World Mental Health Day: Making Space for the Parts of Ourselves We Don’t Always Understand

There is something interesting about the way we talk about mental health today, because although the conversation has become more open and more visible, we still seem to struggle with what it actually means to take care of ourselves beyond the things we can easily recognise or explain. We know that we should talk about our feelings, that asking for help is not a weakness, and that our mental health deserves the same attention as our physical health, yet putting these ideas into practice can be much more complicated than agreeing with them in theory.

World Mental Health Day, celebrated on 10 October, offers an opportunity to pause and think about this gap between what we know and how we actually live, particularly in a world that often encourages us to keep moving, to make sense of our experiences quickly, and to present ourselves as people who have everything under control. For me, the conversation around mental health becomes especially meaningful when we move beyond the idea that taking care of ourselves is simply about feeling better, and begin to consider how we understand ourselves, how we respond to the world around us, and how much space we allow ourselves to change.

Because sometimes, the hardest part is not recognising that something feels wrong, but understanding why it feels that way in the first place.

Why Being Heard Matters More Than Having the Right Words

One of the most important aspects of mental health awareness is recognising that everyone's experience deserves to be taken seriously, even when they struggle to find the right words to explain it.

We have all experienced conversations in which we try to explain something that matters to us, only to receive advice before we have even finished speaking, or find ourselves reassuring the other person that everything is fine because we do not know how to explain what we are feeling without making it sound more serious, more dramatic, or simply different from what we intended. Sometimes, we leave these conversations feeling that we have said a lot without really communicating anything, which can make it harder to try again the next time.

Mental health conversations can be particularly difficult because there is rarely a single explanation for how we feel, and even when we understand our own experiences, finding the words to communicate them to someone else can take time. We might be dealing with several things at once, reacting to something that happened months ago, or experiencing emotions that seem contradictory, such as feeling grateful for our lives while also feeling overwhelmed by them.

We should not have to make our experiences easy for other people to understand before they deserve to be taken seriously.

Listening, therefore, means allowing someone to describe their experience without immediately comparing it to our own, looking for a solution, or deciding whether their reaction makes sense from our perspective. It means accepting that we cannot fully understand another person's experience simply because we have experienced something that appears similar, and recognising that sometimes the most helpful thing we can offer is the space for someone to work through their thoughts without having to defend them.

For those of us who are still learning to understand ourselves, that kind of space can make a real difference.

Understanding Ourselves Is Not Always Straightforward

One of the things I find most interesting about psychology is how much of our behaviour is influenced by experiences and expectations that we do not always recognise consciously, particularly when we are trying to understand why we respond to certain situations in a particular way.

We often think of self-awareness as the ability to identify our emotions and explain our behaviour, but I think it also involves questioning the assumptions we have developed about ourselves over time, including the beliefs we have inherited from our families, the expectations we have absorbed from our environments, and the ideas we have formed about what it means to be successful, capable, or accepted by others.

For example, someone who has always been praised for being independent might find it difficult to ask for help, even when they genuinely need it, because asking for support does not fit the image of themselves they have learned to maintain. Another person might become uncomfortable whenever they make a mistake, not necessarily because the mistake itself is significant, but because they have come to associate achievement with being worthy of approval.

These patterns do not always come from negative experiences, and they do not necessarily mean that something is wrong with us, because many of the ways we learn to navigate the world begin as useful responses to our surroundings. However, as we grow and our circumstances change, some of these responses may no longer serve us in the same way, which makes it important to recognise them rather than continue following them without questioning where they came from.

For me, taking care of our mental health includes giving ourselves permission to examine these patterns with curiosity instead of immediately judging them, because understanding why we behave in a certain way can be a more useful starting point than simply telling ourselves that we need to change.

It also means accepting that self-awareness is not a destination we reach once we have figured everything out, but an ongoing process that changes as we encounter new experiences, develop different relationships, and begin to see familiar situations from perspectives we did not have before.

We are allowed to discover things about ourselves that we did not know yesterday, and we are allowed to change our minds about things we once believed defined us.

When Your Environment Becomes Part of Your Identity

At TCK Mind Space, I am particularly interested in how our environments shape the way we understand ourselves, because identity is rarely formed in isolation from the people, cultures, places and expectations that surround us.

For third culture kids and people who have grown up between different cultural environments, this relationship can be especially complex, since moving between places or adapting to different social expectations can influence not only how we see the world, but also how we understand our place within it.

You might find yourself behaving differently depending on the language you speak, the people you are with, or the cultural expectations of the environment you are navigating, and over time, you may begin to wonder which version of yourself feels the most authentic.

But perhaps the question assumes that there must be one version of ourselves that is more real than all the others, when in reality, different environments can bring out different parts of our personalities without making those parts any less genuine.

The way we communicate with our family may differ from the way we interact with friends, just as the values we prioritise in one cultural context may not always be the ones we emphasise in another, and learning to navigate these differences can become part of how we develop a more nuanced understanding of ourselves.

