As we come to the close of Mental Health Awareness Month, I thought it was important to get some things off my chest…
Let’s Check In with One Another.
First of all, I wanted to do a check-in. How are you doing? Are you checking in with yourself every day to check your emotional temperature? I check in with myself on a regular. Like every hour or sometimes minute by minute. Maybe it’s because I’m a therapist, but it’s important to me to ensure that my emotional and mental well-being is in tip top shape. And so should you…
Things You Can Do to Address Your Mental Health.
Metacognition is when you are thinking about your thinking. I engage in this a lot. I’m always analyzing my thinking, which some may say is ‘over thinking’ however I believe in tapping into how our thinking affects our emotions and then our behavior. That’s the principle of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which is an evidenced-based therapy, widely used with people in therapy. The reason for the effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is that it addresses and challenges distorted belief patterns that are negatively impacting your social and occupational functioning. If you are dealing with this challenge, I recommend that you consider connecting with a therapist to help you break this cycle and have a more fulfilling life.
But awareness is key. You have to be aware of how you think and why you think the way you do. Sometimes, it requires you sitting down with a therapist to unpack your past. Maybe there are some things that are traumatic that happened to you that you don’t even realize were traumatic or that those events still have an impact on you and your relationships. It’s important to flush this out with a professional who can help you do this while mitigating the harm that may happen with uncovered trauma.
Trauma informed care is an evidenced based approach that specifically addresses trauma-informed stress and related issues. If you have experienced any sexual, physical, emotional, racial or complex trauma, it’s important to get this addressed in therapy that caters to trauma. I have seen in my experience some folks get therapy for trauma that is not trauma informed care and report that it was not successful and then generalize that therapy is not helpful. It is important to research what therapy models are best for you given the issues that you are experiencing.
Early intervention is also key. Don’t wait until things get so bad that you are almost on the verge of an emotional crisis before getting therapy. This can make therapy less effective and much harder for you to return to your baseline. It’s important that you get whatever individual, relationship, or family issues addressed right away rather than when they are already beyond repair. Therapy can help you review the way you think and address it, so you can disrupt the cycle of behavioral patterns that no longer serve you.
I can’t stress enough the importance of reaching out for professional support. Professional support is important, but it is also just as important to have emotional support through your tribe of friends and family. Don’t expect your friends and family to fix your problems though; this is best left in the hands of a professional counselor. But they can definitely be a listening ear and offer you support by giving you a space to feel heard and understood. Most therapy is offered once a week so having a network of support you can go to the other 6 days is vital to your emotional stability.
Mental Health Should Be Addressed All Year Long.
Mental health is something to be highlighted not just in May, but all year long. We should not abandon the importance of tapping into and building our mental wellness every day so that we can strengthen our emotional resilience for when we experience negative events in our lives. In fact, we should be diligent about creating a buffer for events such as these by actively working on building our mental health through wellness activities, touching base with our support network, and professional counseling. It is when we drop off from doing these things that adverse events can disproportionately affect us and our emotional well-being.
I hope that you find this post to be enlightening and that it plants the seeds for further change. Please also feel free to visit our online shop to instill these same values in your children by teaching them about emotional health and the importance of continuously working on it.
Take good care,
Kira
