Taking Care of your Mental Health
By Joanie Reilly
(From the January - March 2021 issue of VOX)
“Fear, anxiety and uncertainty may still be present. But they don’t have to rule.”
I am looking forward to the day when I can make a bonfire of all my face masks, visors and anything printed black and yellow. With the arrival of the vaccine it feels, “the allies have landed” and with them, hope that the ‘war’ will soon be over.
Covid-19 has touched all our lives and changed our world, and while we will eventually regain the freedom to come and go, travel and hug everyone, it has changed the way we think about and do life and it has left a lot of scars that will take time to heal.
It has robbed us of much that we just took for granted. It has brought disruption, change and uncertainty. As human beings we do not like change and uncertainty and the loss of control that comes with it. Worst of all, it has taken the lives of people we know and love, leaving devastating loss and grief compounded by being unable to be with loved ones in their last days. Fear of catching the virus and the possibility of its long-term debilitating effects still hangs like a dark cloud through the relentless messages about staying at home and social distancing.
Love, freedom, significance and fun
Social distancing is absolutely foreign to the human soul and to our four basic emotional and psychological needs. We are created for love, belonging and connection with each other - it took away our normal interacting with family, friends, colleagues and church.
Freedom is a primal human drive. The opposite of freedom is to feel trapped - it took our freedom to come and go and we could barely leave our homes. We also need to feel significant - that we can contribute to life. We get a lot of significance from our jobs and being able to give something of ourselves, but it severely threatened jobs and livelihoods and shut down church and other creative and meaningful activities.
Another basic need, often overlooked, is the need for fun - laughter, ‘craic’ and learning new things. At the beginning of the first lockdown, I often laughed at the plethora of funny creative posts I constantly read on social media (remember the toilet rolls!). But after too many lockdowns, humour has all but disappeared, replaced with a gutting-it-out endurance.
Just like we need food, air and water to survive, these powerful emotional and psychological needs are also not optional. Covid-19 has depleted our ability to meet these deep and complex needs. It’s no wonder there are high levels of depression and anxiety at this time.
However, we are not helpless. Trials often bring out the best in people too. There are countless heart-warming stories of wonderful random acts of kindness. Doing something for someone else, even when our hearts are full of pain, has an amazing effect on our sense of significance and connection.
This crisis has demanded new and creative ways of doing things. We have had to (and still need to) rise to the challenge of finding alternative ways to ‘connect’. Some of my best moments of church during the pandemic have been the ‘Zoom’ coffee and chats with others. Thank God for Zoom, WhatsApp and other platforms that have enabled us to work, connect and find ways to meet these important and significant basic needs in other ways.
What do you choose?
So much of good or bad mental health begins in the mind. “As a man thinks, so he is.” Every feeling I have is always connected to a thought. My thoughts and feelings powerfully affect my behaviours. I perpetuate my own depression and anxiety – it is not so much the circumstances I find myself in but how I think about and brood over them.
What is your inner self-dialogue like? I can think and talk myself into depression and anxiety but I can also think and talk myself out of them. [Note: we are not talking about clinical depression or chronic mental illness here - these often need medical support and intervention - but rather the ups and downs of life.] Covid-19 may take your loved ones, your freedom, your job and your fun, but it can NOT take away your choice of how you will react and behave. Will it be grumbling, worry, fretting and negativity? Or will it be thankfulness, gratefulness, hopefulness and faith? You choose.
We are not victims of Covid-19 or any of the other circumstances of our lives, unless we choose to be. God has made us with ability to choose how we will think and this will have a profound effect on how we feel and live. Hedy Schleifer‘s mother was a survivor of Nazi concentration camps. Speaking of her, she says, “she taught me how to live instead of just coping – she had an indomitable spirit… a woman who was committed to living no matter what, no matter where.” What a legacy! I read those words in the early days of the pandemic and felt the challenge. I want to live, not just cope.
Faith is not a feeling. Faith is a deliberate act of the will. A turning of the mind and will toward God’s truth when my thoughts and feelings may be screaming something else. “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). It often doesn’t come easily to be still and to keep your mind on God and His promises. We have to fight for it.
We change our feelings by changing our thoughts and behaviour, our negative thoughts by replacing them with alternative truthful thoughts. Sometimes it means declaring and repeating the same words over and over again, and choosing to believe them. This is how we fight the good fight. We have to fight for peace, and wrestle against every thought that seeks to take it from us.
“In quietness and confidence shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15). Trusting God is positioning the heart towards the facts that God is with me in the middle of all things and that He will never leave me despite how I feel. Fear, anxiety and uncertainty may still be present. But they don’t have to rule.
This is an opportunity to grow, to exercise the muscles of faith, thankfulness and patient endurance, which will develop positive mental health and resilience. It is hard to lift ourselves up and fight for our freedom, and to wrestle with replacing our negative inner dialogues with positive ones but it is also hard to stay in the unrelenting, unhappy place of fear, anxiety, and negativity too, so pick your ‘hard’ carefully.
How to have a good day when you don’t “feel like it”
“Cultivate the mental habit of thankfulness, gratefulness and appreciation.”
Control all the things you can control - without consulting any of your feelings, get up at the same time every day and make your bed. Getting hold of structure and routine in your day gives you a sense of control. Having a shower and refusing to dress sloppy just because it’s ‘comfortable’ will make you feel better about yourself.
Give to God all the things you can’t control - make time to sit down, and centre your thoughts on God - His character and promises.
If you work from home, separate your work space from family space as much as possible.
Take regular breaks from screen time by going for five-minute walks outside and looking up at the sky, breathing in some fresh air and noticing nature – even if it’s only round the block. It will improve your productivity, as will sipping lots of water!
If someone comes to mind, take a minute to send them a quick text or voice message telling them you are thinking of them. You will bless them and yourself. What you give often comes back.
Take responsibility for your frustrations. Write them out on paper, give them to God and then tear them up. Don’t dump them on your family. Be fast to apologise, let go of grudges and be a ‘kindness machine’.
Cultivate the mental habit of thankfulness, gratefulness and appreciation. Start by thinking of five things you are thankful for…and then five more… and then five more. This is a particularly good thing to do as you go to sleep at night.
When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.
