Mental Health Awareness Month
Despite all the fuffle in our Great Kerfuffle, the last two years have sparked many positive ripples like:
- Slaying the myth that WFH couldn't work
- Accelerating safe and effective preventive medicines
- Acknowledging that it's ok not to be ok
Although we've made great strides in becoming more open about mental health, we need to keep pedaling. I see it with my story, as I publicly share my orthopedic and vascular challenges but have rarely discussed my depressive and PTSD symptoms from the early moments of my last bad day recovery.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and hopefully, it gives us a reason to talk more openly about how mental health is health. I've shared here and on social that if we don't take time to care for our health, we will be forced to make time to deal with our illness - this includes our emotional wellness.
Too often, we reach for maladaptive ways of dealing with our stress and overwhelm, like sitting down with Ben & Jerry or my early covid fave of Cheez-Its and a jammy pinot from the Willamette Valley to make things better, but numbing our pain doesn't heal it. And guys, we're not excluded from this conversation. Mental health isn't something we can solve with body armor or shoving our suffering in our backpacks as I did back in the day.
I often talk about the magic of our ripples. Unfortunately, not all ripples are pleasant; some are unwanted, like the effects of untreated emotional health challenges, which can ripple into families, communities, and around our planet.
So what can we do?
Here are a few resources and steps we can all take:
National Suicide Prevent Hotline: 800-273-8255
As you might guess, I'll add mindfulness-based stress reduction - which I'm a qualified teacher - as another clinically proven option to help us heal.
In business and life, we often talk about mindset and its importance. If this is true, then shouldn't we be more open about talking about how to promote better brain health? Perhaps, we can use May as a way to start or continue the conversation with our pelotons.