Write yourself a rainy day letter
Deal with your mental health before it becomes a problem!
At the age of 21, I left my sheltered comfortable life in Mumbai and moved to Europe. I was excited as anyone should be — I was after all moving to a picture-perfect and dreamy part of the world. But, I did not have a great start. I moved from a city of 15 million people to a small town with less than 8k people. I moved from a city of extremely warm people to a country that takes time to open up to you. I moved from a city where winters are still above 20 degrees to an extremely cold place (winter depression is real). A place of familiarity to a place where I did not even speak the language. I did not anticipate back then the effect these changes will have on me. The effects were negative and significant on my mental health. Fortunately, we live in times where it is okay to speak up about depression. It is acceptable to seek help. And that is exactly what I did and recovered.
3 years, 3 countries, 5 jobs, one master's degree, 100s of friends, 1000s of experiences later I am writing this piece, reflecting on all the ups and downs I have gone through since then. The ebb and flow made me stronger as one would expect. But what is important to note is that it also steered me into a direction where I am proactively taking care of my mental health. This is to not say that I do not get upset or feel low in my life anymore, but if the circumstances go downhill, I am better prepared than before on how to deal with it.
The past few years have seen a lot of positive developments when it comes to mental health. The taboo around it is reducing, there are solutions and initiatives to help people deal with it, there is a lot of ongoing research on it, and so on. However, most of the developments are around crisis management and not preparedness. The whole corona madness is a perfect example of why a proactive approach is of utmost importance. Each one of us is suffering mentally through this pandemic. Each one of us have struggles outside of the pandemic. Instead of letting problems snowball into poor mental health, anxiety, or depression — we need to actively take steps to build that mental resilience.
Now, there are two aspects to this. One, building routines to strengthen your health. Secondly, preparing yourself to deal with the downfall. Both of them require self-analysis, recognition of your thoughts and triggers, understanding of factors that could alleviate problems, monitoring of changes, and constant proactive efforts. This could sound intimidating, but there are small and easy steps that helped me. While I am no expert on this subject matter — these are from my experience, and these hints could also lead you to more guided and specific research online.
I read a lot online about building routines for good mental health and realized quickly that there is no one cut solution for all. But the core of it is to destress, be aware and rationalize. Destressing is as easy as it is difficult. We all have our own way to destress — going out, cooking, watching harry potter, family time, it could be whatever. The hard part is doing enough of it and doing these activities stress-free. Many of us even while doing these “destressing” activities, have some stress bothering us. Consciously distracting yourself and enjoying our leisure time is a habit that can be worked upon. This is also where meditation plays a major role. Next comes being aware. Our daily rut leaves very little time to reflect regularly. Being aware of your feelings is important. Intimidated at work, disconnected from your partner, yearning for more in life — we feel so many feelings each day. Recognize these feelings. Journaling, simple reflecting, knitting, gardening, running — find your way to compose and collect your thoughts. Rationalizing is the imminent next step. Rationalizing is trying to understand why you are feeling what you are feeling. You are feeling disconnected with your partner? Understand what is causing it, should you be concerned, what can you do to alleviate it. This is one of those exercises that also help with all the over-thinking we all do.
Cognitive Behavior therapy is a scientific area that deals with mental toughness. In layman’s words, it is the interlinking of your feelings, thoughts, and behavior. For anyone who wants to deep-dive into building routing for mental resilience, this is what you look for. Instead of looking into ways of building a good routine online, understand the theory and the link between the above-mentioned three pillars. Once you have an understanding of this theory, you will probably already know what to do and how to do it.
The second aspect is preparedness. There are things in life that are beyond control — and when faced with these situations, it is normal to spiral downwards. With preparedness, the effects are of course mitigated and solutions are faster. Whenever I anticipate that things could go bad, I “warn” my friends. When I do feel low, like many other people, I am not motivated to socialize or reach out and this is further detrimental to my mental health. But my warned friends make sure they come to me and check in on me, and this helps me speak out and get help if and when I need it. A recent exercise I started is to write myself rainy day letters. The corona months have been a real roller coaster. On my good days, I write myself letters to read on my bad days. These letters have content around gratitude, around love, around good life stories or experiences, inspiring snippets, funny memes, anything and everything that could help me lift up. This way, even when I do not anticipate but experience low time, I have these letters and hot chocolate to console me. Preparedness can again be in any personalized form. Having information and initial contact with a counselor, rainy day letters, a lift-me-up playlist, list of friends who can help you, the list is endless. Have your coping took-kit and mechanism ready.
“Prioritize your mental health” — this is a phrase we have all heard enough. It is time to do it in a more educated and proactive way instead of mindlessly doing random exercises we come across online.
