I’m now 32. I spent most of my 20s making sense of my mental health and how to improve it or look after myself as a sort of part-time job on the side. It was a kind of underground work I didn’t share much on. Now, emotional and mental wellbeing is core to my work as a coach, who happens to specialise in Menstrual Cycle Awareness. This post is relevant for anyone. Share far and wide!

With the current Coronavirus pandemic, mental health is at the forefront of media and interpersonal conversations. I have noticed my own need to really, and very ruthlessly, prioritise it on a daily basis. With that said, I’d love to offer here a few things I have learned along the way:

1. Acknowledging how human I am

I love to learn, understand, acquire and process knowledge. I learn from experiences, from taking workshops, from my relationships, etc. But what I regularly come back to, and need to, is my humanness. Just because I ‘know’ something, doesn’t always mean I practice or embody it, and that’s ok. I am vulnerable. I have the capacity of a full spectrum of emotions and thoughts. I am made of flesh and bone with water in between. I can be knocked, shaken, disturbed. I can be eroded.

2. Gaving myself full permission to have a deep spiritual life

Coming to see that spirituality and religion were two very different things gave me a lot of freedom. I stand at the pick’n’mix stand of spiritual and religious teachings. I try things, explore, pick things up, put them down. I agree and disagree. I take what I like and leave the rest. I am careful not to spend too much time in the disagreeing or critiquing place. That space doesn’t serve me if I stay there too long.

Having a strong inner spiritual life supports my ability to trust, to connect and to surrender whenever I feel I need one of those qualities in a particular circumstance. Spirituality can be anything for anyone. For me, my journey began with writing my prayers. I allow it to flow through in my connection with the arts, nature and relationships.

4. Practicing Menstrual Cycle Awareness

Seeing the menstrual cycle as a very important part of a woman’s body, step 1! Step 2, seeing that as part of mental health. Oh yeah! Doing some work around shame, embarrassment, the stories we took on, etc. Massive!

I came to this work from a place of suffering with my menstrual cycle and finding it very difficult to get the answers and support I needed in the medical world. While Menstrual Cycle Awareness (MCA) does not promise to fix anything, it has been a game-changer in terms of how I manage my energy, understand my hormones and therefore my moods. MCA helps me to process out my emotions and have a more balanced and flexible relationship with myself. See this article on more details on MCA and how it can support your mental health.

5. Getting clarity around self-care

I bang on about this a lot. What I have learned is that it is not so much the ‘whats’ in our self-care list but rather how we ‘relate’ to self-care. Getting curious about what our needs are in any given moment as opposed to what we feel we ‘should’ do because of what we read in blogs and magazines. Having your toolkit there available for you, checking in with what your mind and body needs and then allowing yourself to avail of that self-care ‘thing.’ An example of this, which I write about in this post in more detail, is that I sat down one day and listed all my ‘shoulds’ on my self-care list. My self-care practice in that moment was to reduce the list to just a small number of items that I now have clarity on in terms of prioritisation. A few non-negtiable priorities for me are: sleep, food, water, exercise, supplements I take, social connection, somatic soothing exercises, nature, my peer support groups and listening partnerships, time to myself, music. Anything else is an added extra.

6. Understanding boundaries

There are lots of places you can go and read about boundaries. I like Brene Brown’s teachings and my friend Sile has a helpful blog on the topic here. What I have come to learn is that boundaries are more about ‘me’ than about ‘other;’ the boundaries I hold with myself. The term ‘boundaries’ has in my opinion been bandied around a lot in the self-help and psychology world and what I have seen and experienced is that sometimes boundaries are too rigid or used as a way to push people away.  This doesn’t sit right with me. I therefore make a conscious choice to see boundaries as flexible via the power of discernment. An example of such a boundary with myself is that I don’t bring screens into my bedroom. Not having a phone next to me in bed has been a game-changer to my relationship with sleep. However, when I’m on my period, watching a movie in bed is super nourishing!  

7. Choosing discernment

The ability to judge well, in a given moment or interaction. This is a powerful tool in my box and weaves in well with forming boundaries, therefore, bringing a sense of integrity to my mental health practices. I know a lot of people who never read or watch the news because it’s usually all bad or ‘negative energy’. While this is true, for me, staying somewhat engaged with current affairs is important to me for my sense of connection to society. However, I can also resonate with taking in too much negativity! What then? Discernment around boundaries. When helps to ingest the news? In what form? How often? With who? How much before you choose to turn it off? Do I feel too vulnerable in where I am in my menstrual cycle? Getting clear on these questions helps me to meet my need to stay in touch with the news while not compromising my mental and emotional wellbeing.

8. Not engaging in harmful relational or environmental dynamics

I have had my fair share of harmful relationships or being part of toxic work environments. At one point, I tried to fix, change, resolve them all. It never worked! I have come to accept that I have no control over those situations or people. I know what I am able to tolerate and what I am not. It can be a difficult and painful decision to walk away but from my experience, this has only served my mental health and opened spaces for new and better situations to come in.

9. Coming back to values and human qualities that matter to me

I have never been one to do a ‘listing my values’ exercise because I also see them as quite fluid and that there might be values I am not yet aware of. I guess this is a value in and of itself, that I hold a spaciousness around them. But some that are important to me and that I often need reminding of are: personal responsibility, practicing awareness, curiosity, self-honesty, compassion, non-dualistic thinking, open-mindedness, free will, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, human rights, clarity, communication. There are definitely more…Coming back to these help me in my mental health because again, they bring me to a place of integrity and knowing what I need to support me.

10. Human Connection

In the mental health world, there is a big focus on solitary practices e.g. mediation, yoga, art, reading, self-care, etc. But actually, human connection and relationships are the number one important thing. It’s not me saying this. It’s scientific research. The quality of relationship between a therapist and a client is more important than the tools or modality that are being used. Being an introvert, self-employed and a long time recovering perfectionist and ‘achievement-aholic,’ I’ve had to make a bit more effort in the social connection department. You know when you just have a really good yap with a friend over a cuppa and feel great? Yeah, that’s a thing. Give yourself more of that.

11. Understanding the physiology of mental health

Through my work, I have quite a deep understanding of the physiology of mental health via the endocrine system (hormones) and the nervous system (brain-body-gut connection). I work with a polyvagal and trauma-informed approach which, in short, means that I prioritise safety within environments and that I consider the inner and outer environment as relevant to our emotional and mental experiences. Lately, during the pandemic, I have been feeling very tired on a daily basis. We experience our lives through our bodies and so, having a pandemic in our outer reality is a lot of chaos to digest every day. It makes sense why I feel tired more. Ramping up the self-care here is my discernment practice.

12. Cheerleading myself & choosing joy

Again, lots of talk in the self-help world on the inner critic. I love that work. It also helps to balance that enquiry in developing an ‘inner cheerleader’! Red School have a gorgeous blog on that here written by my peer Kirsty. When someone praises or encourages me, I now make a conscious decision to fully receive that. Let it in! 

Do you have any other lessons to add to this list? Do you have questions? Leave a comment below. I’d love to hear from you!

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