Lessons I've Learned about my Mental Health and how they've Impacted my Mindset at Work

World Mental Health Day

Today is World Mental Health Day and this year’s theme is “Mental Health at Work.” In 2019, the World Health Organization shared that 1 in 8 people (over 1 billion people today) were living with a mental disorder, such as anxiety or depression – and they’ve since reported a 25% increase in depression and anxiety in 2020 alone. According to a recent Harvard Medical School finding , half of the world’s population (4.1 billion people) will develop a mental health illness or disorder during their lifetime. So, if you don’t personally suffer from a mental disorder, you may in the future or you may know someone who does today.

Sadly, there is still a stigma around mental health, leading as many as 3 out of 4 people to not get treatment. Some are reluctant to seek the help they need because they think they are the only one experiencing a mental health issue or that asking for help may be a sign of weakness. I have been quite open about my own mental health challenges with anxiety and depression and I think it’s important to know that, if you face challenges, you’re not alone and there are resources to support. Sometimes it’s also an awareness or access issue; a recent Amazon One Medical study found that over half of employees surveyed are not aware of what mental health benefits are available to them at work, while many employers offer mental health well-being resources.

So, take care of yourself on this World Mental Health Day (and every day!). For me, one of the things I'll do to take care of myself today is take advantage of a rare sunny fall day in Seattle and walk my dogs along the beach (one of their favorite spots is pictured above).

Lessons Learned about my Mental Health

As I talked about recently , lessons learned from lived experience tend to be more salient than a list of 'tips and tricks.' Here are a few of the lessons I've learned about my own mental health through lived experience:

• Human beings think that we’re 'thinking beings' that sometimes feel, but we’re really 'feeling beings' that sometimes think (from Brené Brown). There’s a common misconception that our brain primarily sends signals to our body. However, neuroscience has shown that it happens the other way around: 80-90% of the signals in our nervous system are actually sent from the body to the brain. In this way, bodily sensations can often cause us to think and behave in certain ways before our brain even detects the associated emotion consciously. It’s important to pay attention to those physical cues, such as tension in the temples or constriction in the chest, as they may be early indicators of an emotional state building up. By being more attentive to my body, I’ve helped to identify feelings before my brain has caught up to the signals from my body.
• Regulating your emotions can be hard. I have found that these four steps help: (1) Being mindful: defining an emotion as you feel it and observing what behaviors it evokes in you. (2) Understanding what triggers the emotions: maybe there’s a past trauma or set of experiences that cause you to feel a certain way. (3) Separating stimulus and response: our emotions can get the best of us when we let them control us (either through immediate reaction or also through suppression/avoidance). Slowing down how quickly we react can help us regulate both how we feel and how we act. (4) Choosing self-compassion: as human beings, we aren’t perfect and we can’t simply navigate through hard emotions just by wishing they will go away. However, we can choose acceptance and self-compassion over resistance and judgment. Simple things like saying to my inner voice, “Will, I know you’re struggling right now, but this is temporary” have helped me and are actually scientifically-proven ways to improve our ability to self-regulate (read Self-Compassion by Kristen Neff for more details).
• Recognizing the nuances of your emotions can help you communicate them and determine the best way to move forward. Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart (learn more in the book , HBO special , or podcast ) uses thousands of research data points to granularly define emotions. Her research has found that, on average, most adults can only define three emotions (mad, sad, and glad/happy) while there is much more nuance and many more emotions out there. If I even just break down a common emotion I find myself with, anxiety, I’ve found that getting more granular on that umbrella term helps me with processing it: if I’m panicked, I do breathing exercises; if I’m overthinking, I immerse myself in nature or write down my thoughts; if I’m frustrated, I go for a walk; if I’m overwhelmed, I slow down (this one feels particularly paradoxical, but works really well!); if what I thought was anxiety is really just that I’m tired, I’ll take a nap or get extra sleep; and if I’m lacking energy, I’ll hydrate, eat something, and stretch. It rarely is just as simple and quick to process complex emotions as these steps, but these actions have been helpful for me in processing emotions.
• Closing the stress cycle. We’re only able to finish experiencing an emotion, physically and mentally, through closing the ‘stress cycle.’ Emotions have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and so often we think we’ve reached the end of that emotion but we haven’t processed the emotion fully and so we carry that emotion (and its weight) with us. Over time, failing to close this cycle can lead to overwhelm and burnout. However, staying on top of this by regularly closing the stress cycle can help us prevent this. Luckily, the best ways to do this are pretty straight-forward: physical activity (at least 30 minutes but for some it may be longer – and it doesn’t need to be rigorous activity necessarily), connection with others (this can be experienced physically like through a long, 20-second hug which has demonstrated better regulation or experienced emotionally through a deep and meaningful conversation), breathing deeply, a true full-belly laugh, a deep cry, and dancing or singing. (Check out Burnout by Amelia and Emily Nagoski for more information)

