Tag: Mental Health

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Self-Care Tips for Long Hours

In the post I wrote last week on self-care tips, I said that I do believe that there is a place for themed self-care tips. One such themed self-care tip that I have experience in is with working long hours, hence my post for today.

Whether it be for a project in high school or college, or ending up working long evenings because of a job I have, I have some experience in trying to take care of myself through working really long hours in order to get work done.

Note that all of these tips are ones that are not time-consuming by design, not by any stretch.

So, without further adieu, here are my self-care tips for working long hours:

  1. Make sure you take breaks to stretch and stand up. I don’t know about others, but if I spend way too long at a computer, my productivity ends up tanking. However, by standing up and stretching, you give yourself a mini-break to recharge and refuel.
  2. When/if you have a longer break during your workday, try to do something relaxing that is not work related. It might be reading a book, taking a walk, praying (if you’re the religious type), or working on a crossword puzzle, but do something to take a break. Otherwise, you may run the risk of getting burnt out.
  3. Feed yourself. I’m going to put my foot down here—it doesn’t matter how busy you are or how much you “don’t have time” to eat. It’s difficult to work productively on an empty stomach, so eat! And ideally, eat a nutritionally balanced meal, not just a bunch of potato chips and a chocolate bar.
  4. Once you’re done with work for the night, take at least 10-15 minutes before you go to bed to do something relaxing. Speaking from my own experiences, if I don’t do that, I have a hard time sleeping and/or I have nightmares related to the work that I do. There was one time I worked three long days in a row, and by the end of it all I was having work-related nightmares—no fun!
  5. If you anticipate working long hours, do try and make sure you get adequate sleep both before and after your day of working long hours. I understand that this can sometimes be difficult depending on life circumstances, but try to get 7-8 hours of sleep before and after the long day of work you’re anticipating so that you’re well rested for the work you have to do.
  6. If you anticipate working several long days in short succession, and you accumulate time off with your job, consider taking a day off (or even a morning or afternoon off from work) after those long days are over so that you can get some rest. Some jobs result in your accumulating compensatory time off instead of overtime. If that is the case, then consider using some of it in order to get rest after working several long days in short succession.

These are a few of the tips I have for working long hours. If others have additional tips beyond what I have here, please let me know in the comments section below!

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On Self-Care Tips

Some time ago, I wrote a post on how self-care is not selfish. I still believe that to be the case.

However, one major thing I’ve noticed is that some of the commonly offered tips are ones that some people cannot follow/carry out because of life circumstances. In other words, some (Many?) of the tips I see are not accessible to many, if not most, of us.

For example, here are a few common self-care tips and how they may not be practical for certain groups of people:

  1. Mental health days. Some self-care calls for mental health days, or days that people take off from certain things in order to care for themselves. A “mental health day” is something that many aren’t able to do because work schedules don’t allow for that.
  2. Bubble baths. Some self-care tips call for bubble baths in order to help relax oneself. However, some people don’t have time to make a quality bubble bath after a long day. And even for those who have the time, not every home or apartment has the tub that allows one to take a bubble bath.
  3. Walks. Taking a walk (a part of my self-care routine) is not possible in many parts of the United States and world because of a lack of sidewalks and places to walk.
  4. Massages. Much like with bubble baths, the idea of getting a massage is as a means of relaxing oneself. However, getting a massage costs money that many people do not have.
  5. Unplugging from technology. This is a really well-intended self-care tip, as for some of us technology of certain kinds (especially social media, I am finding) can have a toll on some of our mental health. That being said, I know people who work in jobs where unplugging from technology, which is what some self-care lists call for, is not possible.
  6. Therapy. A lot of people cannot afford therapy, even if a therapist might be helpful for certain people in certain circumstances.

Note that I am not saying that these tips are bad per se; for some people, these tips may be quite good. However, advocates of self-care need to recognize that certain tips may not work for everyone, and that circumstances in one’s life may keep one from implementing certain self-care tips.

What should one do with self-care tips when reading them, then? And what should one do when suggesting self-care tips to individual people?

If you’re reading self-care tips, my answer is that no matter what the author says, don’t feel badly if there are some elements of self-care that are absolutely impossible to work into your life right now. Therefore, don’t beat yourself up if you’re not able to follow certain self-care tips.

As for those who suggest self-care tips to individual people, I recommend just being sensitive to the fact that life circumstances may keep people from following certain tips you recommend. That doesn’t make either you or the person you’re suggesting the tips to bad people—it is just a fact of life that not everything works for everyone.

