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What is Mental Health?

Mental health appears to be the buzz phrase of the moment, but what does mental health actually mean? Where does your mind jump when you hear the phrase? With Bell Let’s Talk day fast approaching, will you be joining the conversation or ignoring it completely because “it doesn’t apply to me”? In this post I will be delving into my own journey with mental health battles and how I came to realize it means so much more than the name suggests.

For many people, myself included until a last year, mental health meant conditions such as schizophrenia – serious conditions that require medical intervention and possible commitment to a facility to help you “get better”. What I have discovered is, mental health is a very important part of everyone’s wellbeing. It goes far beyond disorders and needs to be worked on daily even if you have a “normal” brain. Checking in with our brain every day is just as important as the physical checks we do to our body. My wake up routine includes a “what hurts today?” check so I know if my knee needs some extra attention, or if I need to see my chiropractor for an adjustment to get my back to behave. I also now assess my mood on waking; is today a good day, an OK day, or a bad day? If it’s in the last 2 categories, I know extra steps need to be taken so I don’t start my downward spiral into not wanting to get out of bed. For years, I ignored the mental part of this routine, until it came back to bite me.

Why is mental health important?

Your brain controls everything you do. I think it’s safe to say we have all experienced off days where we just don’t feel like ourselves, but we put it down to a stressful situation and try to carry on as normal. You can then notice some other effects of ignoring this initial response – sleep disruption, loss of appetite, not finding joy in the things you used to enjoy doing – and we start a spiral of unhealthy coping mechanisms until we burn out and our body finally cries enough and we take a sick day or two, before jumping right back in. What if you had just taken a mental health day on the first day you noticed something was off? We live in a world where we feel we need to be connected and functioning at 100% all the time and our mental health is suffering as a result. There should be no shame in taking a mental health day, and actually calling it that when you take it, but there is still a stigma around doing this.

As I eluded to earlier, I had my perception of mental health change a year ago when I suffered from a breakdown. A change in job just a couple of months before seemed to be a trigger and I found myself dreading going to work, regularly crying before leaving the house and questioning why I had ever left my previous job. I had never regretted changing jobs so quickly and I tried to squash those feelings and just carry on. Just days before my birthday, I broke down in my boss’s office and decided I needed to get some help. It was the hardest decision I had ever made, but one I am so grateful for every day.

I never considered myself to have any mental health issues, but the questions the doctor had me answer revealed I had been living with Anxiety, Depression and ADHD for pretty much as long as I can remember!!! I was shocked. The depression I understood, I couldn’t even talk to the doctor about why I was there to see him without bursting into tears, the anxiety and ADHD however was a revelation. The way my brain made me think wasn’t how a normal brain thinks. I will be exploring all of this in more detail in my next posts. For now, almost 1 year later, I am adjusting to my new normal and getting a handle on triggers and warnings that things aren’t going so well.

Mental health is nothing to be ashamed of. Asking for help from friends, family or professionals is a normal thing to do. If you need medication because your brain chemistry is off and doesn’t produce the chemicals it needs to, please take it! It might be a short term thing, or you may have to take them long term, but they will help in ways you’ve never imagined possible. Be open with those closest to you and ask them to help you navigated this new world you are living in. They can tell you’re slipping back into a bad place before you can at first and help you to identify those clues.

The biggest take away I want you, the reader, to get out of this is that it is OK to not be OK. There is no shame in taking a day to “get your head straight”. Sometimes checking out of real life and going to do an activity you enjoy is the absolute best thing you can do, not only for yourself but for those around you. When I feel the negative thoughts creeping back in, I like to do something outside; a trip to the zoo to look at cute animals is an instant mood booster. Getting myself to the local box and crushing a hard WOD also leads to natural high that boost my mood for days after and keeps me going back. Mental health isn’t all medication, therapy and cutting yourself off from life. It’s keeping a check on your emotions and moods, it’s doing things that bring you joy, it’s knowing that sometimes not getting out of bed and sleeping most of the day is actually the exact right thing to do. Don’t ignore the voice (or voices) in your head yelling at you to slow down, sometimes you really need to listen to it/them!

Let’s go beyond Bell Let’s talk day and make every day let’s talk day. I encourage you to ask someone how they are doing. It can take someone else approaching to get them to open up. Simply listen to what they have to say, we aren’t looking for solutions, but validate the feelings and let them know it’s OK to not be OK and you are there to support them. You have no idea how much of an impact this can have.