Why you should care for your mental health before you tackle your child’s
Thalia Pope is a recent university graduate and content manager for EveryDay Strong. In this personal essay, she shares how her parents’ journey with mental health impacted her own, and how she was able to find emotional safety once her parents found it for themselves.
As you read, you’ll learn why it’s important to stay emotionally safe with those around you, how your mental health and attitudes impact your family, and some simple ways you can apply EveryDay Strong — even in the messiness of real life.
Growing Up
As a kid, I was known as an expert multitasker. Especially through my pre-teen and teen years, I earned praise and admiration for juggling college-credit classes, part-time jobs, clubs, volunteer hours, church and home responsibilities, and even making time for “fun” and socializing.
I also had a weakness. In moments of privacy, I frequently broke down into an ugly, sobbing mess.
As much as possible, I kept this vulnerability out of sight, in the “in-between” moments: Taking a shower, writing a paper in the living room in the wee hours, walking home from school. I would burst into tears, get the negativity back to a “manageable” level, then resume the task at hand. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I knew this cycle was unhealthy; I also didn’t know what else to do.
The handful of times I tried to explain to my parents or a teacher about feeling like I was falling apart at the seams, they usually prescribed quick remedies or an extra dose of “grit”: Wake up earlier. Why don’t you drop commitments from your schedule? You’ll be fine, just push through it. Don’t take this assignment so seriously.
Eventually, I stopped trying and just resorted to crying in the bathroom. My default emotional state became a bone-deep level of exhaustion and stress.
And more than anything, I felt the blame of my own misery. This anxiety, this never-ending sense of pressure, I knew, was my own fault. I knew that if I were just better at managing myself and my time — if I just “loosened up” like everyone told me to — I wouldn’t feel so deeply unhappy.
From the Handbook: SAFE TO FAIL
What caring adults can do: Share a story about a significant failure or mistake you made in your own life. Be detailed and vulnerable about your feelings. Try not to emphasize how you overcame that adversity or learned a valuable lesson. The most important thing to communicate is that you understand failure, embarrassment, or disappointment.
Why you should do it: Failure is a part of every life. Yet, a child’s early experiences with failure can be scary and feel threatening, even overwhelming. Learning from others’ experience with failure, including their honest feelings of challenge, can help them relate and imagine themselves working through their own failures.
Of course, I need to insert here that the adults in my life did a lot of things right. My parents never demanded we get certain grades, taught us it was normal to feel negatively, and encouraged us to say “No” when we had too much on our plate. Most of my teachers were okay if I needed to submit an assignment after the deadline, and my church leaders were always “available” if I wanted to talk.
What counteracted those protective factors were a lot of mixed messages about how to handle stress and negativity. As a child, I sang songs about how “no one likes a frowning face,” so we should always “change it to a smile.” In elementary school, I joined my peers in bestowing the Stink Eye on anyone refusing to clap along to “If you’re happy and you know it.” And in my pre-teen and teenage years, the students lauded as the “best and brightest” were the ones juggling the most, sleeping the least, and smiling throughout it all.
I also didn’t really see adults practicing self-care.
Mom was always frazzled juggling her volunteer work, but she regularly lamented how she wished she could do more and felt guilty saying “No.” When I asked my favorite, dark-circled-eyed teachers if they were okay — was there anything I could do to help? — they would just smile wryly and wave away the offer. You’re sweet, but really, it’s nothing.
Unfortunately, what I ended up absorbing was this unspoken rule: Keep any negativity you might be feeling to yourself.
As my mother would sing to us when we were irritable, “If you chance to meet a frown, do not let it stay — turn it quickly upside-down, and smile that frown away!”
From the Handbook: SAFE TO FEEL
What caring adults can do: When you see a child overwhelmed with anger, sadness, or anxiety, validate his or her emotions rather than trying to eliminate or solve the problem. Adults can also make an extra effort to meaningfully connect, especially by being a caring witness to their suffering. Supportive words like, “I can see how hard you are trying,” “You’ve really got a lot you are dealing with,” or “Be patient with yourself,” can help youth feel seen. Adults might even thank the child for trusting them with her very personal feelings and experiences.
Why you should do it: We may want to say, “You’re okay, hop up!” when they fall, or “Seriously? Stop it!” when they pout. But when we invalidate or minimize children’s feelings, we can make it unsafe to have or express certain emotions. Alternatively, kids, and especially adolescents, often hide their worries, which can lead adults to believe they aren’t trying their hardest. Even if you have to redirect the behavior, expressing confidence in them while acknowledging their feelings are normal and okay is an important lesson to help youth feel safe.
The concept of “mental health” came onto my radar around the time I graduated high school and left for university. One particular afternoon, I remember walking into my parents’ office and my mom was standing there, shaking.
Upon hearing my tentative “Mom?” she burst into tears, eventually an explanation tumbling out — my younger brother, I learned, had been self-harming.
In many ways, this small bombshell acted as a catalyst for my family. When he was diagnosed with depression and ADHD, he was the first in my family to acknowledge (and go get help for) emotions that weren’t “normal” or healthy.
But the issue also seemed, in many ways, taboo.
