Taking a Mental Health Day
I receive emails from 16personalities.com every so often. On this site, you can take a free personality test to learn more about yourself – “who you are and why you do things the way you do” – as they say on their homepage. When I took the test over a year ago, my result was an analyst personality type referred to as the logician. The logician is introverted, intuitive, thinking, and prospecting (INTP). Today’s email was about whether logicians can be themselves at work. The read relates to my word of the year, which is authenticity. But that is actually not what I am going to discuss in this post. I believe that therapy, the nature of my work, and feeling comfortable with my coworkers has helped me a great deal with being my authentic self versus my adaptive self in the workplace. Here’s a great Psychology Today article on these two “selves” if you’re interested.
After reading the email, I began searching other work-related topics that logicians struggle with. After all, I’ll be starting full time in a hospital setting soon. So, let’s talk mental health days! When you hear “mental health day,” what comes to your mind? Something that caught my attention in my search was How to Take a Mental Health Day for Your Personality Type. It caught my attention because I’ve noticed a few posts on LinkedIn recently regarding mental health days and mental wellness, but I’ve never considered the link between taking a mental health day and one’s personality type until I stumbled across this 16Personalities article.
What I learned about myself is that mindfulness is so important for me, as a logician especially, because of my tendency to live on autopilot. I might do a part of my morning routine twice because I can’t remember whether I’ve already done it or not, or I may mentally check out while watching a movie. It makes sense to me now why my mom used to tell me she thinks I have ADHD! The sentence that especially stood out to me in my read is this one: “Logicians are the most likely to say they often get so immersed in something that they forget to eat or drink.” That was one of my biggest problems in graduate school; I was so academically focused that I neglected my own self-care. For a logician’s mental health day, the article suggests losing oneself in something enjoyable for a few hours. To me this is saying: If you’re going to get so caught up in something that you forget everything else around you, why not plan something fun so that you don’t neglect anything of importance while you’re doing whatever it is that brings you joy.
The next thing the article suggests a logician can do during his/her mental health day is text a friend. I actually LOVE this one! I’d rather text than talk any day; however, I am getting better at dealing with talking on the phone…it just has to be scheduled most of the time so that I can mentally prepare myself for the conversation, especially if we are going to be talking for an hour or more. Logicians struggle with talking about emotions, so instead, the article suggests texting something specific to someone you know can make you feel better if you’re having a mentally/emotionally draining day. I know from personal experience that social isolation can negatively affect your psyche. Even if you can’t (or don’t want to) explain how you’re feeling, you can still communicate/respond on your own time through text AND you can most likely avoid the probing questions your concerned friend may have when you don’t sound yourself or aren’t saying as much as usual.
I am a strong proponent of mental health days! Before looking into it, I always thought of a mental health day as just a day off so that you can sit at home and do nothing but let your mind recover from a stressful or toxic work environment. No real plans except maybe to sleep in and get some things done around the house that you have not been able to do because you are too busy working. I never considered actually doing something fun! After learning how I can really treat myself on such days, I just had to share. Go do some digging yourself and discover how you can make the most of YOUR mental health day. It looks different for everyone. Maybe all you need is to stay in and relax, but maybe you need a hike or to get dressed up and go out. Feel free to share what you do on your mental health days in the comments!
Lai
