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Depression
Self-Care in a Mental Health Crisis
Don't let stigma prevent you from caring for yourself.
Posted June 22, 2018
Mental health stigma can run so deep that even we can second-guess ourselves when it comes to our wellbeing and self-care.
Take, for example, a rough day. You’re sitting at your desk—or whatever type of workstation you have—struggling to focus on any one important thing. The anxiety kicks in, and you start to think about all the ways your next task could go wrong, how many mistakes you’ll make. The negative self-talk begins, and your depression hits you like a sack of bricks. You just know you’re about to have a panic attack and you can’t think of a single way to stop it.
Now if this were any other illness that had symptoms preventing you from functioning normally—a really bad migraine or the flu—you wouldn’t think twice about calling it a day and going home to rest. No one could blame you for it—you’re sick, right? You don’t feel well. Go home. Feel better.
But this is not a migraine or the flu, this is mental illness. This is anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder, which don’t carry the same severity in our society as other well-known illnesses. When we’re really suffering from mental illness, people tell us to stop exaggerating or to suck it up. So of course when we contemplate the idea of a mental health day, we beat ourselves up for it. Tell ourselves to man-up and get over it, to stick it out, just like others would tell us.
The problem with this way of thinking is that it is not self-caring at all. We must fight the stigma in an effort to not only help others understand that these illnesses we deal with are just as severe as other physical illnesses, but to also help us be kinder to ourselves. Just like stubbornly working through that flu or migraine, working through depression or psychosis does not help us feel better. It does not help us to work through it. Giving ourselves time to rest and being kind to ourselves about what our limits are helps us feel better, just like rest helps us feel better when we have the flu.
If you need some time to re-energize, do it. Your mental wellbeing is just as important as your overall wellbeing, and you must take care of your brain like you take care of the rest of your body. Your good health depends on it.
