Can We Talk About Mental Health?

I used to hate using the term mental health. If I had to use it, I would slip it into sentences under my breath, the way one would a swear word. I only recently realised why.

When we talk about mental health, we are almost always actually talking about the absence of it. We mean mentally unhealthy. And no one wants to be mentally unhealthy, or worse, mentally unwell.

But can we talk about this for a moment? I will start.

I have to work really deliberately on my mental health. Much like I have to work on my physical health, or I will be physically unfit. I need to eat fresh food, drink water, and move, every day. If I do not, I feel very unwell, physically.

There you go. That was easy. No big deal to talk about being unfit, right? It makes perfect sense.

Then why is it so taboo to talk about needing to work on mental fitness? Why is there so much shame in it?

I do not know the answer. But I know it is true that almost nobody wants to admit they need a mental health regime, or to talk about what happens when we do not feel mentally well. Myself included, until now.

This is how I see it. Our minds are incredibly powerful machines, but almost no focus is put on giving us the skills to use them. If you want to learn to drive a car, you take lessons and get a licence. But our minds? We are left to the wilderness, to stumble along until it all works out. Or does not.

Not once during my fifteen-plus years of education was I taught any practically applicable tools for running my own mind and staying mentally healthy.

The result is that my adulthood so far holds a graveyard of ideas and half-projects I was not able to bring to life, relationships that suffered, and hours and hours of unnecessary agony. When I am not tending to my mental health, I am moody, volatile and snappy. I procrastinate. It is not pretty to be around, and it is even worse to be trapped inside.

I have big dreams and plans. But without being mentally fit, I have no chance of achieving them.

So I built myself a system, because I looked everywhere for one and could not find it. Every week I focus on and implement one new mental health habit. I pick a tool, habit or ritual, usually one I have learned from people who are further along than me. I deliberately apply it to my life for that week. I have an accountability partner who checks in with me, and I with them. At the end of the week, I assess whether the tool has added value, and I decide to keep it or ditch it.

That is it. Simple, but not easy. It has changed my life completely.

Yours in friendship and freedom,

Tamryn

Written by

Tamryn Sherriffs

Founder and editor of DIFFERENTLY. She writes about the systems that shape how we live, learn and work, many of which she has spent two decades experimenting with.

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