Some is Better Than None

Many of us that live with a mental health condition have probably been told by our mental healthcare team that we needed to make some lifestyle changes as well as taking medication and going to therapy in order to help our unwell brains become healthier. We've probably been told that exercising would help improve our mental health along with getting more sunshine. If your therapist is anything like mine, they may have also suggested taking up a meditation practice, doing yoga, and even diet changes to help manage the day-to-day symptoms of our mental health conditions.

Being asked to make all those lifestyle changes at once can feel like we're being asked to do a complete lifestyle overhaul, and that can be daunting, to say the least. The knee-jerk reaction for many of us is to say, "I'm never going to be able to make these big changes like they've asked. I'm not even going to try so I don't have to fail at it." It's not that we don't want to do it a lot of the time, really. Sure, resistance to the therapeutic process might be a piece of the puzzle, but the other pieces of the puzzle are all real world based. Those big changes can be hard to make because of budget, time, energy, and actual physical limitations that we have to work with.

When I first began my meditation practice, I would constantly take this issue to my therapist. I knew from research that twenty minutes of daily meditation is the amount of time recommended by scientific studies to be the most beneficial for helping manage the symptoms of mental illness. I felt like I was failing at meditation because I just couldn't make it to the recommended twenty minutes. I could comfortably do ten minutes before I started to feel stiff and fidgety and before I got antsy for it to be over. There were also times that I couldn't even find the time in my day to do the ten minutes. 

My therapist would always remind me of the same thing. She would say, "Just remember that some is better than none. Just because the science says that twenty minutes of meditation a day is the MOST beneficial for our brains doesn't mean that less time isn't beneficial, too. Any time you spend in meditation, whether it's ten minutes in a quiet room, a couple of minutes in the car, or even a minute in line at the grocery store, is better than spending no minutes in meditation."

She had the same approach to exercise and diet. Some smaller healthy changes that build to a bigger change are better than making no healthy changes in diet and exercise at all. If you can't do a complete diet overhaul, swap one unhealthy snack for a healthy one each day, like swap carrots, olives, or an apple for your usual potato chips or swap water for one of the sodas or sugary juice drinks each day. If you can't do a full work out because of time constraints with work or school or because of physical limitations, find some stretches to do at your desk or find some targeted exercises that work with your physical limitations that you can do so you're doing some exercise. 

The point is that we're trying to make the changes that will help our unwell brains. Instead of getting hung up on how big and daunting the changes feel before you start, and instead of remaining locked into the same patterns that are unhealthy because you have no idea where or how to start, just remember: some is better than none. Some of a good change in whatever area you need to work on is better than no good change in that area. You can always build on the "some" and the small changes as you go along and figure out what you have to work with in your life until you reach your goal.

I'll end with this: Being asked to make lifestyle changes in order to help our unwell brains can feel like we're being asked to overhaul our whole lives, which seems impossible to manage for a lot of us with budget, time, energy and/or physical limitations. But...we don't have to do the whole overhaul at once if it doesn't fit in the confines of the resources that we have. It's okay if you can only make smaller lifestyle changes, and you shouldn't feel like you're failing or that those smaller changes won't be beneficial for you. Remember you're doing your best with what you have to work with, and also remember that some healthy lifestyle changes are better than no healthy lifestyle changes. You can build on the "some" whenever you have the ability to do so, but you can't build on anything if you don't start it.

Who Am I to Tell You?

 I recently saw a series of tweets by Allison Raskin, a mental health advocate that I respect and admire, and I've been thinking about her tweets ever since. In these tweets, she talks about how she used to "gate-keep" OCD diagnoses. She said that she used to be someone who didn't want people to say they had OCD unless that person had been diagnosed by a mental health professional. She went on to say that she felt differently now because she realized that, basically, she didn't have the right to say whether another person had "OCD tendencies or enough symptoms for it to significantly impact their life."

I hadn't realized it until I read the words of Allison Raskin that I'm also guilty of gatekeeping mental health diagnoses, especially OCD diagnoses. I've had a few people in the past earnestly tell me that they believed they had OCD. A dear friend once told me that he believed he had "a touch of OCD" after I disclosed my diagnosis to him. My response was usually to tell the person something like, "Well, unless you see a mental health professional and get a diagnosis, you can't really just go around saying that." After my dear friend said he thought he had a touch of OCD, I remember telling him, "You can't have a touch of OCD, really. You either just have it or you don't, and you need to see a professional to find out for sure." I have to admit that I was also a bit offended when people would say they had OCD if they hadn't been clinically diagnosed. 

My reasons for gatekeeping are similar to the reasons Allison Raskin laid out in her tweets. Like her, I also felt like people self-diagnosing OCD (or any mental health condition, really) would minimize the condition and the struggle of living with it. My other reason for gatekeeping was well-intentioned, but it was still gatekeeping. I didn't want people to self-diagnose mental illness because they might be wrong. I was worried they would self-diagnose a mental health condition and get the condition wrong and then apply the wrong at-home treatment approach or that what they thought was a mental health condition could actually be a neurological condition or some other physical health problem that needed timely medical intervention.

Thinking about it now, of course, Allison Raskin is absolutely right. Who am I to say whether or not someone has a mental health condition? I don't live in their body with their brain. I don't live their life with them every day. Who am I to say whether or not and to what degree something impacts somebody else's life? I don't have the right to tell them that they can't say or think they live with a certain mental health condition because they haven't been given a clinical diagnosis from a mental health professional. Not everyone has access to a mental health professional to even get the clinical diagnosis. 

My job isn't to police whether or not someone has a mental health condition based on whether or not they have seen a mental health professional to tell them they have the condition. My job isn't even to observe them to see if they actually have symptoms of the mental health condition so I can disprove or approve their self-diagnosis. My only job is to ask, "How can I help?" and then listen to them when they tell me what they need from me, whether that's helping them find information about the disorder they're concerned about, helping them navigate finding mental health services, sharing what I've learned in therapy, just listening to them as they think out loud about it, or just checking on them every so often.

I'll end with this: Recently, thanks to Allison Raskin, I realized I had been gatekeeping mental health diagnoses and that I shouldn't have been. I don't have the right or the knowledge and insight to tell someone whether or not they have a mental health condition or to what degree it affects their daily life. I don't live in someone else's body to experience the way they think and feel, and I'm not a mental health professional qualified to observe and diagnose them. In situations in which someone believes they have a mental health condition, my only job is ask how I can help and then actually listen to what they need from me.