Happy World Mental Health Day!
Today, we’ll see many people telling us to care for others. This is important.
At the same time, I’d like us all to take a step back and have a think about whether we’ve cared for ourselves.
Very often, we think we’re being selfless by putting others first and relegating our own needs to the backburner.
However, when we help others at our own expense, we’re actually being selfish; we end up not being able to help anyone at all, for want of sufficient self-care.
As we advocate for greater sensitivity to others’ mental healthcare needs, let’s also remember our own.
I’ve seen how damaging it is when leaders, friends and family members allow their own mental health issues to overtake them.
So distracted are they by the desire to provide for others that they end up depriving themselves of both self-care, as well as the cognitive bandwidth needed for self-awareness, to recognise how fast they’re falling – or how far they’ve fallen.
In the process, they end up hurting their colleagues, buddies and loved ones, and, in the process, irreparably damaging communities and relationships.
Air travel may seem like a foreign land to us these days, yet the safety guidelines provided during take-off briefings – regarding oxygen mask usage in emergencies – are instructive:
May we always remember to wear our own oxygen masks before helping others wear theirs.