The difficulty arises when adapting to our surroundings becomes less about understanding different perspectives and more about feeling that we must constantly adjust ourselves to meet other people's expectations, leaving little room to recognise what we actually think, feel or want.

For someone who has grown up across cultures, the process of understanding identity can involve accepting contradictions, questioning the idea that belonging must mean choosing one place or one way of being, and recognising that a sense of self can develop through a combination of experiences rather than a single, clearly defined identity.

This matters for mental health because our understanding of ourselves influences the way we interpret our experiences, build relationships and respond to change, and feeling that we must continually explain or justify who we are can make it harder to feel comfortable with the person we are becoming.

I do not think we need to find one perfect definition of ourselves in order to feel grounded, because sometimes a more helpful starting point is simply to recognise which environments allow us to feel understood, which relationships give us room to grow, and which expectations we might need to reconsider.

Mental Health Is Not a Personal Project We Have to Manage Alone

There is a tendency to approach well-being as something we should be able to manage independently, particularly when conversations about mental health focus on individual habits, personal growth and the importance of developing resilience.

Of course, the way we care for ourselves matters, and there is value in learning to recognise our emotions, setting boundaries, maintaining relationships and finding ways to manage stress, but I think it is equally important to recognise that our mental health is influenced by circumstances that cannot always be changed through individual effort alone.

Our relationships, financial circumstances, access to education and healthcare, experiences of discrimination, family environments and wider social conditions can all influence how we feel and the support available to us, which means that telling someone to take better care of themselves is not always enough to address what they are experiencing.

Sometimes, what a person needs is not another reminder to practise self-care, but a more supportive environment, a conversation they feel safe enough to have, access to professional help, or the reassurance that they do not have to navigate a difficult situation without support.

We can contribute to a healthier approach to mental health by being more thoughtful about how we respond when someone opens up to us, by questioning the assumptions we make about people whose experiences differ from our own, and by recognising that the absence of visible distress does not necessarily mean that someone is doing well.

We can also learn to recognise when we need more support than the people around us can provide, understanding that seeking help from a mental health professional is not a failure to manage our emotions independently, but one way of taking our experiences seriously.

There is no single approach that works for everyone, and we should not expect there to be one, because the circumstances, resources and needs of each person are different.

What matters is that people have the opportunity to find support that respects those differences, rather than feeling that they must adapt themselves to whatever support happens to be available.

What Can We Take From World Mental Health Day?

I do not think we need to turn World Mental Health Day into a list of things we should all be doing better, because the last thing we need is another occasion that leaves us feeling that we are somehow falling behind in the process of becoming healthier, happier or more self-aware.

Instead, perhaps we can use today as an opportunity to become a little more attentive to the ways we experience our own lives, without expecting ourselves to reach immediate conclusions or turn every difficult emotion into a lesson.

We could start by asking ourselves a few questions that do not necessarily have straightforward answers.

Am I allowing myself to acknowledge what I feel, even when I cannot fully explain it?

Sometimes, recognising an emotion without immediately trying to change it can help us understand what we need.

Do I feel that I can be myself in the relationships and environments that matter to me?

Thinking about where we feel comfortable, accepted and understood can tell us something about the conditions that support our well-being.

When someone shares a difficult experience with me, do I make room for their perspective, or do I immediately try to interpret it through my own?

The way we listen can influence whether other people feel comfortable sharing their experiences with us again.

Am I giving myself the same patience I would offer someone else who was trying to understand something difficult?

We often expect ourselves to make sense of our feelings much faster than we would expect another person to do.

If I need support, do I feel able to ask for it?

Recognising when we need help is an important part of understanding our limits, and we should not have to wait until things become unbearable before reaching out.

These questions are not intended to produce perfect answers, and there is no expectation that we should be able to resolve everything simply by reflecting on it, because self-awareness can help us recognise what is happening without necessarily giving us all the tools we need to change it.

Sometimes, the most useful thing we can take from reflection is a clearer understanding of what we are experiencing, while at other times, it might help us recognise that we need to speak to someone, reconsider a situation, or give ourselves permission to approach something differently.

And if we find that we cannot answer these questions today, that is okay too.

Understanding ourselves takes time, and our experiences will continue to change as we do.

A Final Thought

If there is one thing I would like to take away from this World Mental Health Day, it is the idea that understanding ourselves and understanding other people require something similar: the willingness to remain curious even when we do not have all the answers.

We cannot always explain why we feel the way we do, and we cannot always understand another person's experience simply by listening to their story, but we can choose not to dismiss what we do not immediately understand, whether it belongs to us or to someone else.

We can create more space for conversations that do not have to lead to immediate solutions, for experiences that do not fit neatly into familiar categories, and for people who are still figuring out how to express what they are going through.

For me, this is where mental health awareness becomes something more meaningful than a conversation that happens once a year, because it begins to influence the way we treat ourselves, the way we listen to others, and the kind of environments we help create.

You do not have to understand everything you feel to take it seriously, and you do not have to understand someone else's experience perfectly to treat it with care.

Perhaps that is a good place to start, today and beyond it.