Wellness in the workplace

Like many other weeks in my life, last week was one of those weeks where I just wanted to disappear into the nearest deepest hole that I could find, never to emerge again, until the world had regained its sanity.
As it is with life, that didn’t happen, because life is really good at not letting you get what you want, sometimes, especially when you need it the most. So in light of that, one takes the time out to figure out what it is that you can do to get a break, without having your life go up in flames.
The balance between having to do what it is that you have to do and then, what it is that you need to do, can really cause bouts of anxiety and restlessness for anyone that lives inside their head, more than other people.
Namibia is not set up in such a fashion that wellness and well-being are prioritised and considered to be an important part of one’s lived experience in this country. It is because of how the system has been set up, and how it continues to be run that people that might suffer from emotional or mental diseases are left out wondering if they are crazy for thinking they are crazy.
Mental health and wellness in the work place for instance, does not exist in many work places, a problem that continues to marginalise, if not blatantly ignore, those that suffer from mental illness.
I my own experience, having worked for several newspapers and private companies in the past, I was always met with a sense of shock and humour when it came to light that I do suffer from depression and bi-polar disorder. People really honestly just don’t know what to do with you, when you are sitting in the office, crying your eyes out because you just feel so sad that day.
That is one of the simpler things that can happen when you are having a break down, or an episode, and there are other times where the extent of the emotions and ‘mind noise’ cannot be described to those that are watching or in the vicinity. You have to go to someone who knows exactly what it is that you are going through, or sometimes, and more easily, you just want to be left alone to take a second to remember how to breathe again.
These challenges are the lived reality of many Namibians, who know that they suffer from mental illness, and many more that don’t know that they have a disease that makes them feel a certain way without much explanation.
It seems like we are all still ashamed or not ready to have the ‘wellness’ conversation in the places where it matters, or where it is needed the most. For me, in my personal capacity, the institutional disregard for the wellness of people that suffer from mental illness is one of the reasons why I am so exhausted and sometimes without hope.
A lot of institutions are built for their employees to come slot themselves into the existing structures of the institution, yet little consideration is made for compromise, to accommodate the people that work in that space. This creates a ringing disconnect that isn’t loud enough to have people running off in panic, but it is always there, bothering you, and make it known, that one day people will hear that ring.
Sometimes we stay at a place too long, sometimes we stay just long enough, but what should determine where we place ourselves and how we respond to our wellness needs, should come from the self.
It is a beautiful and necessary concept to want to change the places where we work, live and play to factor in the wellness of mentally vulnerable people, but sometimes you are just tired. Sometimes you just need to go where the love is readily available instead of having to fight to get it in the first place.

[email protected]