Thoughts on Mental Health

Mental health is a tricky thing. In our professional lives, we read about the need for supporting mental well-being in the workplace. We’ve seen shifts in the past couple of years where people are re-evaluating what’s important to them. For those of us lucky enough to be parents, we see the need to guide our children through tough times without protecting them so much that they build no personal resilience. What we often don’t see is our own progress on the wellness scale. 

Depending on the circumstances of our own upbringing (generations, economics, social, location), many of us have been influenced to have a bias around mental well-being. For example, as someone that grew up in a working middle class family in Washington state during the 80s and 90s, we “toughened up” or “grew thicker skin” or “couldn’t be bothered with” or “didn’t have time for that” when things got rough. Any of those sound familiar? There’s nothing wrong with any of those things on their own and many of them, when applied correctly, build a certain level of mental fortitude we need. I’ll call these “traditional coping mechanisms” to make it easier. Does it sound like there’s a “but” coming? 

In the past two years, especially in the United States, we’ve seen a pandemic, historic job loss, critical supply shortages, a divisive election, civic unrest, environmental crises and a war looming. So on top of all of the normal concerns that we have in our lives, there’s that. Since the start of the pandemic, our collective village has shrunk in that a large portion of the population has remained at arms length with concerns of Covid. The simple ability to talk about what’s going on in our own worlds has been stifled or deprioritized. 

Throughout May, I spent a lot of time reading about and considering mental health as a function of my job. Was I a little tired or lacking focus? Sure but I couldn’t be bothered with it because I had work to do and family to take care of. Life has a way of ripping the blinders off at times. Early in the month, my wife and I learned out that one of our children was ideating about suicide and practicing self-harm. Thankfully, we’d taken the advice of a former leader of mine to have our kids regularly speak with therapists just to build up the skill of sharing and not bottling it up. “Bottling it up” could easily be replaced with “toughening up” or “growing thicker skin.”

I knew that my kid had gone through a rough time in the first half of the school year but we’d made changes to help them. I knew that there had been some bullying and other friend group issues. But that’s all “normal” stuff as a kid, right? My focus changed from work and hobbies to crisis mode. Suddenly, I started noticing things like, how much my kid ate (or didn’t eat), how much time they spent with the rest of the family, who they were talking to and how they were talking. Holy cow! It was all right there and I’d not paid attention. My wife had been telling me that she was worried about things but I thought it was “normal worry” and not stop-everything-because-this-is-real worry. So we did (and continue to do) all of the things that we needed to in order to help our child and, so far, we seem to be making it work. Hurray! I did my job as a father and helped my kid when they needed me most. Victory lap except…

About two-thirds of the way through the month and in the middle of working through the crisis above, my brain decided that I COULD be bothered with everything going on around me. Anxiety and a feeling of overwhelming hit me like a ton of bricks. Having dealt with anxiety forever, I did what had always worked before…I quit coffee. Time and again, that had been my trigger so that’s where my head went to cure my woes. Anxiety and overwhelming didn’t budge. I grew grouchy and listless. Those that I held close, I started obsessing over the negative things I felt about them. I was spiraling. It came to a head when I stood in my bathroom panicking and my wife asked me what was wrong. “I can’t handle it. I’m completely overwhelmed with everything.” “What do you need,” she asked and I told her I didn’t know. That’s what I needed, though. I needed to admit that I was human and overwhelmed and didn’t know. All of my tough, thick skin peeled off at that moment. 

“You can’t help others if you don’t help yourself.” So I’ve got a therapist that I meet with regularly now and I’ve begun to focus on the little things like diet, mindfulness and sleep…I’m working my way up to exercise. I spend time with my kids even when they don’t seem to want me around (but really they do.) I stopped playing video games and flipping through Instagram. I started leaning on my friends to vent and ask for advice. Ironically, out of the group of four of us that were talking about mental health, I found out that I’m the only one that’s not taking regular medication to cope with anxiety and/or depression. We’re all in this together. 

This is the tricky part. Mental health doesn’t come with sniffles and a fever that goes away and everything’s all better. Mental health is ongoing and has to be a focus. It’s there and impacts us all whether we want to believe it or not. If nothing else is taken away from this, please consider the following:

• Therapists and talking about mental health aren’t bad. Going to a therapist doesn’t make you crazy or weak. Being able to talk through a problem is often an underdeveloped skillset.
• Make time for yourself and family or life will make you make time.
• Pay attention to the signs and to the words used by those you love. 
• We are all in this together. If you ask around, there are more people like you that you know.