How I've Changed My Mindset at Work

These lessons didn't just present themselves as clearly as I have just outlined. I've found that it's frequently through the murkiness and mess that we get to clarity and can think about how to apply them moving forward. With these lessons in mind, here’s how I’ve changed my mindset at work:

• You’re not a failure for taking a break or saying no; you’re human. When I was at the depths of feeling burnt out and before I decided to take a sabbatical earlier this year, I was so afraid to take a break from work for fear of it meaning that I had failed in my job or that I was abandoning my team. Despite what other signals I was getting that I wasn’t failing in my job, the self-critic that says “you’re not good enough” was feeding off my imposter syndrome that I wasn’t cut out to do the work I was doing. Instead, I found when I told colleagues and friends that I was taking a break, that they sighed in relief and said, “Good for you – you deserve that rest.” It wasn’t that I needed the external validation to do it (I had already decided I was taking a break), but it helped me realize that other high-performing achievers also recognized the humanity in needing a break.
• Just because you think you can do it, doesn’t mean you need to. I found myself guilty of taking on additional responsibilities and work because each individual task didn’t seem like a lot of work, I felt I was capable of doing it, and I’ve never been the type of person to say, “that’s not my job.” While I may have been able to do any one incremental task, taking on those tasks meant pushing off doing the things I really needed (or wanted) to do, like spending more time in people development conversations, doing deeper thinking work, or just taking a break to rest. When I started to say no to additional responsibilities unless they were aligned with my priorities, I found I had more clarity of thought and was beginning to regain energy I hadn’t had in a while.
• As a manager, you have to put on your own oxygen mask before helping employees with putting on theirs. That “put on your own oxygen mask first” guidance we get on airplanes is a helpful analogy in taking care of ourselves first so that we can then take care of others. Before my sabbatical, I was so caught up in trying to help my growing team and organization that I hadn’t stopped to take care of myself. We may be able to do that for a short while, but we can’t take care of those around us if we haven’t first taken care of ourselves.
• The phrase “work hard, play harder” is missing the vital component of rest. Scientists have found that about 42% of our day should be getting rest. 42%! Of course, there’s the 8(ish) hours of sleep we should get but we also need at least 2 other hours of solid rest during the day, some of which is active rest like through exercising. And, you can’t just push through not getting this rest and trying to ‘catch up’ on the weekends or vacation days off (or sabbaticals!). We have to intersperse this rest throughout our daily routine.
• Our brains aren’t wired to handle the notifications and screen time we take in on a regular basis, especially with remote/hybrid work increasing in recent years. While remote and hybrid work have had lots of benefits, one side effect is that we no longer have that in-person meeting without screens or that coffee chat that’s actually physically going to a coffee shop and getting coffee. Instead, we are tethered to our devices and the endless number of notifications and back-to-back video calls. For me, I used to read each notification as it came in and plan my calendar to maximize my time with back-to-back meetings, which meant constant distractions and always needing to be “on.” We need multiple built-in breaks to allow our brains to return to their “default mode” (when our brain is not focused on external stimuli). Turning off audio and visual alerts on my devices so that I only check notifications at a time that is convenient for me and rearranging my calendar to ensure that I have multiple breaks throughout the day has really helped give my brain the mental break it needs to function properly.?

I hope that these lessons and tips have been helpful – what else would you add that has worked for you?