With September being Suicide Awareness Month, the discussion of mental health and taking care of yourself is something that is very important to spread awareness about. For me this topic is something that I care deeply about as I have struggled with anxiety my whole life and was recently diagnosed with depression back in January. I have been in therapy since 2023 and have been learning to take care of myself and my mental health.
My freshman year of college, I was at a place where I felt alone, and struggled to fight off the anxiety and depression. I decided to stop playing a sport that I loved dearly that year because it was draining me and I was losing the love for it. After that I moved back home and started taking my classes online and going to therapy.
The past three years, I have grown into a new person, learning coping skills, how to manage my anxiety, and how to not let the negative feelings overtake my body and stop myself from doing things that I love. I have picked up many new hobbies since being at Monmouth and surrounded myself around friends that support me and love me no matter what.
Mental health and self-care is so important for everyone, whether you are a female or a male, and it is important that we prioritize ourselves as much as we can.
Mental health is so important because it can affect every aspect of our life. It affects our relationships, friendships, physical health, and our performance in things like sports, work, and school. When we are feeling anxious and stressed, I have learned that it is best to take a step back and relax. Spend time with the people that make you feel loved, read a book, or participate in a hobby that you enjoy. This can help us to ease our minds and feel a bit better. Although anxiety and stress are things that are hard to manage, it is important that we remember to take a break and breathe.
Some ways that I manage anxiety and stress is by packing sour candy in my backpack for when I get anxious. When we are anxious our minds tend to spin in circles, and by having something sour to eat when we feel anxiety coming on, it actually distracts our brain. This is because our brain now has to focus on the taste of the candy rather than what is causing the anxiety.
Another thing that helps is using something cold to calm us down. If in class you can put a cold water bottle to your face, or if at home just use an ice pack. The cold water has the same effect that the sour candy does because it causes your brain to think and focus on something else.
Mental health is also so important because if you are struggling, it causes you to fall behind and lose focus on things. Although you might not be able to help how you are feeling sometimes, you want to make sure you are taking care of yourself. If you are constantly on the go and not managing yourself properly you can burn yourself out. This can lead to reduced productivity in things like school, which is something that I definitely experienced.
I also think that mental health and self-care is so important because of the amount of awareness that surrounds it now. Growing up, I really didn’t hear much about mental health and just assumed that everyone dealt with the same things that I did. But sometimes that is not the case. Mental health and its awareness is so important because people shouldn’t be afraid to express how they are feeling. They shouldn’t feel like going to therapy is embarrassing, or that being stressed over something isn’t a big deal. The truth is, everyone fights their own battles, and to know you are not alone is something that can make someone around you feel better.
Finally, I think that it is important that the younger generations know how to take care of themselves and understand that their feelings are valid and seen. Social media can deeply affect everyone’s health, and there is so much in the media that can damage a person’s brain. There is cyberbullying and constant comparisons to other people that can really damage someone’s self-esteem and identity. So if the younger generations know that they aren’t alone and learn the tips to take care of themselves, it will go a long way.
Learning how to deal with our feelings and take care of ourselves can be hard, but if we know how to do it and surround ourselves with people who care, we can conquer anything we put our mind to.
