Prioritizing Mental Health, with Dr. Joy

(object scraping) (object clicking) (serene music) "Headspace Studios." Hey, y'all, I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford and welcome to "Radio Headspace" and to Monday. I'm a Psychologist, author, speaker, and the host of the "Therapy for Black Girls" podcast. I've spent over 10 years helping people through the ins and outs of life as a psychologist. But I know not everyone has easy access to a therapist to help them navigate life. So this week is going to be just that. I'm sharing my biggest mental health takeaways from my experience as a psychologist and host of the podcast. We'll cover things like how to handle imposter syndrome, navigating friendships as an adult, and coping with anxiety. Today, we're gonna get into the basics and discuss why mental health is key to living a full, happy life and our overall wellness. I think that one of the main reasons that people neglect their mental health is that we aren't always given an opportunity to learn about what it means to take care of our mental health. I think that so many conversations for so long have only focused on mental illness. So things like the symptoms of depression, the symptoms of anxiety, what does it look like to have a bipolar episode. And of course, those things are worthy, but there's also all of these other things that can contribute to our mental health, like paying attention to our support system and setting boundaries. And so I think it has really just been an issue of people not knowing that mental health was something that we actually all had and that we had a responsibility to take care of. So in my family, lots of the women have made comments kind of throughout my life. When I was younger, my cousins and I would often hear, like my mom and our aunties talk about having bad nerves. And so as a little person, I didn't necessarily know what that meant. And only through grad school and like as I became older did I realize that what a lot of the women in my family actually were struggling with was anxiety. And so it has been really cool. As I've gotten older, I've been able to talk with my family more about mental health. So many people have now been able to engage in treatment related to anxiety. So whether that be therapy or taking medication. But I think, again, that is an example of not necessarily having the language to describe what we were feeling and instead calling it bad nerves. So if there were three things, I would say, that people really should pay attention to in terms of taking care of their mental health, I would say, the first one is sleep. The second one is asking for help. And then the third one is setting boundaries and saying no more often. I think that people don't realize how important good quality sleep is to maintaining our mental health. So...