BY GABRIELLE SCHULTZ, RAMHP COORDINATOR
It’s a question we ask each other, often with a greeting, in passing, “G’day, how’re you going?”. The response is usually along the lines of “good thanks/pretty good/not too bad” followed by a “how about you?” It’s short and sweet, friendly, pleasant. Most of the time, probably true enough, but how often do we really think much more about it?
How am I going? How am I feeling, or how have I been feeling?
When we are feeling good, we tend to get on with things, we might be busy but manage to fit it all in without too much difficulty. Little bumps in the road don’t slow us down too much.
If we start to hit a few more bumps, it can get a bit trickier to keep up the same pace, we can start to struggle with getting all the same things done in time or doing them as well as we’d like. It can happen quite quickly, then it feels like we’re suddenly overwhelmed. It can feel like everything went from good to bad without any warning.
Quite often, there are some warnings, and unless we’ve learned to look out for them, they can be hard to pick up on when we’re getting bumped about.
RAMHP developed a guide to help track ‘How are you going?’ It’s a quick and simple way to gauge factors that contribute to overall wellbeing. Regularly checking these factors can help people to recognise early indicators before things get bad.
If there’s been a difficult life event, a loss, a relationship breakdown, an injury, or sudden change, we usually can understand emotional responses to these situations. We accept how people can feel, we can understand the types of physical responses that go along with it too. Changes in sleep or appetite, or difficulty with work and social interactions are not uncommon. They’ll need support from family and friends, and some people will find support with counselling or other professional services.
A lot of people don’t realise, it’s also not uncommon for people to experience times in their life when they feel sad, their mood is low, they have difficulty coping or they aren’t able to manage stress as well as they usually do, without being able to understand why, or attribute the feelings to a specific situation.
Often when this starts to happen it can be difficult for someone to understand why it’s happening or what has changed. Often, when people can’t understand how they got to feeling that way, it’s not easy to know how to improve things, or even how to let someone know what’s going on.
RAMHP’s ‘How are you going?’ resource is designed to help people be more aware of their own feelings, and to recognise changes. It can provide a starting point to talk to someone if you aren’t going so well, or to start a conversation with a family member or friend who might need support.
RAMHP coordinators can assist people with information about the mental health services and supports available in your local area. They also provide education sessions for community and workplaces.
As published in the Mendooran Community Newsletter.