My Story: Taking Care of My Mental Health During the Pandemic

LM mentions how important it was to take care of yourself without trying to live up to the unrealistic beauty standards society has set in place for women.

Transcript:

OBOS Today: Why did you want to talk about mental health today?

LM: I just think it’s really an important topic, especially for the times we’re in right now. I think a lot of people’s mental health has definitely been impacted by not being able to see like their friends or their family um, but also, it’s, we’re more subjected to just like being on our phones and our laptop and a, at least for me, my pastimes includes going on Instagram a lot and TikTok and the more, I don’t really like social media that much, in the sense like I don’t like to spend so much time on it because, you know, at least for me, I see all like these perfect people on there with perfect bodies, a perfect face and I, I’d say overall, like, I’m a pretty secure person but you know, when you’re looking at that for so long, when you have like really nothing better to do, it does kinda’ like make you wonder, like make you feel kind of insecure and you know, especially, there’s a lot of I think, um, promoting like this idea that you know, after this quarantine or this lockdown, you’re going to, physically, turn out so much better than you did before you entered into it because I think that’s a mentality that’s been going on ever since like the first lockdown. Um, you know?

You see a lot of people like promoting, like Chloe Ting and you know fitness enthusiasts and stuff like that, but I think a lot of people, they don’t, you know, I feel like because of the pandemic, they’re not cutting themselves enough slack for you know the reason why, you know, they haven’t gotten a job yet or, you know, they’re not doing their best physically or mentally, you know? I think a lot of people are tough on themselves for that and, myself, included. It wasn’t until this year I kind of re-evaluated my whole entire mentality on how I think about certain things and like you know, now I’m really content with where I am.

You know obviously things could be better, but I think, you know, everyone can say that for themselves and so um, you know, you see a lot of your friends going through the same mental, I guess, obstacle that you went through, like few months ago. Again, like it’s different for everyone, but you know, for like the past few months a lot of the times, I find myself like reassuring my friends, like, you know, it’s going to be okay, you know, you’re fine, you’re perfect the way you are, especially with, you know, my female friends, physically like body positivity is also like a thing I wanted to talk about later, but that has been like a huge factor I think for a lot of females, because you know as I mentioned before like bouncing back from like the first lockdown when we didn’t do anything and then just, you know, focusing on.

Now things are opening up again so more people want to get that summer body or whatever, but I think it’s just for me, the important thing is just taking care of yourself mentally and physically but you don’t necessarily have to, you know, fit this certain body image that people expect you to have, um and yeah, so that’s why pretty much I wanted to talk about mental health, specifically, too is because I think it’s the biggest factor that’s been affecting a lot of people during COVID.