We're kicking off Mental Health Awareness Month with a candid conversation about...you guessed it... mental health.
Side note: We break down the definition of mental health and share practical resources in this blog post.
Welcome back to Inner Warmup, where your inner work begins. My name is Taylor Elyse Morrison, founder of Inner Workout and you as always are our expert guest. Let's get started! We're gonna kick things off with a check in question. If you had to choose a season that best describes your mood, what season would you be right now?
I can start, I am definitely feeling with springtime energy. Because literally I have a lot of energy today. And I just feel in the mood to like plant seeds and to watch them grow and to watch myself grow in the process. What about you?
Thanks for sharing. And now that I think about it, part of my springtime energy today is probably because it's the beginning of a new month, which means that we've got a new topic we'll be exploring. So this quarter, we've been looking at this idea of shifting, and this month, we're specifically going to look at how changes or shifts in the external impact what we need internally. So we'll be looking at things outside of us, like, I don't know, a global pandemic, or a really busy work week, or, I mean, there's so many external things that can impact our self care. And so that's what we'll be looking into this month. But there's something else special about May, and that's that it's Mental Health Awareness Month.
It's kind of like Inner Workout's Super Bowl. We have an amazing partnership with a fellow bipoc own brand, Mindterra, and we'll be bringing you journaling content, and events in our community. So join our community, if you haven't already. We'll link to information in the show notes, and we also have a really cool giveaway. More details on that later!
So to bring it back to mental health awareness month, I thought it would be a good idea just to chat about our own mental health to get the ball rolling for our interviews this month. I also realized when I was sitting down to prepare for this interview, that mental health has been one of those words that I use very frequently, or yeah, words, phrases that I use very frequently. And that I hear all the time, especially in the pandemic. People, myself included, are reminding you 'focus on your mental health, your mental health is important'. And I feel like I know what they mean. But then when I went to define it, I was like, mmm, do I really know what this is And so did a little digging.
I'll share this definition to give us context as we start our interview. This is from the World Health Organization. They define mental health as "a state of wellbeing, in which an individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community."
I really liked this definition because I felt like it touched on some of the dimensions of well being. I hear, talk about community care, which we would tie to the bliss dimension and this ability to work productively, we could do a whole other thing on my thoughts on productivity and your thoughts maybe on productivity. But for me, it's like the ability to do focus work, to be present in your work. That's the wisdom dimension, and then ability to cope with normal stresses of life, man that kind of encompasses so many of the dimensions. And then this idea of like realizing your own abilities. I don't think I would have put that in a definition of mental health, but I love that WHO did and I love that it's there. So this was a helpful grounding of me, sometimes words just get so overused, and I kind of forget what they mean. So thanks for sticking with me in that definition.
And that being said, now that we've laid the groundwork for what mental health is, as we explore it in mental health awareness month, I want to ask you, how would you describe your mental health? You can put whatever timeframe on it, it could be today, it could be this past month, this past year, but how would you describe it?
I can kick things off. I can't remember if I use this word on Inner Warmup or on the podcast that I had before that, Be School. But this word Mercurial has been just feeling really apt right now. It just describes where I'm at, and mercurial is this idea that you're kind of temperamental. And that's how I feel like my mental health is. I feel completely fine. I have my support system in place. I'm resting, I'm putting boundaries in place and honoring them. And I feel really high functioning, I feel really supported...until I'm not. And it feels like especially over the past year, it takes less to push me over the edge. Or it takes less to push me towards burnout, or exhaustion or just overwhelm. I mean, everything that's been happening socially, plus all of the changes in our day to day lives, it's a lot. And I think, because I've been able to adapt personally pretty well, that it's like, oh, yeah, I'm just doing fine. And I run this company, where I seek to help people build their own support systems and offer some level of support. And so everything feels fine. Until there's a case on TV, and it's all anyone can talk about. And I realize that there's some underlying trauma that I'm experiencing, or it's my luteal phase and something else is happening and I am feeling especially moody or like I can't deal. So Mercurial is my mental health state of mind, feeling a little out of balance, like I can easily be shifted one way or the other, which can give you whiplash, honestly.
What about you? How would you describe your mental health?
I appreciate you sharing and if you want to keep the conversation going. You can always hang out in our free online community! I will chat with you next week. Thanks as always for your expertise, and take care.