Who Should Read “A Year of Mental Health”?
The “About You” page for my ideal readers, who often feel misunderstood yet also long to live meaningfully.
In a business book I wrote a while back, I outlined the concept of describing an ideal customer. Simply put, you need to understand who you’re trying to serve. “Everyone” is not a target market.
So how about for this yearlong project—who is the ideal reader?
Maybe you’re new to my world, or maybe we connected long ago and we’re reconnecting now. Either way, you might be wondering: Is this for me? My time and attention are limited, so is this series worth it?
It’s a fair question! In life, knowing who you are and what you want is supremely important. So here’s who I think you are and what I think you want.
Think of it like an “About” page, except it’s about YOU instead of me. (If you want to learn about me, here’s my page for this project, and here’s more of a traditional one from my main site.)
Don’t worry if some of the details below aren’t exactly right: the point is to see how it feels to you overall.
About You: The Person Reading “A Year of Mental Health”
You are doing well in some ways and not-so-well in others.
You are frustrated. And also eager!
You want something different—a change in your life, or perhaps more than one change.
You know there is something great you can do, become, achieve, or experience. But what is it? And how do you find it? And what do you do about all of the life pressures standing in the way?
You worry about how you spend your time.
You feel like there’s something you should be doing, but you’re not always sure what it is. You want to stop scrolling all the time. You want to find what matters and do more of it.
You are strong—and you struggle. These two points co-exist.
Also within you, a sense of insecurity causes you to second-guess yourself. You have ideas but don’t always follow-through.
You worry about what other people think of you. Then you get mad at yourself for worrying about it. But you still worry.
Sometimes you get stuck. You don’t feel like doing anything at all! You just want to give up and do whatever energy-depleting activities you gravitate toward.
Because you have this tendency, you might think you’re lazy. (Spoiler: most likely you’re not actually lazy. Instead of being good at being lazy, you are good at negative self-talk. Executive functions, like task initiation and planning, may also be difficult.)
Sometimes, you feel misunderstood, maybe even by the people close to you.
So what are you doing about these things that trouble you? You’re not powerless, of course. You’re trying to figure it out, and like all of us, you manage as best as you can.
But the solutions seem elusive. You pick up on tips n’ tricks along the way, but much of the time you don’t feel they make much difference.
Tough love doesn't work, either—at least not for long. Tough love is a short-term fix, not a sustainable solution. And sometimes it’s also self-abuse.
So in a nutshell, that’s the struggle: You want something better for yourself. Something is getting in your way. And you want to find the way out.
Notice that this description doesn’t include any ways you are often labeled or categorized in the world: your gender, ethnicity, generation, and so on.
None of those factors are irrelevant, of course—we are all descended from lines of ancestors who have left us with both unique abilities and hereditary trauma.
We also live in a world in which people are treated differently, often for unfair or unkind reasons.
Still, you are also uniquely you. You can’t be reduced to a single variable. You might not always identify with your family members. You might chafe against the bounds of group categorization.
And no matter what, you still have the same concern: you want to be better than you currently are.
***
Well, maybe I just wrote an alternate biography of myself there. 😅 But as promised, I’m going to be real with you this year. What you see is what you get.
Perhaps there’s just one more section to close it out. This time, it begins with a couple of questions.
Again, this isn’t for everyone. It’s for my ideal readers—the people to whom I’m dedicating this yearlong project:
Are you willing to read a post three times a week?
Are you willing to consider new ideas?
Once in a while, if a suggestion is offered—would you consider following it, as long as it seems good to you? (You’re still in charge, of course.)
If you like the sound of that, you’re in the right place. Let’s make something special this year.
Conversation Starters
In what ways have you felt misunderstood?
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Something you’re curious about.
Your #1 goal for the week.
In Internal Family Systems (IFS), the key to lasting, long-term transformation is healing our exiles — the parts of us that carry our deepest traumas.
Making surface-level changes softens up our personalities so that there is more space to address the deeper underlying wounds we carry. Which is why EVERY tiny shift we can make, from eating a can of non-dairy whipped cream versus a can of dairy whipped cream (if dairy phlegms us up) is worth it. (Shout out to my excellent harm-reduction strategy last night!)
In my opinion, NO tiny change goes unnoticed by our overall system. Every effort is worth it. AND the more strength we gather to address the deep, core wounds we carry (IFS calls them ‘burdens’), the more lasting change we will accomplish.
It takes a village of strategies to do this work. One, two, or ten techniques is not going to cut it. Whatever we can do to till the soil, loosen up the clods of gnarly old patterns and make our consciousness fertile, creative and generative — that’s what’s worth doing. And then if deeper work is needed, digging deeper to do that work. It sucks sometimes. If it takes a can of whipped cream for dinner, so be it. But whatever we start with, wherever we start, at least starting.
My goal for this week is to just keep digging. Glad to be digging with you!
Hey Chris & others,
I've been here for awhile mostly in a passive capacity during a particularly tumultuous and sad time for my family. I finally feel ready to start engaging, and I look forward to learning a few things along the way :)
1. In what ways have you felt misunderstood? Living with undiagnosed ADHD my whole life caused me to often feel misunderstood. For example, I regularly heard things like "you have so much potential but..." and "you can go far in life if only you apply yourself/focus..." I internalized these words and they became beliefs that I'm just now dismantling in sobriety.
2. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I would love for my completion rate for new projects be somewhat more in line with my drive to start new projects (I get super excited about a lot of things but the excitement sometimes tapers off - Hello ADHD!)
3. Something you’re curious about. I'm curious about how other folks prioritize tasks and set long-term goals.
4. Your #1 goal for the week. To write for one hour (minimum) per day.