“Why don’t you take a mental healthcare break”
“Why don’t you focus on your mental health for a bit?”.
One thing people who say such statements don’t understand is this -
When I prioritize my mental health, I am prioritizing on myself. This means that I will rearrange my life in ways that put my quality of life at the top of my needs. But when I focus on my mental health, I conflict with all the systems around me.
In an article recently, a journalist talks about how she prioritized her Mental Health and talked about her bipolar condition with her company. What ensued were a series of actions and reactions from her manager and HR that was not just insensitive but made her Mental Health much worse.
Ironically, in today’s world, to improve my mental health in the long term, I have to lose some in the short term.
Truly useful solutions necessitate change and accommodation from the systems around me as much as it demands change from my side. This means that as someone who’s part of the system — whether it’s family or work, you also play a role in helping me prioritize my mental health, which means you give up a bit on your comforts as a system. Without doing any such changes, offering “kind words” is just “lip service”. It’s high time we stop this!
Harry builds tech-based extended cognition to aid in emotional processing at Konvos
