Notes from the Spring Creek Arts Guild

I have been thinking a lot lately about mental health issues. I have a couple of people in my life who are having a bit of trouble with anxiety, panic, and depression. If we all looked around, including in the mirror, we’d probably see lots of people with some level of the same sorts of troubles. There have been plenty of challenges to staying on the sunny side of life, plenty of things to get us worried and down. I sincerely wish we could get to a place where we see mental health in the same way as we see physical health, like that a person can be generally in great health but have the occasional bout of a mental health challenge whether it be caused by events or injury, and can recover from that and go on and be robustly healthy again. I think the tendency is to forever cast side-eyes at people if you learn they have been treated for mental health issues.

This stigma surrounding mental health issues keeps a lot of people from recognizing that they need help or at least that they need to do something differently. Many little dips or glitches in mood or thinking can be fixed without professional help, but sometimes a doctor, some medication, and/ or some counseling can be necessary to right the ship if it is listing badly or has been listing so long that you no longer remember how upright felt. I see no reason to go on feeling miserable in your sideways ship if something can be done to help. As a person of faith, I believe God does not want us to waste much time feeling sad, lonely, stressed, worried, etc. All those emotions are appropriate and valuable, but if they are the dominant emotion all day every day, something needs to be done. Worry (anxiety), for example, if left unchecked, leads us to do things we should not. I am reading the Bible through again and am currently on the long journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. I have noticed that nearly every time the Hebrews do something really bad or stupid, it is because they got worried about being lost, or that Moses was never coming back down from the mountain, or about whether they were going to have enough to eat. To alleviate their worry, they make an idol and start worshipping it...like that is really going to help (insert eyeroll emoji here). But seriously, think about what crazy things you may have done because you were anxious or stressed. Mine is self-medicating with chocolate or obsessively watching the news or the Facebook feed—both of which just give me more to stress about.

Here is one of my mental health curatives, put in the form of a Beatitude: Blessed are the productive for they do not become anxious. This is one of the reasons that I always have lots of projects in the works—knitting, sewing, fixing, painting, planting, building, etc. The staying busy keeps my ship upright and making forward progress and producing something, whether it is a clean and organized house or a home-grown tomato, gives me a really big boost.

I hope if you see a worried, anxious, lonely, or sad person in the mirror, you will be kind and see to it that you get some help. And I hope if you know someone else who is suffering, you will be kind to them and help them or at least not think badly of them.

SpringCreekArtsGuild@gmail.com