One final, but relevant, note I’ll make is that there is a place for themed self-care tips. I think there need to be posts on self-care for new dads, self-care for those with long hours, self-care for essential medical workers during COVID, and more. Sometimes, the best self-care tips are from those experiencing circumstances in life similar to yours. I will hold up to my end of the bargain by writing a self-care post next week on self-care tips for working long hours, because I’ve been there before.

I am not critical of the idea of self-care recommendations; to the contrary, they are needed and great. However, it is important to remember that not everything works for everyone.

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American Health Care and Responding to the Long-Term Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic

With the Omicron variant having settled down, it seems like the “health care system” (putting that phrase in quotes because, in the words of a former journalist by the name of Walter Cronkite, I believe it is “neither healthy, caring, nor a system”[1]) can perhaps take a bit of a breather, at least until the next variant. If there is another catastrophic variant, that is, and I hope there won’t be one.

Yet, even if there isn’t another variant, health care systems around the world, including the one in the United States, will in a way be responding to the long-term impacts the pandemic has had on people for years, if not decades, to come. And I am concerned about the American health care system not giving people with said impacts the sort of health care that is required.

But first of all, who are the people with these long-term impacts?

Some of us will possibly be COVID long-haulers who will need physical health care. We are learning more about the long-haulers as we go along, but it may turn out that some will end up with long-term or even permanent impacts that will affect their daily lives due to neurological conditions,[2] among other things. Regardless, the long-haulers are a population that will be dealing with long-term impacts from COVID, quite possibly, long after the pandemic ends.

However, many more of us will be people who need mental health care of various kinds due to the emotional trauma that the circumstances of COVID have caused. A wide range of populations will need this mental health care in some way, shape, or form, ranging from family members who lost loved ones due to the pandemic, to hospital workers who have emotional trauma from working in hard-hit hospitals, to people whose personal economic fortunes turned completely upside down due to the pandemic and never recovered. Dealing with the effects of trauma can be lifelong, and as such, dealing with the effects of COVID-related trauma may also be lifelong.

I have no idea how many people will need COVID-related physical health care and how many will need COVID-related mental health care after the pandemic, but I’m guessing that it will be a sizeable number of people in the United States—perhaps in the hundreds of thousands, and perhaps even in the millions. What I do know is that there will likely be a lot of people who will need one or both things, and that if preparations are not made for that long-term reality now, people are going to be hurt quite badly (physically, emotionally, and otherwise) by how poorly prepared our health care system is, by how American health care has a nasty tendency to leave people either uncovered or undercovered for so many basic needs.

Nor do I know what preparing for such a reality may look like, as I am not a health care expert. Frankly, I’m not even sure if a lot of health care experts know what preparing for such a reality may look like, either. I’m not even sure if it’s possible for a health care “system” as broken as the one in the United States—a “system” where millions are uninsured, where millions more are denied coverage for so many basic needs, and where the politicians that could change this would rather keep the status quo then actually fix these problems—could ever be truly prepared for the potential enormity of caring for scars, both physical and emotional, that come from this pandemic. Possibly not. But if it is possible, those preparations need to happen, and happen now.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/74350-america-s-health-care-system-is-neither-healthy-caring-nor-a

[2] https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/boston-doctors-explain-long-covid-and-neurological-symptoms/2509459/

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What Is…Minority Stress

When I started my “what is” series, there were a number of terms that I thought were deserving of a post in the series, because they are viewed as social justice jargon that many don’t understand. One term I didn’t know too much about, but have come to learn more about, is minority stress.

What is minority stress, and why is it so important to know what it is?

A concise definition I’ve seen for the term is that it “refers to the way that individuals from underrepresented or stigmatized groups experience a number of stressors that directly relate to a minority identity.”[1] Those stressors come from experiences of rejection, discrimination, and other forms of marginalization.[2]

However, it is more than a term—it is a framework.

When the framework first came to prominence in the 1990s and early 2000s, it was one to help explain how certain minority groups experience disproportionate poor mental health outcomes. The rise in prominence of this notion was significant in terms of coming to a greater understanding of why sexual minorities (people who identify as lesbian, gay, and bisexual) experienced a high number of mental health issues—issues that can be attributed to stressors such as rejection, hiding, internalized homophobia, external homophobia, and more.[3] With this minority stress framework, it is easier to see how such stressors lead to the poor mental health outcomes.

