People say “take care of your mental health” or “take care of yourself” all the time, but most of the time, it feels like one of those phrases that you hear so often that it starts to lose meaning. Because in real life, it’s not always like this stuff you see on TikTok. Sometimes, taking care of your mental health just looks like trying to get through the day without feeling completely overwhelmed.
I’ve struggled with mental health problems since middle school, and I don’t think I really understood what that meant at the time. Back then, I thought it was something that I could just handle my own if I tried hard enough or stayed “strong” enough, but as I’ve gotten older, I realized it’s not that simple.
As college students, it can feel like there’s always something happening or something you should be doing. Classes, assignments, internships, jobs, social life, family, it all adds up. Even when you’re doing everything “right,” it can still feel like it’s not enough, almost like you should be doing more, achieving more and being more.
And in the middle of all that, your mental health is usually the first thing you push aside without even realizing it.
You tell yourself you’re going to rest later, you’ll slow down after this week and you’ll take a break once things calm down. But the truth is, things don’t always calm down. There’s always something else waiting right after this thing you just finished, even if it’s in the back of your mind.
And as time goes on, it can catch up to you.
Mental health doesn’t usually fall apart in one moment. You can’t always see that it’s affecting you more than it actually is. In a sense, it kind of builds up over time, showing in small stressors you ignore, exhaustion you push through and overthinking you brush off. One day, it all feels like too much at once, and you can’t even fully explain why you feel the way you do. And that’s what sucks the most.
What I’ve learned over time is that this doesn’t make you weak or behind; it just makes you human.
I would say one of the biggest changes and challenges for me has been realizing that I can’t always rely on myself. For a long time, I thought I had to figure out everything alone, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that mental health is not just something you’re supposed to carry by yourself.
Sometimes you need other people. Sometimes you need to talk things out, be around people who make you feel safe, or even just put you in an environment where you can meet new people and not feel so stuck in your own head. But also, there’s sometimes where you just need yourself.
Taking care of your mental health doesn’t always have to be perfect. It can be small things like saying no when you’re overwhelmed, going to bed earlier, taking a walk without your phone or even just giving yourself a chance to slow down. I feel like we all grew up seeing mental health as a burden in the sense, but in reality, we’re humans, and we all go through mental health challenges, whether it’s identified as mental health or not. I feel like it’s taking us a long time as a society to get to this point,
But that also means sometimes letting yourself lean into other people instead of isolating yourself.
There’s a lot of pressure in college to look like you have everything together. It could feel like everyone is handling life better than you are, and it doesn’t make sense, but you never really know what’s going on behind the scenes.
Relating to what I’ve said above, I wanted to share one thing that I think helped me a lot was in my RPTM 297 class. We had a guest speaker, Loren Crispell, the State College Area School District’s new athletic director. Crispell shared two ideas that really stuck with me: “Meet kids where they are, deliver what they need,” and “Everybody in our building is going through something.”
What Crispell said really stuck with me because he acknowledged the reality that we never truly know the internal battle someone is fighting. To me, ‘meeting someone where they are’ means you aren’t trying to force them to be better or pushing them to meet your own expectations. Instead, you are simply choosing to be there for them, and it’s about providing the specific support they actually need in their current moment, rather than what you think is best. Most importantly, it’s giving them space to be human without the pressure to be perfect.
Everyone is dealing with something you can’t see, and everyone has moments where they feel lost, but it doesn’t always show. That’s why checking in with others, but most importantly, yourself, matters so much. Not just when things feel bad, but regularly.
Mental health isn’t about being happy all the time. It’s about understanding yourself, giving yourself grace and learning that the rest isn’t something that you must earn.
At the end of the day, taking care of yourself isn’t selfish; it’s necessary. Because you can’t keep showing up for school, work, relationships and everything else in your life when you’re constantly running on empty.
So, if you need to reach out for support and take a break, take it. Even if you’re struggling more than usual, that doesn’t mean you’re failing; it just means you’re human and you’re allowed to not have everything figured out, and you don’t have to do it alone.