May is Mental Health Awareness month. While it is important to address your mental health every month of the year, this month it is being talked about more than ever. 

Increasing awareness can be amazing. It can generate powerful and beneficial conversations. Unfortunately, many of us stuff our feelings away and avoid addressing symptoms when they arise. Awareness can help people to identify problems before they become too big to ignore. Things don’t have to become catastrophic before you ask for help. 

Cultivating Routine Awareness

Checking in with yourself and becoming more aware of your mental health is a wonderful focus for this month, however, you don’t want to limit this practice to only the month of May. Mental Health Awareness is important every month, but life can get busy and we forget to check in with ourselves. Awareness of our functioning and mental health often falls by the wayside. 

Don’t let this happen. Building healthy habits can keep us on track. Think about some of the habits you have. If you are a human, it’s likely that you have some bad habits. Now think about a time you’ve tried to stop a bad habit. It’s not easy right? 

The same can be said about healthy habits. We all have the ability to form habits, use your powers for good. Create a healthy habit of checking in with yourself to see how you are feeling. 

Road Blocks to Checking In

There are some barriers to this type of practice. Some of the MANY things that can stand in our way might include not finding the time, not knowing how to check in, fear of what we may find, or not knowing what to do if we don’t like what we find.

Everyone is different and will have different obstacles to creating a healthy habit of awareness, however, the above ones I mentioned are the ones I hear most often and experience myself from time to time as well. (Yes, therapists are humans too!)

Limited time is part of the human experience. There are no magical skills to give you more time in your day, however, checking in isn’t an all-day activity. Taking just a few moments each day to check in can be enough. Challenge unrealistic expectations when it comes to this area. You don’t have to devote excessive amounts of time to checking in with yourself. 

What to Check

This one’s a bit loaded and needs its own section. You will want to come up with your own, personalized list but here are some suggestions to get you started. 

  1. How are you feeling? Asking yourself how you feel, truly feel, can be difficult but it can yield some amazing results. When doing this, stick with actual feelings as your answer. “I feel like this is a waste of time” is not a feeling, that’s an opinion. Identifying feelings can be challenging. Searching Google can give you endless lists of feelings, and this can help to get your wheels turning and build your comfort with identifying your feelings. 

 

  • How are you sleeping? Sleep is really, really important. Unfortunately when we are busy we will go to bed later, wake up earlier, or even have a hard time sleeping due to stress and anxiety. When we aren’t sleeping well, all the areas of our lives can be impacted. This can also be an indicator of a multitude of other concerns including depression and anxiety. If you aren’t sleeping well, it’s important that you address this. 


  • How are you eating? You have to eat to function. Eating nutritious foods is necessary for functioning as well. You wouldn’t expect to get in your car with an empty tank of gas and drive to another state. Don’t do that to your body. Much like sleep, appetite changes can be an indicator of something more. Don’t ignore appetite changes or unhealthy eating habits. 


  • How are you functioning in your life roles? How are things going at work, school, home? Check in on the important roles you play and ask how you are showing up. If you aren’t functioning the way you want to or have in the past, this could be an indicator that it’s time to pay attention to your mental health and make some changes. Decreased functioning in important life areas is a symptom of most mental health conditions. Include this in your check-ins!


  • Are you doing things you enjoy? Life challenges us to work hard, and you need to play hard as well. This looks different for everyone. When checking in on yourself, ask if you are doing the things that bring you joy and fulfillment. This is essential to your mental wellness. 

What If You Don’t Like What You Find?

Avoiding check-ins for fear of what we may find is common. Sometimes we don’t want to ask how we feel because opening up that door may be too much. What if we open it and can’t close it? What if we don’t know how to fix what we identify as problematic?

If you’re concerned about this, you aren’t alone. Delving into your feelings and addressing your mental health can be really overwhelming. Avoidance rarely leads anywhere good, but most of us do it anyway. 

We can stuff down our feelings, however, that doesn’t make them go away. They wait around and often fester. You can only stuff for so long before they come out. 

Your mental health is important and deserves attention. Cultivating a practice of awareness can allow you to intervene sooner rather than later. If you are checking in and find that things aren’t as you want them to be, you can take steps to make a change. 

To Sum It Up

May is Mental Health Awareness month, making this a great time to check in on yourself. Creating a habit of this will allow you to take better care of yourself and intervene sooner rather than later if you aren’t feeling like your best self.

Personal mental health awareness can be difficult to practice. We may not check in our mental health as often as we need to because of limited time, not knowing what to check, fear of what we may find and not knowing what to do if we don’t like what we find. All of these reasons are valid, but not a reason to avoid becoming more aware of ourselves. 

It can be hard to honestly check in on your mental health. It can be hard to avoid your mental health needs. Choose your hard, my fellow humans. And don’t forget, therapy can help. 

Jaime Johnson Fitzpatrick LCMHCS, LCAS is one of the Owners and Vice Presidents of Carolina Counseling Services. She is a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and Licensed Clinical Addictions Specialist in the State of North Carolina as well as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in State of New York. Jaime is also certified in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and utilizes various other approaches in her practice.