Mental Health World Tapestry and Self Care
I climbed up the ladder on my own. I chose the platform, stepped onto the wire with conviction. I wanted to be there—I was burning with purpose, full of energy, hope, and belief.
Taking the job felt like saying yes to meaning. But saying yes also meant taking on their strings—I just didn’t realize how many were attached or what that actually meant.
Their strings are the ones that pulled me out farther and farther on the rope. The longer I was there the higher the rope got, the more burden existed, and the farther the net below me became.
More and more I felt like I was losing myself and my autonomy. I had no idea how many puppeteers there were at that point.
When I look back across my wire—especially between 2002 and 2018—my most intense burnout happened in places that shared one thing: neglect.
Underfunded programs, overloaded roles, the same script repeating itself. Whether it was community mental health, inpatient units, or group homes—the setting changed, but the strings did not.
Over time, I realized something else. The wire I chose freely—the one I believed would bring purpose—morphed into stigma itself and held me in place, not just physically, but psychologically.
Just as the rope was about to break, I started to zoom out…
If you zoom out, you see it’s not just one organization, it's many across the system, and it's not just one walker. There are many of us caught in the same tangle.
It's one big tapestry. It's all interconnected. It's hard to know which strings are woven in what ways. You can't see the individual strings because it's part of the bigger MH world tapestry.
But up close, there was a mix of neglect and knee-jerk reactions asking me to give up my needs or my values or both and never with enough care or reflection. I always thought I was acting independently, but I've learned that was simply just not the case for me.
Over my many struggling years I heard the importance of spending time with friends and family, exercising, getting enough sleep and other tools.
While these are important for stress management, I think it's clear why these regularly and widely recommended tools are woefully inadequate for anything more severe.
When these questions are asked - have you tried a massage? Have you spent time with people you love? These suggestions are based in stigma because they put the onus on the practitioner and absolve any responsibility for anyone else. We are laying blame on practitioners for a problem that practitioners did not create nor can we fully control.
It just seems like we should be asking people who are suffering different questions.
And It all feels so personal, because we experience it within us, but the large majority of the problem lies outside of us.