I can only presume my parents talked with my brother one-on-one about his mental health. But whenever I spoke to them about it, the conversation seemed laser-focused on doctors’ appointments, helping my brother identify new hobbies, medications, next steps — anything besides what he (and we) were actually feeling.
I would end up talking to a therapist, years later, how my brother’s experience affected my first semester away from home. It was the semester I tried to kill myself; and it was only this memory of my mother crying — the realization that, if I finished, I’d be making Mom cry, too — that caused my will to crumble.
From the Handbook: SAFE TO TALK
What caring adults can do: Adults might take time occasionally to invite youth to talk to them about their struggles with fatigue, stress, or other emotional or mental problems. When they do come to talk, remember to listen. During emotionally charged conversations, imagine that you have duct tape over your mouth. Stay engaged and continue to communicate in any way you can without speaking.
Why you should do it: Children often have the impression that adults “wouldn’t care” about stress or depression. An explicit invitation to open up can help create a sense of safety. When children feel they will be listened to and understood, they feel safe to share challenges, true feelings, and ideas. Without feeling safe to talk, they may overcompensate by becoming defensive, withdrawn, or insistent.
The Turning Point
As I neared the end of my third semester of university, my parents went on what my dad calls “The Walk.” As they were making their way around the block, my dad took some time to explain to Mom that he’d been struggling with lethargy, lack of motivation, and indifference for a long while.
Mom nodded in understanding, thought for a bit, and commented it sounded like he might have depression. My dad scoffed. “No, I don’t,” he told her. “There’s no such thing.”
But he paused, and he asked her how she’d know.
For the first time in over a decade and a half, my dad listened to Mom as she described her struggles with severe postpartum after each of her four children.
In the months following “The Walk,” I watched in skepticism, and then in awe, as my 6′ 3″ fully bearded, 200-pound-plus father — who rode motorbikes and loved handguns and was an avid Bootstrap philosopher — began to visit a therapist, take medication, and follow his doctors’ advice on stress management.
Even more startling was how he began to talk to us about his health. Words like “self-care” and “work-life balance” started creeping into his vocabulary. He even disclosed how he enjoyed a cup of herbal “Nighty night!” tea before bedtime.
I cannot overstate how much seeing this change meant, and still means, to me.
When my dad reflects on that conversation during “The Walk,” he identifies it as his personal turning point. Perhaps reflecting on his wife and son’s experiences helped him feel safer to be vulnerable — safe to feel, fail, talk, and explore.
Regardless of how or why he changed his mind, though, his decision to talk with us and share his experiences made it easier for me to eventually open up about my own depression and anxiety. Watching him, I came to realize he (like me) sometimes didn’t know how to manage his stress and negativity, and that was okay.
He wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t have to be, either. Listening to him open up for the first time about his emotions, watching him fail and try things he would have previously dismissed out of hand, I felt my own walls begin to come down.
I began to realize my own capacity for stress was similarly something I needed to listen to, not forcefully expand. I felt like it was okay to keep growing. My dad still was, after all.
From the Handbook: SAFE TO EXPLORE
What caring adults can do: When a child hears or sees a situation where a person made a decision that is not consistent with the family’s values or beliefs, ask them, “How do you think it would affect our relationship if you made those choices?” Try to express reassurance that nothing will come between you and your child.
Why you should do it: When we quickly condemn actions we don’t approve of, our children can feel their relationship is endangered if they ever do any of those things. That reaction creates a feeling of a lack of safety in a relationship that can be harmful to children’s ability to make their own wise choices.
Today
Since my dad’s diagnosis, the topic of mental health has been discussed more frequently and openly at home.
I won’t say I embraced everything right away. It took me many years to even begin seeking counseling, and many more to actually let the lessons start sinking in. I can say, though, my dad’s example cleared the way for me to seek professional help myself when I needed it most. As my mom’s and brother’s examples cleared the way for my dad.
In my family’s case, many of us required formal counseling and, at times, medication. This isn’t true for many families or most adult-child relationships.
But perhaps a more universal message that can be drawn from both my personal story, and from the EveryDay Strong program, is that we each have the power to open and close doors.
As parents, partners, and community members, we can create opportunities for resilience in ways institutions often cannot. This is true for our youth, for each other, and for ourselves, and is deeply tied with our ability to feel emotionally safe and connected.
Our stubbornness, our beliefs, our willingness to be vulnerable: I hope I’ve been able to capture how these are not inconsequential, as much as we might like them to be.
Our personal mental health and emotional needs have tremendous influence on our children and each other. And we often underestimate the ways we affect those around us.
Thankfully, any doors we might unintentionally close are not shut forever. At any time — with anyone — stubbornness can be checked, beliefs can be changed, and we can take a moment to be vulnerable and safe with each other.
Keep in mind that the pieces of the Handbook woven throughout this article, outlining how to help others feel emotionally safe to feel, fail, talk, and explore, are not checklist items. Rather, they are bits and fragments of a larger framework, to be applied slowly and messily, over time.
We will fumble; we will fail. But we can lead by example in caring for our own (and each other’s) physical and emotional needs. We can regularly ask ourselves the question, “How can I help myself and those around me feel safe?”
As we do, our youth will sit up, take notice, and one day do the same. ※
