Proactive Mental Health

by Katie Kavalsky, MSW, LCSW-C

Now that we have officially entered the 2020 holiday season, we hope you enjoyed Amber’s helpful article about how to navigate this season with the challenges of distance gathering and shifting traditions. We want to carry the theme further and pull back the curtain a little bit on how we at Terra will be guiding ourselves through the coming months filled with interrupted holiday plans and colder weather. To set the stage for this, however, I want to share with you a little bit about what this year has been like from our end, and what we hope to bring as a gift to you, our community, as we endeavor to live lives built on solid ground – no matter how the terrain may shift. 

On March 17, 2020, I sat down at the computer and clicked my way into my first telehealth session from my basement. The pandemic was here and we were uprooting in-office therapy for the foreseeable future. Those first few weeks of pivoting our work to virtual spaces and making sure everyone knew how to work the links and cameras brought only the beginning of the changes. 

The bigger personal challenge was discovering how to walk with my clients through a major life event that was affecting everyone – myself included. From the get-go, the pandemic ushered therapists into an intensified season of parallel work – caring for our clients and caring for ourselves. The sense of professional depersonalization we often lean on when caring for the needs of our clients was, in some ways, out the window…and in a radical and compelling way, we were all in the “same boat”. As the weeks went by, I found myself eager to tune into what I was noticing about myself and others, as a way to gather clues for how we might all-weather a season of such upheaval and uncertainty with the psychological agility and integration we always strive for in our work. I heard people everywhere saying, “I’m not typically an anxious person, but I can’t stop feeling scared about all that’s uncertain.” and “I don’t think I’m depressed, but I feel so unproductive and can’t get myself to do much.” The pressure to understand how we were coping was intensifying. As a society, we were  – and still are – experiencing a communal event that brought into focus the need to understand mental health in a whole new way. 

In conversations with other counselors, I noticed several concepts popping up in our Zoom calls and texting threads that we knew to be integral to healthy mental and emotional wellbeing, and supersede the typical self-care buzzwords. Like, instead of a habitual “How are you?”, we would check in with an, arguably, nerdier way of asking – “How are you staying regulated… and when you are “out of whack” (aka losing my cool on my kids more than I typically would), how are you grounding yourself again?”  Or instead of scanning for “Are you doing Zoom happy hours?”, we would get to the core with, “How are you staying connected to people who create that essential safe space of understanding and encouragement?”  And, more than just mutually freaking out – although, that did happen here or there – we would ask each other, “What do we do with all these new and intrusive thoughts to consider about health and risk and daily activities?” Along with many of you, we were in a tussle with our mental and emotional health-seeking balance amidst new and frightening stressors, and tuning in to how we were responding to them. It became clear to me that this pandemic has exposed a tender and urgent need for people to be empowered to navigate their experiences and responses to life in a way that is broader than the current understanding of “mental health”. 

So, to begin, I want to toss this idea in the mix: “Ordered” mental health is a thing. It might be a weird way to say it, but it’s true. I propose that we need to reorient our starting point if we are going to change the conversation on the too-often stigmatized realm of our mental and emotional wellbeing. Even as a mental health professional, I sometimes cringe at announcements for Mental Health Awareness initiatives, because like perhaps some of you, I’ve noticed there is often an implied subtext at play. The subtext is that when we talk about mental health, what we’re “really” (wink wink) talking about are mental health disorders. When this subtext is all we hear, the conversation tends to steer in the direction of assessing for disorders like depressive disorder or anxiety disorders, rather than staying in the wide and vibrant world of general mental health. A world within us that can thrive in a textured and layered manner and where emotions, like depression and anxiety, have a path for understanding and integration. But often, in our haste to move along and avoid considering what our feelings, for example, could be signaling to us, we are quick to check off certain boxes that we are not experiencing any of the listed concerning symptoms – and our “mental health” does not need to be discussed any further, thank you. 

Friends, by continuing to live along these lines, we reduce the breadth of mental health to the specific times when it becomes disordered. Like the terrifying state of a forgotten closet before Marie Kondo arrives. Or the chaos on the bridge of a ship during a storm when the captain is nowhere to be found. There is much more to mental health than the concerns that cause us to reach out to a therapist or doctor for help. Relating to what goes on inside your body and spirit with clarity, organization, and presence is something that is available for every one of us. Mental health is the complex interplay between our bodies, our environments, our experiences, and our unique blends of personality, preferences, and perspectives. It’s complicated, but it is also beautiful. So, as I mentioned earlier, we want to craft a broader and gentler conversation about mental health – and especially now. People are worn down from the chronic stress of the past eight months and the nationwide demand for care is increasing.  As therapists who have been walking the journey of this pandemic with you, there are ways we are right there with you – in all the disruptions, confusion, and strain. And, because of our experience, we have a lens that might be helpful to view things from, no matter if you are currently seeing a therapist or just someone who is curious about mental and emotional wellbeing. With a few minutes on our blog, we want to put information into your hands to shed light on areas of “ordered” mental health that you might not have learned about before. Our hope is that as a community, we can raise our collective MHIQ (mental health IQ) and narrow that gap between “I don’t know much about mental health.” and “I really need help.”

We are headed into a winter that will bring challenges to each of us in how we live and connect with others. Your mental and emotional health matter, and just like we are all becoming much smarter about physical health these days – we want to bring other areas of health and wholeness into focus as well. We are here for you and want to offer these insights as a few handholds to use to steady yourself in your growth and wellbeing – just like we are using them for our own.