse — precarious situation.
But on the other side, say you lived in a wealthy suburb of DC, maybe at a law firm — and you are working all the time, trying to make partner, isolated from your family, never doing enough. Perhaps this stresses you out—or perhaps it’s normal.
— Understand that triggers are highly individual — how do you re-orient yourself to the context, and understand what is causing the stress and the triggers
— Have respect for oneself
if you are stressed in your normal situation— whatever is normal — look for signs of emotional breakdown: hypersensitivity, organizational problems, other symptoms as above.
— If I know they are happening, stop doing what you are doing and re-evaluate
— Minimize the number of stressors at the moment
— Understand that some people perform better under stress — they have a mastery of stress
— Learn to live with the stressors and do what you need to do. But also know that in some cases, living with the stressor might be physically impossible. Examples: Soldiers returning from war, getting over PTSD. Speaking out about sexual assault — never say “live with it, deal with it, go on”.
4.) What do you do when you see the triggers and the symptoms? What actions do you take?
— Get to a new physical environment
— Reach out to others with love
— Drop everything and get physical health back
— Understand grief — don’t celebrate the same way we used to celebrate now that the person is gone
— When I know there is going to be an issue with lack of light, make a conscious effort to try to go outdoors more
— Remove myself from stressful situations that are not controlled by me.
— If someone is trying to sow seeds of doubt, terminate relationship. Don’t have figure why they are doing something harmful, you just have to remove yourself from harm.
— Being aware of timing is important, understand the cyclical nature of mental wellness
— Grief and bereavement — what are proactive ways to deal with death? Instead of focusing on dec 20th (day of death) focus on oct 7th (day of birth)
— Diet and exercise
— Anticipation of trigger and learning to plan for them.
You have a responsibility to yourself and others to care for yourself enough to be able to care for others and yourself.
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