When Your Mental Health Takes A Dip, Don't Think Of It As A Step Backwards

I’ve been taking more baths lately. That can read as applaudable levels of self-care, but personally it’s actually one of my biggest tells. Taking a bath for me has always been calming, but when I’m doing it daily I know it’s a response to a hard season.

Baths become my own version of time out.

I’ll think, “I don’t know what to do with my physical being right now,” so I’ll take a bath.

I’ll think, “My mind feels too cloudy,” so I’ll take a bath.

So lately, I’ve been taking more baths. I’ve also been making my peace with the fact that I’m treating this harder season differently. Traditionally, I would compare one hard season to the last or fail to recognize that I’m in one altogether because of how high functioning I can be. I’m trying to be more intentional about stopping and asking myself, “What is actually triggering me right now? What is it about this season that’s hard?”

I follow up each question with time to actually hear the answer and a commitment to honor my reality no matter what. Lately, that’s looked like a need for more baths or naps as a way to deal with how low-energy and out-of-body I’ve been feeling. When it comes to our mental health, one of our biggest frustration points can surface in those small moments of acknowledgement because we think that by recognizing what’s wrong it should automatically be fixed. Our mental health doesn’t work this way. Nothing about being human is linear. We gain more when we don’t try to resist this fact.

We also gain more when we choose to not see a dip in our mental health as a step backwards.

One of the things I talk about in therapy so often is my inclination to aim for perfectionism. It came up in therapy just today. I can live in my head for days on end and feel content because in my head everything is fine and I’m perfectly landing every jump from the balance beam — this isn’t real life though. Real life isn’t about perfection and that holds true for our mental health. Having an easy season or a hard season doesn’t make you a bad person or an imperfect person, it makes you a person with the highs and lows that come with living.

Right now, I’m struggling with a really bad case of seasonal depression, a Vitamin D deficiency that isn’t helping matters, and other layers of real life that make some days harder to get through.

Someone I love recently had their first panic attack and in the debrief afterwards I told them that they needed to rest because even if their body didn’t move an inch, their mind ran a marathon. That’s how I’m choosing to categorize the dips in my mental health. My mind is running sprints while simultaneously trying to figure out how to slow down. My body is slowing down in an effort to regain energy from the races my mind is running.

I’ve been going to therapy for 7 years now and I still struggle to navigate a harder season. No one is gifted a roadmap when the hard season arrives, all we can do is listen and try.