3 More Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Mental Health Struggle

In last week’s post, I shared a couple important questions to ask yourself about your mental health struggle. I mentioned that even though I’m not an expert on this topic, I do have personal experience with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I may not know every detail about your mental health struggle—perhaps anxiety, depression, or OCD—but I do know you can move forward. Here are a few more questions to consider as you decide how:

Question #3: Do I Avoid Social Media?

I believe a big contributor to mental health struggles is social media. After all, there’s endless content on it that isn’t true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, or praiseworthy (Philippians 4:8). Yet the content is so easy to consume when it’s available via a single tap or click.

This idea may sound radical, but I genuinely want you to consider deleting your social media accounts and apps for at least a couple months. (Yes, I’m serious. I know you can do it!) It may not be the cause of your mental health struggle, but it may be a contributor. Taking a break from social media—or avoiding it permanently—may have significant benefits on your mental health.

Question #4: Do I Take Care of My Body?

Physical health and mental health are connected. The decisions I make about food, exercise, and sleep impact both. For example, if I choose to stay up really late, my body and my mind will be affected.

Please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying about the connection between physical health and mental health. I don’t believe that making food-, exercise-, and sleep-related changes can always cure mental health struggles, but I do believe it can improve them. Take some time to consider if/how you aren’t taking care of your body. Making some changes may be appropriate.

Question #5: Do I Allow My Struggle to Define Me?

If you’ve had a mental health struggle for a long time, perhaps you’ve thought, “I struggle with _____ [fill in the blank with your mental health struggle]. This affects every part of my life. This is who I am.”

I realize it may be hard to separate your identity from your mental health struggle, but it doesn’t define who you are; your Creator and Savior does. If you have a personal relationship with God, you need to find your identity in Him. He loves you in—and in spite of—your brokenness. This passage from Romans makes that clear:

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, ‘For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35-39 NASB1995).