Quotable: Mayim Bialik (introversion/mental health)
We get Spry Living with the Chronicle, and this month's featured interview is with Mayim Bialik. She's one of those people I've grown up with and I admire her work based on her longevity and being my age. She also always came across as someone intelligent, and that was before we knew she had a Ph. D.
There were two quotes in this article that resonated with me and I wanted to save and share them.
On being an introvert:
I'm an introvert who is employed as an extrovert. And I'm a true introvert in that time spent out really makes me feel depleted and exhausted. So, I need time to refuel. And that's a true thing. That's not just hippie science. That's real science. My neurological system does not like all of that out-time and it needs to reboot.
Wow, do I feel that. (See: Yesterday.) I'm around so many people during the week that when I'm home, I do hide out in my room. Later in the article, another paragraph ends, "I also need alone time--that's something I didn't learn until later in life. I need quiet time, just me and my cats in my house." Part of me has known that for years, but perhaps I wasn't aware of how to articulate it. The best example of needing to recharge would be camp--I'd have to be on basically the whole week, and it would take me the following week to recuperate, though I'd be back at work and it would not be pleasant. I'd joke about "camp hangover," but honestly, that's what it was. As much as I loved it, it took a lot out of me.
On mental health:
This is part of what she discusses regarding mental health and how we as a society don't really talk about it.
I think a lot of people believe that if you fill up your life with enough things and purchases--a lot of people turned to drinking or drugs during COVID--it will distract you. But the fact is, your mental health will follow you wherever you go, and you can't numb it away. You can try and hide it, but it will be something that you deal with at some point in your life. It cannot be hidden. At least, not for long.
This is pretty much my mom. She has mental health issues, which she recognizes to a point, but she hasn't actively done anything to help herself with them in years. She was seeing a therapist around the time I was teaching but stopped going for whatever reason and never went back. She's just this side of a hoarder. It's compulsive. I've mentioned that one of her hobbies is watching home shopping on TV. She just lies in bed watching that or Bravo. She's a denier of having problems in some respects and it's really frustrating to deal with; meanwhile, the house is so cluttered that one room isn't functional and another barely functions. The latter is the middle bedroom that dad and I want to redo, but mom has recently taken it over and it's worse than it was before. And, due to all the clutter she has all over the rest of the upstairs, we don't have a good place to put the stuff that's in there in order to clean it out, paint it, and put in new furniture. This may well be my winter project, because it would be nice to be able to use that room. It's gotten to the point that we can barely walk in there, and I do use that room about once a week at this point. I'd use it more if it was easier to access everything.
There were two quotes in this article that resonated with me and I wanted to save and share them.
On being an introvert:
I'm an introvert who is employed as an extrovert. And I'm a true introvert in that time spent out really makes me feel depleted and exhausted. So, I need time to refuel. And that's a true thing. That's not just hippie science. That's real science. My neurological system does not like all of that out-time and it needs to reboot.
Wow, do I feel that. (See: Yesterday.) I'm around so many people during the week that when I'm home, I do hide out in my room. Later in the article, another paragraph ends, "I also need alone time--that's something I didn't learn until later in life. I need quiet time, just me and my cats in my house." Part of me has known that for years, but perhaps I wasn't aware of how to articulate it. The best example of needing to recharge would be camp--I'd have to be on basically the whole week, and it would take me the following week to recuperate, though I'd be back at work and it would not be pleasant. I'd joke about "camp hangover," but honestly, that's what it was. As much as I loved it, it took a lot out of me.
On mental health:
This is part of what she discusses regarding mental health and how we as a society don't really talk about it.
I think a lot of people believe that if you fill up your life with enough things and purchases--a lot of people turned to drinking or drugs during COVID--it will distract you. But the fact is, your mental health will follow you wherever you go, and you can't numb it away. You can try and hide it, but it will be something that you deal with at some point in your life. It cannot be hidden. At least, not for long.
This is pretty much my mom. She has mental health issues, which she recognizes to a point, but she hasn't actively done anything to help herself with them in years. She was seeing a therapist around the time I was teaching but stopped going for whatever reason and never went back. She's just this side of a hoarder. It's compulsive. I've mentioned that one of her hobbies is watching home shopping on TV. She just lies in bed watching that or Bravo. She's a denier of having problems in some respects and it's really frustrating to deal with; meanwhile, the house is so cluttered that one room isn't functional and another barely functions. The latter is the middle bedroom that dad and I want to redo, but mom has recently taken it over and it's worse than it was before. And, due to all the clutter she has all over the rest of the upstairs, we don't have a good place to put the stuff that's in there in order to clean it out, paint it, and put in new furniture. This may well be my winter project, because it would be nice to be able to use that room. It's gotten to the point that we can barely walk in there, and I do use that room about once a week at this point. I'd use it more if it was easier to access everything.