It’s May of 2025, and it’s Mental Health Awareness month.
This almost feels like a cruel irony, because we’re only five months into this chaotic year and my own personal mental health has been dragged, stomped on, and flatlined. What does “mental health” even look like when we live in constant dysregulation? Here is a fairly raw, unedited version of my current thoughts about “Mental health Awareness,” not just as a professional with 15 years in the therapy field, but as a fellow human being just trying to survive.
Mental Health is just your health. Full stop.
I honestly wish we could do away with the phrase “mental health” altogether. It says nothing, but suggests some scary undiagnosed disorder lurking in your subconscious.. Our ancestors certainly didn’t distinguish between mental and physical health, and the more specialized I become in my work, the more I rarely understand the difference between someone’s physical health and their mental health. This isn’t to say they are “the same.” Of course there are distinct differences. However, if your physical health is significantly suffering, is it actually even possible for your mental health to be perfectly amazing? Or, if your mental health is under duress, it’s more than likely that your physical health is also undergoing a parallel distress.
Imagine if we treated a panic attack with equal respect to the goddamn flu. Doc says: “Aw yeah, sorry to hear you’re feeling unwell. Panic attacks are going around. Rest, recover, here’s a script to identify some personalized strategies to protect your immune system/nervous system. See you next week.” That, my friends, is integrated mental health. Will this utopian vision for an integrated health future ever come to pass? I’d like to think so, because the separation between mental and physical health isn’t serving anyone (Except billionaire insurance CEOs. They like the separation. A lot.)
You’re not stressed. You’re anxious.
“Stressed” is a boring word for your ANXIETY, and everyone on the planet has anxiety. It’s not an emotion. It’s certainly not a disorder. It’s literally how your nervous system identifies threats, making it possible for you to live past the age of two. If we normalized anxiety, especially in the age of chronically online internet usage, we might not take every clickbait article headline or every intrusive thought we’ve ever had so seriously. Instead, we would crawl into bed and say to ourselves, “Hey there’s an anxious thought. I must have anxiety. No shocks here. Maybe it’s time for some relaxing music and a little light reading. This too, shall pass.”
I have anxiety. So does your dog. And so does your toddler and your boss and your poor child’s teacher. It’s the fear of having “anxiety” or “mental health issues” that ironically is causing more anxiety and mental health issues. You’re not special babe, you’re just anxious. Welcome to the human experience.
The obsession with “mental wellness” is making us sick.
We live in a society that’s inundated with mental health enthusiasts. Maybe this describes you. Maybe you scour TikTok in search of a “diagnosis” that will validate your dysregulation. Maybe you love quoting “Therapy Tok”, hoping each time that you’ve convinced yourself how self-actualized you’ve become.
Maybe you’ve started to feel like you have no idea who you might be without your weekend bed rotting depressive episodes. But internalization of mental health disorders and labels are their own types of (self-created) suffering.
Labels aren’t a new way to cope. In previous generations, we called ourselves uninspired terms like lazy, unmotivated, neurotic, and emo. These labels didn’t help us either. They were false lights we used to fumble around in the darkness of growing up because we were afraid of what we didn’t understand about our inner landscape. Because the truth is that really feeling those feelings is so goddamn scary. Labels are safe.
“Labels aren’t a new way to cope. In previous generations, we called ourselves uninspired terms like lazy, unmotivated, neurotic, and emo. These labels didn’t help us either. ”
Imagine it: talking about yourself and your painful life experiences without the disorder labels. Using plain language for your emotions can be very vulnerable – terrifying, even. But it’s also freeing. And while sometimes there is freedom in having an official diagnosis, there is also an imprisonment when you form your personality around the label of a mental health “disorder.”
If you really want to become “aware” of your mental health, I recommend that you stop diagnosing yourself on the horrific echo-chamber of money hungry social media influencer accounts.
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You’re bypassing the real mental health work that happens when you allow yourself to be in real-life relationships with people who are able to see you as a whole person – beyond diagnosis (someone like a therapist – but maybe I’m biased!).
The TL;DR Summary of this Article Is . . .
Maybe don't pay attention to your “mental health”. Maybe just pay attention to how you feel, how you’re reacting, and how you’re living your life. This isn’t about your mental health, or your physical health, this is just about your life.
So as you become aware of your mental health this May, become aware of your inner voice answering this question: Are you living a meaningful life?