More recently, the idea of minority stress has expanded to also explain how certain other minority groups experience disproportionate poor physical health outcomes—not just poor mental health outcomes. The expansion of thinking about how minority stress may manifest itself was significant in terms of coming to a greater understanding of why sexual minorities also experience a high number of poor physical health outcomes—issues that can be attributable to the same stressors that cause the poor mental health outcomes as well.[4]

While the study of health outcomes for sexual minorities has played a prominent role in understanding minority stress, it must be pointed out that the issue of minority stress for explaining disproportionate poor mental and physical health outcomes among certain people and groups is relevant to many other communities. A few such communities that come to mind are some indigenous communities, some communities of color, and some immigrant communities.

It must also be pointed out that someone can be in multiple minority communities and therefore experience minority stress (with its relevant stressors) for all of the communities they are in. One of the more prominent articles on this subject explored minority stress as experienced by LGBT people of color,[5] but there are other combinations of minority identity that can have the impacts of what the aforementioned article calls multiple minority stress.

I’ve thrown around a lot of terms in this post—minority stress, stressors, multiple minority stress—but does this all matter? And if so, why?

It absolutely matters, on both a personal level and a policy level.

On a personal level, stressors that lead to the experiences of minority stress for a wide group of minority communities should be a call to self-examination, to see whether we act in ways that contribute to that minority stress for our friends of color, for our friends with disabilities, for our friends in the LGBTQ+ community, and so on. And if we find that we do, it’s a call to change our actions. That self-examination may not be easy and may result in letting go of long-held beliefs about certain people or groups of people, but some people’s well-being depends on it.

On a policy level, I would only hope that the stressors which lead to the experiences of minority stress would be a call to action for elected officials to see whether any policies or laws contribute to minority stress for any marginalized communities. And then, if any policies do contribute in such a negative way, curtail them.

Overall, a greater understanding of minority stress and its impacts will hopefully lead to actions from all that will, in the long run, reduce those stressors that lead to the stress. That is my hope, and that is my dream.

[1] https://www.verywellhealth.com/minority-stress-in-health-disparities-4691231

[2] Ibid.

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2072932/

[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3895416/

[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4059824/

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Texting as Part of the Suicide Prevention Lifeline: It’s About Time

A few weeks ago, I was listening to the news and heard that starting next year, people could dial the 988 number to reach the Suicide Prevention Lifeline through texting, not just calling.[1]

And when I heard about this, I thought the following: it’s about time. Actually, it’s beyond time.

I should start by saying that having a phone number to dial for the Suicide Prevention Lifeline is immensely helpful to have. It can be a vital resource for those in crisis.

However, there are many people who may not be able to, or may not feel comfortable, calling a phone number to talk out loud with someone. Among those who fall into this category are:

  • People who lack the privacy to talk on the phone about what is making them suicidal.
  • People who feel most comfortable expressing what they are going through by way of text messages instead of a phone call.
  • People from marginalized communities for whom marginalization within their own homes is why they feel suicidal. People in the LGBTQ+ community who are not accepted within their own homes come to mind for me, but there are other groups that I’m sure experience this.
  • People who have certain kinds of conditions that prevent them from speaking, but still allow them to write. One example of this for me is that there are some people who are nonverbal because of autism yet are able to communicate through written word.

For those wondering about the Lifeline’s online chat, while it may be helpful in certain circumstances, it faces many of the same shortcomings as calling does for many of the same groups of people, as well as other shortcomings that calling does not face. One notable shortcoming unique to the online chat is that people who are concerned about their online whereabouts being tracked might not want to go to the Lifeline’s chat in the first place. Another issue is that if demand for the chat is too high, people are directed to a list of “Helpful Resources” or calling the lifeline, meaning that the chat is not an option in some cases even if it might be otherwise preferable to calling. While the online chat can be helpful in certain circumstances, there are still large groups of people for whom the online chat is not a viable option, even if one were to assume that someone was available to do the online chatting in the first place.

While I have highlighted the shortcomings of both the dial-in Helpline and the Lifeline’s online chat, this is not to say that texting is going to be perfect. The biggest potential pitfall I can see of the texting element of the Helpline is that texting, in general, can result in major misunderstandings under the best of circumstances, but that in the worst of circumstances could lead to someone taking their life. This is a potential pitfall that I assume the Lifeline is aware of, and one that the Lifeline will have to work to try and prevent.

Even with this pitfall, what it boils down to is that there are many groups of people who will be helped by the existence of a texting element of the Suicide Prevention Helpline, and it is beyond time that such a thing exists. I am so incredibly glad that this will be coming into place next year—it can’t come soon enough for some of the most mentally and emotionally vulnerable among us.

Until such time that the texting Helpline is in place, though, you can call the Helpline at 1-800-273-8255 or chat with the Lifeline if you need help.

[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/fcc-decide-texting-upcoming-suicide-prevention-lifeline-988/story?id=81254458