Checking In

     When people talk about mental health, they often emphasis the importance of checking in on your loved ones. We all see the posts on social media reminding us to check on our strong friend, our distant friends, our goofy friends because they might not actually be as "okay" as they seem. Those same people that remind everyone else to check in with others often forget about the other check-in that's just as important: checking in with yourself.

    It's easy to remember to check in with other people most of the time because we can more easily see changes (like a drop in functioning, a change in our interactions, and emotional changes) in other people. American society has taught us to not recognize those changes as easily in ourselves, though, and so instead we prioritize "powering through" or "dealing with it later" when we might notice something feels off. So, of course, we don't think about ourselves a lot of the time past a surface-level, like whether or not we've eaten that day, or whether we're sleepy enough to go to bed at night.

    Checking in with yourself is so important even when you don't have a mental health condition, and especially during times of high stress (like a pandemic and the holidays happening at the same time). Checking in with yourself is a vital part of self-care. It's actually how you figure our what kind of self-care you need at any given time. But, to actually do it properly, you've got to go deeper than the usual surface-level concerns. Example: Instead of just asking if you've eaten today, it's a good idea to ask, "HOW have I been eating lately? Do I need to change any of my eating habits to improve how I'm feeling? How can I change them within my (dietary/budget/time) restrictions?"

    Don't forget about checking in with your mental health, too, even if you don't live with a mental health condition. To check in with myself, I regularly ask, "How am I ACTUALLY feeling overall lately? Am I honestly okay, or am I trying harder than usual to be okay these days? Have I been feeling 'not like myself' in any way?" Then I have to go a little deeper and ask myself, "In what ways do I feel 'not okay' or 'not like myself'?" 

    Once I do the "system scan" I have to ACTUALLY implement or change my self-care routine to reflect my current needs. The same self-care routine won't be helpful for every issue. If I've slipped back into an unhealthy thinking pattern, or if I need to get more sleep, then a face mask and meditation aren't going to be the self-care things that make me feel the most "okay". Checking in with yourself is the only way to really become self-aware enough to realize that how you care for yourself needs to change from time to time. 

    A note for those of us with mental health conditions: Don't confuse checking in with monitoring. Monitoring is more specific than checking in, and monitoring generally makes us feel worse, not better. Monitoring is when we notice we're experiencing symptoms of our mental health conditions, and then we keep going back and asking, "Am I still anxious/depressed/having intrusive thoughts?" And then we just keep going back and doing that over and over again. By doing that, we've just added to our symptoms and exacerbated them by worrying about them. The goal of monitoring is to make sure we stop having symptoms of our mental health condition. That is not the goal of checking in with yourself.

    Checking in with yourself is an overarching assessment of "Am I okay or not okay, even if I'm dealing with symptoms of my mental health condition? If not, what can I change to work toward being more okay?" The goal of checking in with yourself isn't to stop your mental health symptoms but to help you tweak/shift/change all the areas of your life that you can to get into a space where things generally feel more okay than not okay. However, reaching a feeling of being okay may actually help your mental health symptoms even out since some of the previous stress and worry have been lifted.

    I'll end with this: People are generally quick to remind everyone to check in with their loved ones to make sure they're okay, but they often forget to extend the same level of attention and care to themselves. This is your reminder: check in with yourself regularly. Make sure you're closer to okay than not okay in every way that you can. Also, it's completely normal to need to change up your self-care routine because your needs aren't always going to be the same.