A mental health primer for 2025

Staying sane in an increasingly unprecedented world.

Dear Compatriots In Peace

Another year many of us are undoubtedly glad to see the back of — though I’m guessing we are no longer assuming that next year will be better (I think I said this about 2024 too).

I’ve been putting off writing this newsletter — procrastinating, prevaricating — but find myself in that long, lazy stretch of time between Christmas and the proper start of the new year (6th Jan amirite?), marvelling at how quickly the frantic energy that pervades December gives way to going-nowhere-and-doing-nothing as soon as the clock ticks over to the 26th, or even a few scant seconds before. The city sighs and slumps. The transformation is magical and it almost makes me want to acknowledge the importance of things like collective energy (but I am all about the ‘Real Psychology, No Woo’ so I won’t, lest there be a tarot-card burning rebellion).

I love the way Melbourne empties itself at the start of summer, vomiting its masses into the regions. Those of us who sometimes STAY know the beauty of actually being able to find parking more promptly than usual. I too was meant to dissipate into the regions with the rest this year, but had a disappointing accommodation experience and returned forthwith, angry and hot greyhound in tow. I enjoyed this time off anyway, watched a few movies (Anora and All We Imagine as Light), read a lot (Calla Henkel was a brilliant new find), worked on my memoir, napped, went to yoga, and did the classic thing of eating no regular meals but lots of odd snacks. Primo.

I know this isn’t a primo time of year for everyone and there will be lots of people mourning, grieving, processing, struggling — including all those impacted by the bushfires just after Christmas, and the many thousands across the world who have been affected by illness, war, genocide, dictatorial regimes, spiralling costs, and the general ravages of this world. Surviving is feeling harder and there is a certain grimness characterising the way we relate to the idea of the world and the future. It can be so easy to feel alone at these times, when the world seems to be celebrating in blithe ignorance of those struggling.

Writing a newsletter at this time of year almost demands some form of wrap-up and highlights reel, which is why I’ve been putting this off. I don’t have the energy or desire to do this — a far cry from years past where I’ve beadily tallied my achievements and compared them to others (I think this new ambitional apathy is a good thing?!). This image below sums up my general feeling about the flip of the year at the moment — chronology as a bit pointless, and time as a vast man-made expanse.

Resolutions/goals and evaluating the year and taking stock with a view to progressing has felt especially onerous, and I’ve been wondering why. Have I just been tired and disinclined to think and produce? Totally fair — the drive to remain relevant and to create content is perennial and a true Sisyphean task. But, it felt like more, like something inside me was pushing against the need to take stock of a year, to centre it around the self and the personal.

Then I read the post below by Jan Fran, and it all clicked. My tiredness, my apathy about goal-setting, my lack of interest and spark in the idea of a new year or in the idea of reviewing the one past — it all makes sense. A new, and more tired and cynical me has emerged from 2024, and I don’t quite know how to make sense of it, or how to be in this world anymore with my hope intact.

jan__fran

A post shared by @jan__fran

Perhaps it’s bold or self-defeating for a psychologist to say she doesn’t have the answers, but honesty is important to me and I’m wary of the morally superior stance some psychologists feel they must hold by virtue of their training. Most of us have the same struggles everyone else does, and none of us have nailed living perfectly, especially in these interesting times. We might have some thoughts and understanding of general principles and research — but no answers about what will definitely help each individual live their fullest lives. We are each unique, and so are our needs.

2024 has been a year of global loss. Losses of lives for tens of thousands of people in the most brutal way, and for those of us helplessly watching — the loss of innocence, the loss of belief in individual power, the loss of faith in western democratic ideals, the loss of trust in many people we thought were good people invested in truth and justice. Add to this the spiralling climactic crisis, the failure of civics and political education in many countries and the ongoing reliance on our failing economic institutions, and I can see why many are despairing and feel like hope is futile.

Hope is important (so important that I devoted a whole chapter to it in LIFE SKILLS) and as I survey the world, it feels like this is what we are missing the most at present, hope that the world can be just, sane, and good and that we can have good lives. I’m not quite sure what the answers are, I’m not given to pithy quick-fix solutions or exhortations to ‘just look at the positive’, but I do believe that there must be a way to continue exploring and building the best of humanity. Our current emotional struggles are well-known to generations of activists and those working for change and I take heart in this — the world has been in crisis before and will continue in various forms of crises — and we can and must bear this and continue. Zooming out helps us cope, while a myopic zooming in only perpetuates the discourse that we cannot bear this, or that the status quo will remain unchangeable.

While being well in a sick world might itself be a form of sickness, I don’t think it’s wise or useful to abandon any hope of mental well-being or health, and it’s essential to stay as well as we can to keep building for ourselves and for others.

