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Latricia Nickelberry
Latricia Nickelberry

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Mental Health is Important

Taking care of yourself mentally is really important especially in the times we are in now. I think that it is easy to push the way we are feeling off as something we can deal with later, but by doing this it just accumulates.

It does not help that society has put a stigma on mental illness, but I am glad to say that it is changing. You see more and more people talking about it which is great! Mental illness is a disease that can be treated! And there is no reason to be ashamed of it!

I have been a mental health tech for the last 5 years and over my time span I have picked up on signs of mental state. A few that I have noticed are:

  1. anxiety
  2. unable to sleep
  3. depression
  4. high and lows

I am by no means a license professional, but working in the field has showed me some of the signs. My word of advice is that you never know what someone is going through something, so be kind.

That brings me to tech. We have to be cautious of how we are feeling. Taking sometime to step away from the computer to take a walk or just get some fresh air is important. Now that a lot of people are working from home and there is not a lot of human interaction I think inviting your co-worker or virtual buddy to a virtual coffee, just to talk about anything other than code or work would be a good way to ease some tension. And just a good way to check in with someone to see how they are doing.

We should also check in with ourselves to see how we are doing on a daily basis maybe add something like morning pages, which is a tool I recently got introduced to. Morning pages is essentially writing three pages of whatever comes to your mind. It allows for you to get the clutter out of your mind and on to paper, which frees up your mind for the day. Another good tool is a gratitude journal, which is a classic.

With all of that said have a wonderful day! Happy coding!

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