#MHAW 2020

Last week was Mental Health Awareness Week - with the theme being “Kindness” this year. Apt really, at a time when not only have we seen - at least for a while - an increase in genuine kindness online (rather than the sort that is almost entirely based around using the #BeKind hashtag publicly on Twitter whilst simultaneously behaving in a way that is anything other than kind behind the scenes) and when a good number of people have begun to really learn to  - and to take the time to - be kind to ourselves, too.

Kindness can, I think, take many forms. A random act of kindness - done quietly, without a fanfare or the need to announce it - making it about the act itself, rather than the need to show what a wonderful person YOU are. Being there to check in with a friend who you know is having a tough time - not necessarily to explicitly say “are you OK?” but just to keep a dialogue going, so that person knows you are there, and listening, and that your shoulder is there if needed. Helping a stranger who you can can see is struggling - whether that takes the form of assisting someone elderly with picking something from a low shelf in the supermarket, buying a homeless person a drink in the chill of winter, or donating to a charity that helps those in need for whatever reason. At the moment kindness can also take a different form - being the one to step aside when passing someone who is clearly less mobile than you - off a path or into the road briefly to maintain social distancing, waiting back in the supermarket aisle when others are choosing products ahead of you and there is not space to pass, doing shopping for someone higher risk, or vulnerable. We can choose to be kind to the planet - being thoughtful with our choices of product to minimise packaging, prioritising handwashing over use of single use plastic gloves, re-using intended single use plastics like rubbish sacks, water bottles etc (if you must have them, then multiple uses at least improve them for environmental purposes) or by taking a litter picker and one of those re-used, if possible, black sacks out for an hours local wandering and litter picking. We can also choose to be kind to ourselves - setting aside some time each day to do something that makes us happy, or relaxed.

How much of the current spirit of kindness - to others and to ourselves - will live on when the lockdown is fully eased and we are back to at least some sort of normality? At the moment we have the gift of additional time to be able to spend on ourselves, with no commute for the majority of us that allows for a slower start for many, no crack of dawn alarm clock, just more useable hours in the day. Already the kindness online appears to be waning - indeed I’d suggest that Twitter in particular is back to being as unpleasant and combative a space as it was at the height of the brexit furore or the lead-in to the 2019 election. Perhaps a new way of being kind to ourselves might be recognising the advantages of taking a step back from social media to avoid having our “buttons pressed” and our stress levels increased - I have certainly felt the benefit of doing that recently. I’ve always considered Twitter to be a “two-way space” - making an effort to see what others who I follow have to say, but now with so many tweets from accounts I have absolutely no interest in showing up because others have interacted with them, it’s much less easy to do that if you don’t wish to see the divisive bile spouted by the likes of Piers Morgan, Katie Hopkins and others of their like. So now, if I use Twitter at all, I pop on, post a photo, skim through my most recent notifications and then leave again - and I have begun to learn that this is a good way of being kind to my sometimes fragile mental health. While it’s neither practical nor healthy to try to completely avoid anything vaguely unpleasant in the news etc, I do think that it is possible to actively avoid those who choose to make the unpleasant stuff worse than it already is, those who enjoy glorying in the drama, and stoking the fires of division still further.

Whatever else you do this week, choose to take some time for you - to walk, or run, to think things through, to take a closer look at the effect your social media consumption might be having on your mental health, or just to sit with a good book - one you WANT to read rather than one you feel you “should” and try to let go of the guilt it is so easy to feel around taking that time. To be kinder to others, we first need to learn to be kinder to ourselves, perhaps?

Robyn