Let’s zoom out

There’s so much zooming in encouraged in our society — actually, not just figuratively — look at your pores, your cellulite, your macros, how your shares are performing at any moment of each day, change your walls to the colour of the year, what baseboard do you need for your reno, do you want Russian volume or hybrid eyelashes? The granularity of detail encouraged is startling, and if you pay careful attention it’s all designed to make you do one of a few things — feel not good enough and consume something to fix this feeling.

Let’s zoom out of this, and zoom into the many bigger questions, experiences (and joys, always joys) available to us as humans.

Mental health in 2025

I don’t have clear answers for you about how to be mentally well in 2025. I do encourage the classics of assessing your values and ensuring that most of your actions are aligned with the principles you really care about, practising good diet, movement and sleep habits, learning to tolerate helpful discomfort, reducing your perfectionism and need to always be on and doing, carefully balancing your care and nurturance of self with care and nurturance for other, holding the dialectic between being enough and doing better, accepting that you are here for a short time and may as well make the most of it, and playing — play is so essential as some form of grounding against this hard world. Joy is indeed not meant to be a crumb.

I use these core principles at each turn of the year, they’re not new years eve principles alone. I like them because they allow each of us the space to explore the world in a way that feels right for us with an ethical orientation at core but without too much prescription.

In addition, I’d like to offer some questions to guide your musings as you approach 2025 and encourage you to undertake your own accounting. What matters to you, what you lost, what you gained, what questions remain, what sorrows you felt, how you played, when you felt joy, how you decide to define your own unique life — these must be questions you sit with in the dark of the night.

• What do you hope for?

• What do you bring and gift to the world?

• What does mentally well look like for you? Is this realistic?

• What is one step toward mental wellness you can take?

• What can you tolerate?

• How can you be braver?

• What do you need to anchor to?

• What do you need to let go of?

• What do you need to grieve?

• What do you need to accept?

• When do you most feel joy? How can you plan more of this?

• What will help you feel awestruck this year?

• How can you laugh at yourself this year?

• What one habit do you need to build? What’s the first step?

The answers will be so different for us all based on our capacities and needs, and that is just wonderful.

An anchor for the year

I tend to ignore resolutions and sometimes adopt a word for the year (which I assure you I most often forget by February). This year, I’ve settled on ‘soul’. Nothing spiritual or religious about it (my soul is well past saving, friends), but it calls to me. I’m looking forward to thinking and feeling through how to enact this and to understand what it means. I like the mystery of a word I can explore in different ways as the year unfolds — but for now, soul is looking like slow + sun + not pushing + pleasure + kindness + orange (the colour).

Apart from this word-anchor, I’m just going to keep focusing on the basics — being a good psychologist, learning, studying, writing, being honest and reliable, owning my own shit, trying to make my little corner of the world happier for those who inhabit it. Nothing world-changing, but it doesn’t need to be.

What anchor might you choose? It doesn’t have to be a word — it can be a principle, a poem, a statement, a question, a drawing, a colour, a shape, a yoga pose — be playful!

Exploration > self-improvement.

Some additional things to consider for mental wellness in 2025

Apart from the basics listed above (nail sleep, food and movement first always), a few other things are likely to help improve your capacity for mental wellness.

• First, adding novelty to your life. This article nails it. Finding ways to break out of cycles of sameness and busyness are immensely helpful, as are finding ways to savour and bring presence to moments.

• Second, working on the seven types of rest. Rest is not just lying down and watching TV, and we must have a balance of multiple forms of rest.

• Find a hobby, preferably something you don’t measure or monetise. Last year I took up yoga more seriously, pickling (not v seriously at all) and continued baking and reading. This year, I’m tackling film appreciation, and I’ll probably have a crack at something crafty too.

• Contribute to others. The emotional boost from altruism can be significant. This doesn’t have to mean volunteering every week too, it can be something as simple as a $5 monthly donation, or attending a working bee at your local community garden once a year.

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BOOKS OF 2025

Ok, here are the books I’m excited to read in the early months of 2025!

Unfinished Business - Shankari Chandran
Onyx Storm - Rebecca Yarros
Dream Count - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Apart from these, I have a gigantic library backlog to plow through (just finished Intermezzo though!), so am trying not to acquire too many new books.

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MEDIA AND EVENTS

• Wrote this for The Age about resolutions, and this for The Guardian about sibling abuse.

• My ASA webinar is now available on demand for writers too.

• No events scheduled yet, I’m expecting 2025 to be quieter on that front (thank the sweet lord).

I’m going to be a bit more chaotic with this newsletter this year and will churn out editions as my soul calls (hah!), so I’ll see you next when I see you next. You can also keep up with me on Instagram, I post a little more regularly there (never the reels though, never the reels).

Stay brave, stay humble, keep learning.
x Ahona (+ Karla)

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