World Mental Health Day

Today is World Mental Health Day.

The Covid epidemic isn’t over. It may feel like it for a lot of us lucky vaccinated people, but no. It has come too close to home in the past week (so far so good, all are weathering it well). And with it comes anxiety. If anything good has come from Covid, it has been the open discussion about mental health conditions in ways that I haven’t seen in my lifetime. Everyone’s talking about their mental health, how it has declined, how it has improved (hopefully). Hearing it directly from people who have never experienced this particular kind of pain before is validating. I so appreciate the openness, and the recognition that none of us are immune to vulnerability in the face of such fear and loss.

 I don’t know if this will make sense to anyone else. But sometimes I imagine holding my anxiety in my hand, caring for it and protecting it, and asking what it needs from me. Treating it with a little tenderness and understanding rather than deeming it the enemy and trying to banish it from my body. Because it takes over the whole body, not just the brain. It is telling us something and trying to protect us. Not always helpful, but important to listen to just the same. And if the attempt at permanently eradicate it from our lives isn’t working, why not turned TOWARD it, instead of away. Ask questions untainted with judgement or panic, and see what we might learn about the way it tries to protect us. And then ask it, politely, to go take a long walk on a short pier (if only it were that easy).

Really, I know how ridiculous this could sound to people in the depths of debilitating anxiety that prevents you from doing the most basic tasks of life. And please, do whatever you need to be able to have any comfort again. When you have some semblance of peace, and if you can tolerate it (and with help from mental health professional), maybe get curious, even for short periods of time.

Because everyday is World Mental Health Day in my book.