#lookingafter

It has always been important for me to look after my mental health, because without sound mental health, physical health will always be difficult for me to keep on top of.

According to the World Health Organisation, worry, stress, and fear are all normal responses to real threats, and at times when we face the unknown or uncertainty. It’s understandable and normal that I have been experiencing fear in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. (Source: https://www.who.int)

We’ve all had to face and make significant changes, we’ve had disruption in our daily lives that has been forced upon us, particularly around our movements in the early days, to help slow down the spread of the virus. Even years into the virus, we’re doing very little to protect ourselves, and our mental health.

I make no excuses for continuing to write about mental health. It’s important to talk about it. It’s important to change our mental health, to make it positive, to deal with our issues. Talking about mental health, about how I feel, makes me feel better, to appreciate that we all need to continue to work on our mental health. It needs to be current, we should all be dealing with our mental health.

In the early months, I had the added fear of contracting the virus and not knowing how that would work out. But even today, not everyone’s life is back to normal. I still have my own struggles around the pandemic to deal with.

Since the lifting of restrictions in the UK on the 24th February 2022, I am home and I’m struggling with that concept. For hundreds of thousands of people who like me are high risk and vulnerable and presently who may still have little contact with family and friends, and being blunt, means we’re having to live our lives around ‘a modern day institutionalisation.’

It is no life, although unlike others who are out, I am keeping safe, while I continue to look deal with my mental health. Realities for others still include working from home, children who are being home-schooled without consent.

We should be masking up. What I don’t get, is why people are so reluctant to change the way they live if it means keeping safe. If you know something can protect you and you can stay well for longer, why would you choose to go with advice that can make you ill, or chronically ill?

I wear a mask because it’s proved it protects and until I am told the virus is gone, I will always choose to go with the safer option. Why wouldn’t you? It’s mental.