It’s Mental Health Awareness week this week. I would like it to be Mental Health Awareness Day every day. It’s curious to me that we only seem to focus on mental health at certain times of the year, or when we are going through a crisis. To ‘have good mental health’ to my way of thinking, is having an awareness of how we are thinking and feeling in any given moment. We can then use this information to determine what our course of action needs to be. And it’s a focus that needs to happen every day, not just on certain days of the year. And if we have good mental and emotional awareness and build habits that nurture and sustain us, then we can help avoid the tipping points, or deal with the tipping points that life brings us. I talk about tipping points a lot in my work. The tipping point is the ‘last straw’, it’s the thing that completely undoes us and finds us in the mire and unable to cope. Sometimes it can feel like it has come out of the blue and yet when we stop and think, feel and listen to ourselves we can often understand that it wasn’t out of the blue at all. Tipping points can trigger all sorts of destructive behaviours, from rowing with our families, working too much, drinking or drug taking to excess and sadly, if left, can lead to feelings of hopelessness and wanting to end life. Over a series of posts this week, I intend to help you to focus on some good mental and emotional habits that you can incorporate into your day. These habits can help you to recover more quickly, or help you to climb out of the dark hole that you might have started vacationing in. And if all of this is too much right now, then it might be helpful to talk to a professional counsellor who can help you to work through your difficulties. So let’s get started.
