The Most Radical Thing You Can Do This Mental Health Month Is Nothing
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Reading time: 4 minutes
Playlist: Start with something without words. Seriously. We'll get there.
May is the loudest month for the quietest need.
Scroll through any feed right now and you'll find it. A beautiful, well-intentioned spread of mental health offerings. And I say well-intentioned genuinely, because we're getting so, so much better at talking about mental health. That part is real progress and it matters.
But here's what I've been sitting with lately: awareness without quiet is just more noise.
It's a little bit like opening any streaming platform after a long day. You finally have an hour to yourself and suddenly you're staring at an endless scroll of options. And somehow that choice, that sheer volume of here's everything you could be watching or listening to right now, becomes its own cognitive load. You end up watching or listening to nothing, or falling asleep in your pajamas on the couch. And honestly? That might be your brain being completely rational. It's conserving energy. It's doing exactly what it's designed to do when the world asks too much of it.
That seems to be the consistent theme for a very tired brain in a very loud world.
I know that tired intimately.
When my son was little, I was working in the city. My husband was on deck for daycare drop-off in the mornings, which meant I could catch the train, because paying for parking downtown was just not happening. But that also meant I spent most of my workday with one eye on the clock, because pickup was on me. Every. Single. Day.
Do you know what it feels like to be sitting in a meeting, mentally calculating whether you can make it to daycare on time before the charges become astronomical? While also trying to be present, competent, and contribute something useful?
And then you get there. You get your kid. You have maybe an hour, sometimes two if you're lucky, to actually be with him. To play, to connect, to just exist together. And then it's bedtime. And then you start again.
That was my noise. Not dramatic. Not a crisis. Just the relentless, grinding hum of a life that never quite paused.
And here's the thing. If someone had handed me a flyer during that season of life listing ten great mental health events to attend in May, I would have smiled, said that's wonderful, and quietly put it in the recycling.
Not because I didn't care. Because I was already full.
What the exhausted working mom doesn't need is another thing to show up for. She needs something that makes showing up feel possible again. She needs the noise inside her head to actually get quieter. Not temporarily distracted, but genuinely, sustainably quieter.
That's a different ask entirely.
Last week I ran a Capacity Under Pressure workshop, and something happened that I want to share. Not as a pitch, but as honest evidence of what's actually possible when you give your brain what it actually needs.
One woman almost didn't make it. She wasn't feeling well and wasn't sure she had it in her to show up. She came anyway, maybe because some part of her knew. She got a little emotional during the workshop. Afterward she sent me an audio message, and what she said has stayed with me: thank you for just holding space for me. I needed it in more ways than I thought.
That's not a testimonial about a framework. That's what happens when someone finally stops running from the quiet long enough to feel what's actually there.
Another woman wrote to me after and said that before the workshop, she would have measured her week by her deliverables. The tasks completed, the boxes checked. After? Her measure of achievement was how she showed up mentally. The week was just as full. But she left for vacation energized instead of depleted. She said it was the most incredible feeling.
A man who came in describing his brain as constantly on overdrive emailed to say that the brain dump before bed, and again when he wakes in the night, is the single thing that moves the needle most.
These aren't dramatic transformations. They're quiet ones. And that's exactly the point.
I've been doing this work on myself too over the past few years. Practicing what I teach, which is the only way I know how to teach it.
Three priorities. That's it. Brain dump before bed. Protect my sleep like it's sacred, because it is. Guard those three priorities like they matter, because they do.
And what happened when I started living that way? Everything else got quieter.
I sit more. I reflect more. I write more. I think more, and not in an anxious, spiraling way. In a generative, oh that's interesting way.
Here's what I've come to believe: we are afraid of our thoughts. We live in a world of constant stimulation. Endless streaming, endless content, music with no commercials, no pause, just more. And I think part of why we reach for all of it is because silence feels unfamiliar. Maybe even a little scary.
But our thoughts are not something to run from. They are actually a very beautiful thing, when we give them room to breathe.
The quiet isn't empty. It's where your best thinking lives. It's where you go on vacation and actually feel it. It's where you sleep and wake up with new ideas instead of yesterday's unfinished business. It's where the version of yourself you actually want to be has been waiting, patiently, for the noise to settle.
So here's your one small thing, if you want it:
Tonight, before bed, brain dump. Everything swirling, unresolved, undone. Get it out of your head and onto paper. Not to solve it. Not to organize it. Just to stop carrying it through the night.
That's it. No millions of programs. No more commitments. No sign-ups.
Just you, a notebook, and a little bit of radical quiet.
And if something shifts, even just a little, your village wants to hear about it. That's what we're here for.
What does quiet look like in your life right now, or what would it look like if you had it? Share in the comments. You might be putting words to something someone else hasn't been able to say yet.
At Village of Play, we work on brain fitness. The practical, science-backed kind that makes your whole life feel less noisy. Want to know more? Start Here
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