Written By Alex Berbank
15 Minutes a Day
I’ve really enjoyed getting into the frame of mind to look at my mental health. Before this week I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. My ideas of what looking at my own mental health would look like weren’t accurate. I thought there would be more softly spoken self help videos and exercises that had me staring into mirrors, but that’s not at all what I found. It’s been full of small activities that each have relieved a little bit of the pressure life throws my way. I haven’t even noticed the extra time that it’s taken as I’ve used time that i either would otherwise spend on my phone or wasting otherwise. I’ve also found myself to be more productive this week. In just doing that I’ve made a small amount of time back for me. Something that hit home was I read before I started that all it takes to start to improve your own mental health is 15 minutes a day. That’s roughly 1% of our day. If we get ourselves to a point when we cant even spend 1% of our day on ourselves then that’s a sign that we really need to change something in our life.
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This is by no means the end of my journey to look at mental health. This week has just created an excuse for me to try new things and I really like them. The journal has been fantastic. I plan to keep that going until I’ve scribbled on every page. By my count that would take me up to pretty much a year. So maybe this time next year on the next mental health awareness week I’ll be able to talk about the impact that it has had on my year rather than just my week. Ditching the phone has been trickier, I find myself going to reach for it at times and I know that in some way it must show that I’ve become addicted to the sounds whistles and pings it projects. One one hand I think isn’t everyone addicted a little bit to their digital brick but a much larger part of me feels quite uncomfortable by how often I’m reaching for it when it’s not there. I’m not sure how it’s best to tackle that and I even feel that it’s a new challenge entirely to try and kick that habit, but I’ll be looking into it for sure.
This year’s theme for mental health awareness week was community. I wasn’t really sure what this would mean to me. I guess I presumed by just throwing this out there to a community I was ticking that box. I learned quickly that there is a good community around me, I wouldn’t have said that straight away last week. I knew those around me I could talk to but I think I only ever let that extend to 2 or 3 people, that’s not much of a community. In starting the conversations and telling people about what I was doing, literally overnight, that number grew and now I look around at everyone I have spoken with this week about it, from my partner, friends, work colleagues to the local mindfulness coach, academics studying mental health that i’ve been in touch with and of course everyone reading this. My point is that communities are hard to see, even physical communities in our towns and cities, we don’t see everyone each day in their houses, we only see those that are out and about, but we’re all there. When starting to look at myself I didn’t see everyone I just saw those that posted about it or people I had spoken to before about it, I didn’t see everyone in their own houses. For anyone feeling isolated, either because of their own mental health or as a consequence of DMD I urge you to make the bold first step open up about the process you want to go through and watch the people pour in.
What Does Community Mean For Me?
At the start of the week I gave myself a score for my own mental health out of a hundred. Looking back now I wonder how many others saw that this was probably a sign that I hadn’t looked at my own mental health before. I wanted to fix a number to it and almost take this week as one big science experiment but the truth is that it’s much more of an art than it is a science. It’s really difficult to pinpoint the exact thing that changed our day or our mood and often it’s a combination of many things over a long period of time. I get now that, of course I wasn’t going to see an overall change in a week, that’s not the point. For anyone who’s ever been on a diet or new exercise regime, you don’t start on Monday expecting to be done come Friday. It’s not healthy to look at it as a short term venture. It’s changing your habits that negatively affect your own mental health and swapping them for more positive or just less negative ones. Real change comes with time, new thought patterns and patience. What I will say is that I feel more comfortable that I’ve made these changes to me. I wont keep all the changes from this week but a good proportion of them I will. Next week or month I might try a few more new things, and then more. I want to keep things fresh and helpful for me.
One thing that did alarm me was the difference that other people saw in me. My Fincee said that as the week went by I looked less ‘in my own head’. She told me I used to always have a furrowed brow in the evening, and seemed deep in thought a lot. This week I’ve been more relaxed and taken myself less seriously. We’ve laughed a lot more. It could be the weather or a happy coincidence or one of many things but if it was because I was neglecting my mental health then that’s quite worrying how I didnt pick up on this. I wasn’t noticing the signs I guess and actually with a relatively small set of changes I’ve managed to make a visible difference. In doing so maybe even I’ve delayed the onset of wrinkles by a few more years!
It’s OK To Get It Wrong
This week has also taught me that I’m ok to get things wrong. None of us have a book telling us exactly what to do and sometimes our minds can really take failure badly. Using it as a way to confirm the negative thoughts we have and stop us seeing how well we do in certain things. This week I tried plenty that I didn’t connect with and that alone was a good exercise to do. Learning for myself that we just chalk it up as a loss and move on helped me take myself less seriously and get more creative with ideas of what I could do to help. That’s in just a week. I will now try almost anything someone suggests I should, however mad it sounds at first. I throw this over to you now reading this.
Let’s Talk
Let’s talk about it all more often, let’s find a way that makes our mental health easier to address and more comfortable to bring up. If you see me and you’ve read this, ask me! I’ll always talk about it so you don’t need to feel awkward and it’ll be good practice to start to ask others and yourself the same question. Same goes for if any of this week has connected with you in some way, talk to someone. I’d love to be that person but there are other organisations out there that can help. Find the one that works for you and enjoy the process of learning more about you and getting a little bit of you back.
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Find out more about Mental Health Awareness Week and how you can get involved here
