It’s Mental Health Awareness month
For many of us who feel healthy in body, mind and spirit we take it for granted that we keep moving ahead.
Moving ahead – “Of course,” says my avatar “the ant.”
In our strange pandemic times, how are each of us moving ahead? The status of our mental health has been stretched.
I have seen many of the following in my coaching and psychotherapy clients ….
- Worry warts have developed anxiety or panic attacks.
- Feeling blue at times turns into depression. That includes difficulty sleeping, eating and doing normal life activities.
- Perfectionistic tendencies morph into obsessive thinking. People work 12 to 16 hours a day.
- There’s no separation between work activities and home, since so many of us work at home. We have a new diagnosis I call “no boundaries”. Under control mood swings to huge fluctuations.
- Feeling safe in the world becomes justified paranoid thinking, in our current climate of intolerance. This is particularly so, if you’re Asian American or African American.
How’s the pandemic treated you?
I’m curious about how the pandemic has affected you. Are you languishing at times? A recent New York times article spoke about the major emotion that so many of us have been feeling is languishing. Languishing is the word for blah, a dash of hopeless, joyless and foggy.
As life opens up to in person gatherings, how do you see yourself moving ahead?
Are you happy to stay in your cocoon? Or are you excited to be out in society?
The answer isn’t as simple as saying that introverts want to stay home and extroverts embrace mixing and mingling in person again.
So as you move ahead be aware that others may not be at the same pace as you regardless of what makes logical sense to you.
Check out your assumptions and take a deep breath into your heart. Things may not be as they seem.