Josh Patel

Reading Response 3

Writing and Rhetoric ||

A person who is emotionally healthy and stable always feels lively and fully alive and can handle
emotionally challenging events with ease. One needs to be physically fit as well as emotionally strong.
Even while mental health is a very individual matter, what affects one person may or may not effect
another, there are several crucial factors that contribute to mental health problems. That is what I
learned as a part of mental health. As a human being in the 21st centry. I am a very emotional person
when it comes to mental health, and I am a very emotional person. An article called, “Why Can’t Black
Women Get Some Rest” talks more in detail. The article is concerning the mental health idea which
focuses on self-care. The article was more focused on how she came to relax and have a great massage,
but the masseur would not let her relax due to “talking too much.” I personally have experience with
this as how when you want to relax, and someone gets in your way. The rest of the article talks about
boundaries that need to be set and how you should enforce it in a time of need. The main focus in the
article is Black Women and self-care. I chose this article because the idea of self-care really piqued my
interest in the topic. This article is a narrative type that shows a certain story being shared. Jennifer
Epperson, the author of the article, talks about her personal experience and what research she has
shown and put other creditable adults in the article. She has put in quotes like “Boundaries aren’t
necessarily for other people, “They're for you to protect you from other people. A boundary you could
have used be like, ‘Hey, this is a great conversation, but I really just want quiet time right now.’” Oludara
Adeeyo, who is a self-hyphenate psychotherapist, works in research with Black women self-care. Adeeyo
not only shows his quotes in the article but gives a new perspective on the essay that I think Epperson
was missing. Personally, I agree with her on this point of how boundaries need to be assessed. Another
article that I was interested in was, “The world’s issue with you is not your issue’: Meditation and
grounding tips for the neurodivergent community” pertains to a similar issue. The article is pertaining to
tips and tricks on how to focus on meditation and grounding which also pertains to mental health. The
article is more focused on the narrative side of the author and his issues growing up. The author, Rachel
Patel, talks about other people's mental health issues. One person that chough my attention was Marita
McLaughlin. Every time someone feels overwhelmed, Marita McLaughlin, a senior meditation instructor
at the Chicago Shambhala Center and an integrative psychotherapist, advises them to try to "relate to
their feet on the ground.” She also offered striving to be open to one is five sense perceptions as a
substitute. McLaughlin stressed the significance of self-acceptance in everything, not only in meditation
and grounding. By "othering" ourselves and one another, or by placing people in a box marked
"different," the distance between an individual and their environment is widened. According to
McLaughlin, there is a way to accept one's differences without feeling the need to judge them as inferior
or incompetent. I believe that if someone's mental health is in different shape than others it could have
different effects like if one family was rich and the other one is poor. It would also affect you if you had
to commute every day or even if you had to pay for your own tuition or job. Lot of factors affect the
contribution to mental health and how it can affect people.