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ARTS AND CULTURE

Managing mental health is an ongoing job

  • 09 March 2020
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love, said in an interview last year that although her job title may say ‘author’, her actual full time job is managing her mental health.

She said, ‘I don’t take it lightly, because the stakes are very high. Like many of us, I have a mind that is a very dangerous neighbourhood.’

My initial response to this statement was to feel frightened for her, but the more I heard her speak about it, the more I began to realise that she could have just as easily been talking about me. After years of exploring herself and trying to understand how her mind works, she said she now wakes up in the morning prepared for the battle of the day, fairly confident that she will be the victorious one. It sounds vaguely exhausting to have to begin every day like that, but when I think of the alternative, I understand why she must.

I have always been a very black or white person, and it’s taken me a long time to allow myself to see the shades of grey that so often permeate our lives. Thinking of managing my mental health all the time felt like such a foreign concept to me at first.

Because in my eyes, I was happy or I was sad, my mental health was good or it was bad. If it was the latter, I would do what I could to transform it into the former, and if it was the opposite then I would hang on with every fibre of my being until it inevitably slid away. I had this underlying anxiety that it would soon be gone and so I never truly basked in positive feelings.

Beyond Blue states that almost half of all Australians will experience mental health issues at some point. This is a staggering number and although the stigma around talking about mental health feels like it is slowly breaking down, it still feels like there is a pressure to be either happy or sad, with no middle ground. And when you talk about mental health while you’re in feeling well mentally, your words can be taken lightly, as if your sentiments are less genuine simply because you’re in a place that allows you to express them.

 

'...it is important to remember that mental health, just like any other health issue, doesn’t discriminate. So many lives are
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